Chapter 9
MARA
The window shows nothing but trees and darkness where Gabe disappeared.
"He's not coming back." Zara's voice comes from behind me, flat and certain.
"Don't say that."
"Mara." She moves to stand beside me, her reflection ghostly in the darkening window. "That was a trap. Obviously. And he walked right into it."
"He didn't have a choice."
"There's always a choice." Zara's jaw is tight. "He could have let us help. Could have called Zeke, set up counter-surveillance, done literally anything except go alone and unarmed to meet professional killers."
"He was armed." I saw him check the gun, the knife. Small comfort against whatever's waiting up on that mountain.
Zara makes a frustrated sound. "Great. So when they kill him, at least he'll have a gun he can't use because there are three of them and one of him."
"Stop." My voice breaks on the word. "Just stop."
She's quiet for a moment. When she speaks again, her tone is softer. "I'm sorry. I'm just... I've seen this before. In Anchorage. People who think they can handle things alone. It never ends well."
She's talking about more than Gabe. About her own past, her own losses. But I can't comfort her right now when my own fear is choking me.
"Two hours," I say. "He said two hours. If he's not back, we tell Zeke everything."
"And in the meantime?"
"In the meantime, we prepare." Turning from the window helps. Motion helps. Standing here watching won't bring him back faster. "Check all the doors and windows. Make sure the security system is armed. Get the rifle and shotgun from the cabinet."
Zara blinks. "You have a rifle and a shotgun?"
"My grandmother's. They're old but they work." The storage room holds things I'd rather not think about. "And there are emergency supplies in the cellar. If they come for us while Gabe is gone...”
"They won't." Zara follows me. "They want Gabe. We're just leverage."
"Which makes us targets." The rifle case comes out easily—I know exactly where it is, have always known. The shotgun sits beside it. "Help me bring up the emergency supplies. Food, water, first aid. Everything we might need if we have to barricade ourselves in."
We work in tense silence, hauling supplies up from the cellar. Canned goods, bottled water, blankets, a battery-powered radio. The medical kit my grandmother kept stocked for emergencies. Flashlights, batteries, a portable camp stove.
"You've thought about this," Zara says, watching me organize everything with methodical precision. "About being under siege."
"I've thought about a lot of things." Both weapons are loaded, clean, ready. My hands remember how to hold them even though I haven't fired either in three years. "When you spend enough time running, you learn to always have an exit strategy."
"Is that what you were doing? Running?"
I should deflect. Change the subject. But something about the way she's looking at me—not judging, just understanding—makes the truth spill out.
"Phoenix. Three years ago. My boyfriend...” I stop. Start again. "He hit me. A lot. And I stayed because I didn't know how to leave."
Zara's face hardens. "How'd you get out?"
"I had no choice. I waited until he fell asleep.
Took the cash I'd hidden—a thousand dollars, maybe a little more.
" The rifle goes down because my hands are shaking now.
“After I left, I found out my grandmother died.
Left me this place. It was the only thing in my life he couldn't control, couldn't take away, Left my phone in a stranger's jacket at the airport.
Bought a ticket to Anchorage and never looked back. "
"Does Gabe know?"
"No. Nobody here does." I look at her. "That man on the phone—he knows about Derek. About Phoenix. He threatened to tell Derek where I am."
Zara goes very still. "That's why Gabe went. Not just to protect the town. To protect you specifically."
"I didn't ask him to...”
"You didn't have to." She picks up the shotgun, checks it with the ease of someone who knows weapons. "He's in love with you. Which means he'd walk into hell barefoot if he thought it would keep you safe."
The words hit me like a physical blow. He told me he loved me. Right before he walked out that door, possibly to his death, he told me he loved me.
And I let him go.
"I should have stopped him." My voice sounds distant, strange. "I should have...”
"You couldn't have stopped him." Zara's tone is surprisingly gentle. "Men like that—the protector types—they'll tear themselves apart before they let someone they love get hurt. Trust me, I know."
Her voice goes flat. Empty. I know that sound—I've heard it in my own voice.
"Someone you knew?"
"My foster brother. Marcus." She's quiet for a moment. "He tried to protect me from our foster father. Got himself beaten half to death for it. And when I finally ran, three years later, I left him behind because I was too scared to stay."
"Zara..."
"He's dead now. Overdose, they said, but I know better." Her hands tighten on the shotgun. "So yeah, I know what it's like to watch someone walk into danger for your sake. And I know what it's like to live with the guilt when they don't come back."
We stand there in the darkening lodge, two women who know what it's like to run. To rebuild. To watch someone walk into danger because of us.
"Gabe's coming back," I say, willing it to be true. "He has to."
"Yeah." Zara doesn't sound convinced. "He does."
The silence stretches between us, filled with the crackle of fire and the wind outside. I can hear every small sound—the settling of the house, the hiss of logs burning, my own heartbeat too loud in my ears.
"Tell me about Derek," Zara says suddenly. "Not the leaving part. Before that. What made you stay?"
The question catches me off guard. "Why do you want to know?"
"Because I stayed too. Three years with Marcus getting beaten while I told myself it would get better.
That if I just kept my head down, didn't cause trouble, our foster father would eventually calm down.
" She's not looking at me, her eyes fixed on the fire.
"I want to know if your reasons were as stupid as mine. "
"They weren't stupid."
"Weren't they?" Now she does look at me. "What did you tell yourself?"
I sit down slowly, the rifle across my lap. "That he loved me. That the good days made up for the bad ones. That if I could just be better—cook the right meals, say the right things, not make him angry—then he'd go back to being the man I fell in love with."
"And did he?"
"No. He just got better at hiding it from other people. At making me think it was my fault." My throat tightens. "By the end, I believed him. Believed I deserved it. That I was lucky he stayed with someone as broken as me."
Zara nods slowly. "Marcus used to say that. That he deserved it. That he made our foster father angry on purpose to keep the attention off me." Her voice goes hard. "I believed him too. Thought he was protecting me. Took me years to understand he was just as trapped as I was."
"You were kids."
"So were you, in a way. Twenty-five when you met Derek?"
"Twenty-six." The memories feel distant now, like they happened to someone else. "Fresh out of a bad breakup, new city, working sixty-hour weeks at an accounting firm. He seemed perfect. Successful, charming, knew all the right things to say."
"They always do." Zara shifts, the shotgun moving with her. "How long before he hit you the first time?"
"Eight months. We'd just moved in together. I burned dinner." The words taste like ash. "He apologized after. Cried. Said his father used to hit him, that he'd never do it again. Bought me flowers, took me to an expensive restaurant. I forgave him."
"And the second time?"
"Three weeks later. Then two weeks. Then it stopped being about whether I did something wrong and started being about when he felt like it.
" I force myself to keep talking, even though every word hurts.
"The worst part wasn't the hitting. It was the way he made me believe I couldn't survive without him.
That no one else would ever want me. That leaving would be worse than staying. "
"But you did leave."
"Because I had no choice. But I discovered after I left that my grandmother had given me an out. A place to go where he couldn't follow, enough distance to start thinking clearly again." I look at Zara. "If she hadn't died, if there hadn't been this lodge... I don't know how I would have survived."
"You would have." Zara's voice is certain. "Maybe not that day, maybe not that year. But eventually. Because the alternative is death—fast or slow, but always death."
The fire pops, sending sparks up the chimney. Outside, the wind has picked up, rattling the windows we've covered with curtains.
"Do you ever think about going back?" Zara asks. "Not to him. Just to Phoenix. To the life you had before."
"No." The answer comes without hesitation. "That person doesn't exist anymore. She died the night I got on that plane to Anchorage."
"Good." Zara settles back against the wall. "Because she sounds like someone who let other people define her worth. The Mara I know doesn't do that."
The words settle into something warm in my chest. The Mara she knows. Not the broken woman who fled Phoenix, but the one who built this lodge, who saved Gabe's life, who's sitting here armed and ready to defend what's hers.
"Thank you," I say quietly.
"For what?"
"For asking. For listening. For not making me feel weak for staying as long as I did."
"We do what we have to do to survive." Zara's expression is matter-of-fact. "Anyone who judges that hasn't lived it."
My phone buzzes. Unknown number. Every muscle in my body tenses as I answer.
"Ms. Bennett." The voice is smooth, educated, with an edge that makes my skin crawl. "I don't believe we've been formally introduced. My name is Commander Vex Crane."
I mouth the name to Zara, who immediately starts recording on her phone.
"What do you want?" I keep my voice level.