Chapter Eight #2
“Like I said, not tonight. I want a stage worthy of an audience. I just wanted to stop by and say don’t get too comfortable,” Carson’s smile turned even more vicious. “I can get to you whenever I want to. You are on my timetable.”
“You got through once,” Oren said. “You won’t again. I’ll tell Marsh, he’ll close the door.”
“Tell him.” Carson said with a shrug. “Fix the hole. Won’t matter.” Carson pushed up from the stud he leaned against. “This isn’t the final chapter of our story, Oren. I’m just getting ready.”
“For what.”
“For you to look at me and know why.” He backed away, never turning. “Tell your architect I said hello.”
“You hurt him, and I will put you through a fucking wall.”
Carson’s mouth twitched. “There he is, the monster on the inside.” He vanished into the dark. “Good night, Oren.”
He slid out the way he’d come. The building swallowed him with a scrape of grit and the soft bump of chain against scaffold—one, two, three.
Oren kept still until sound returned in layers—wind through the ducting conduits, the low hum of lights. He opened his hands and found crescents where his nails had pressed.
Facts, he told himself, he needed to remember the facts, so he had something to go on.
He needed time to gather more information so that they had a place to start.
Carson inside the perimeter. Unmatched boots.
Slept rough. Knew cycles. Chose a corridor with no lens.
Produced a weapon, set a boundary, promised a stage. And the eyes—brown, now blue.
He gathered Ty’s tube and killed the light. The corridor went to charcoal. He took the long route out, counting studs and steps because counting moved him forward without the blue of Carson’s eyes replaying in his head.
Outside, the air had sharpened. Gravel popped under his boots on the path to the Ridge House. He thumbed open the security app, flagged timestamps, and typed notes for morning.
Marsh—pull gate footage, audit fence line, walk blind arcs in person.
Check south run.
Verify crews.
Treat drones like hostile eyes until proven otherwise.
Tell Marsh. First thing.
He made his way up the stairs to Dale’s suite and pushed through the door.
He stood just inside and had a clear view of the kitchen.
Ty at the stove, lecturing the sauce into behaving.
Dale at the island, glass of red wine in front of him, smile on his face.
The sight eased something in Oren’s chest and tightened something else.
Saying nothing felt wrong. Saying the wrong thing felt worse.
Not yet.
He let the decision settle. He’d circle the fence line at first light and look for the door Carson thought he owned.
Watch the camera sweeps with Marsh. And he would spend some time trying to work out why those eyes, those blue eyes made his heart pound in fear. He wouldn’t turn dinner into a debrief.
He stepped into the kitchen, loving the welcome in the gazes both men turned in his direction.
“Hey,” Dale said. “Hope you’re hungry, Ty’s cooking enough for a small army.”
“Starved,” Oren said, and meant for more than one thing.
He reached for the wine glass Ty handed him and actively chose to ignore the man who promised a stage, at least for tonight.
****
The pool hadn’t quieted the voices in his head.
Forty minutes of clean strokes and the headache only stepped aside to watch.
By the time Hogan hit his room an hour later, it had returned with a vengeance.
He dropped the towel on the chair and reached for his phone to text Blake like he’d promised Dale.
The second he had the device in his hand and swiped his thumb across the camera to activate it, the device buzzed crazily in his hand.
The screen filled with a circling column of numbers, digits revolving as if they were about swirling around a drain.
He watched them turn until the phone’s camera LED blinked to green and drew a soft bar of light across his face.
A flash of light on his iris, a clean tone, and the numbers locked in and fell into rows. The text unfolded.
ACE.
Harbor wall—trades up, breakwater, east side.
Inside the line—freshwater pools by the black-rock notch.
Lights low. No comms.
One man only.
—K
He didn’t breathe. The room swung a degree and caught. Salt. Jet fuel. A laugh low in his ear from a long time ago. A warm hand against his chest. The letters didn’t spell a name, but he knew who the message came from.
Kai.
The headache surged once, then slid back, giving him room to think.
Hogan read the lines again and saw what was tucked inside them.
The first letters down the left margin spelled it clean: H I L O — Harbor wall.
.. Inside the line—freshwater pools by the black-rock notch.
Lights low. One man only. “Trades up” wasn’t poetry, it was timing.
Winds pushing east. Go now. The freshwater pools and the black-rock notch were local markers—Keaukaha without saying Keaukaha, the Richardson end without giving it away.
Come alone, no comms. It read like a map and an order at once.
He stared at the word ACE until the edges went soft. Callsign, not a nickname.
He started a message to Dale and watched the cursor blink.
Anything he wrote would pull Dale to the door with that look that stripped excuses to nothing.
Hogan didn’t have a clean reason to offer yet—just the feel of something heavy in his chest and the sense that if he didn’t move the window would close.
He killed the message, grabbed the go-bag from the back of the closet, and packed without thinking.
ID, flight card, passport, cash, spare comm that wouldn’t be turned on, clothes, knife.
Everything a traveling soldier would need.
The motions settled his hands, and he left without a backward glance, driving toward the shared hanger, intent on getting to where he needed to get to.
Inside the hangar, the air ran cooler—metal holding the day and letting it go slowly.
The jet sat under sodium light just waiting for all that power to be released, and he was just the man to do it.
Hogan keyed in, let the strip lights spool up, and ran a preflight by touch.
Skin to seam, eyes to rivet, palm to strut.
Smell of fuel and oil made the noise in his head step back another inch.
He’d filed the plan before he’d started the drive to the hanger, thumbs quick on the screen.
He wanted nothing to slow him down. Hilo, night hop, solo.
No passengers listed. Direct routing. He was halfway around the nose when the small personnel door at the back of the hanger opened and let in a rectangle of cooler night.
Dev.
He didn’t raise his voice. He never had to. “Your flight plan landed on my phone for approval,” he said, crossing the concrete like a man who already knew the answers and hated that knowledge anyway. “Hawaii.”
Hogan kept his hand on the skin of the plane. “Hilo to be exact.”
“You don’t have approval.”
“I can ask for it while I’m climbing.” Hogan turned. “Or you can give it to me now.”
Dev stopped with his boots just inside the wash of the light. He looked at Hogan, then at the jet, then back at Hogan. He had that stillness that made people tell the truth.
“What’s in Hawaii,” he asked, “that can’t wait until morning and can’t take a second body?”
Hogan thought about lying and knew firsthand that the big bastard in front of him had some kind of sixth sense when it came to bullshit. “I don’t know yet.” He met Dev’s eyes and kept it there. “But I know I have to be there, and I have to go alone.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have for you.” Hogan didn’t step closer.
Dev’s mouth flattened. “I know about the headaches.” Of course he did. “You think Blake would clear you to fly?”
“I’m not broken.” Hogan snapped.
“Maybe not,” Dev said. “Maybe just bent where it matters.” He looked past Hogan to the cockpit and then back. “You telling Bateman?”
“No.” Hogan let the word land. “Not yet.”
“Dale?”
“No.”
Dev breathed out through his nose, long enough to count, crossing his arms over his chest. “If this is a trap—”
“It’s not.” The certainty surprised them both. “If I’m wrong, I’ll take the burn. If I’m right, then I need to leave now, before it’s too late.”
Dev watched him another beat and then stepped into the light. “You filed a flight plan, direct to Hawaii. That pings alarms for people watching. You going to take the water line in, not the field?”
“Yes.” Hogan didn’t ask how Dev knew his habits. He just let the respect thread between them. “Breakwater. East side.”
Dev’s eyes cooled. “So, you do know what’s in Hawaii.”
“I know who.” Hogan didn’t say the name. He didn’t need to.
Something eased under Dev’s face—recognition, and a decision. He took out his phone, thumbed through two screens, and then the jet’s console chirped approval like a polite throat-clear.
“Flight plan released,” Dev said. “Minimal tower chatter. You’ll get what you need.” He slid the phone away. “And you’ll owe me a report the minute you’re wheels-down.”
“You’ll get it.”
Dev studied him one last time. “I’m not stopping you.”
“You shouldn’t,” Hogan said, softer than he meant to. “But I appreciate you checking.”
Dev turned to go and paused with his hand on the door bar. He didn’t look back when he said, “Not all roads end in places—sometimes, the roads that are most worth traveling? They end with the right people.” A beat. “Clear skies, Ace.”
The door shut on the last word. Hogan stood very still and replayed it. Ace. By the time he reached the threshold, Dev was gone into the dark and the only answer left was the quiet inside the hangar.
Hogan climbed into the plane, closed the door and made his way into the cockpit and set the bag where it lived on long nights. He buckled in, flicked the switches with muscle memory, and watched the greens step across the board.
Taxi lights. Clearance he didn’t have five minutes ago. The runway a clean line. He eased her forward and felt the small lift under his ribs when the nose took air.
“Inbound,” he said to the night, to the message, to the man who’d signed it with nothing but a letter.
Wheels up. The Ridge falling away. Hawaii ahead, and whatever waited on the east face of the breakwater after dark.