14. The Truth
FOURTEEN
The Truth
ADDY
The cold wakes me.
It isn't a gradual shift. It's an immediate, visceral awareness of the empty space in the bed beside me. The heavy wool blanket is pulled over my shoulder, but the heat is gone.
I open my eyes. The harsh red numbers of the digital clock bleed through the shadows. 0214.
The room is completely silent.
I push up onto my elbows, the chill of the motel room biting into my bare skin. My clothes from the mountain—the damp thermal, the ripped jeans—are folded on the armchair in the corner.
Wyatt's tactical jacket is gone.
My heart kicks hard against my ribs, a sudden, erratic rhythm. I throw off the blanket and slide out of the bed. The threadbare carpet is freezing under my bare feet. I pull the damp thermal over my head, drag on my jeans, and shove my feet into my boots without bothering to tie the laces.
I cross the room to the small circular table. The terminal is dark. The hard drive containing the Ares forensic audit sits squarely in the center of the table, next to a cheap motel stationery pad.
Wyatt's combat knife is gone. His sidearm is gone.
I'm not leaving.
The vow echoes in the quiet room. He said it. He meant it. I felt the absolute, desperate truth of it when his hands were on me, when he finally stripped away the armor and let me see the man beneath the ghost.
I walk to the door. The deadbolt is unlocked.
I push the heavy door open and step out into the freezing air of the parking lot.
The rain has stopped, leaving the asphalt slick and black.
Two massive, matte-black SUVs idle near the edge of the lot, their headlights cut.
Four men in full tactical gear stand near the tree line, suppressed rifles slung across their chests.
The heavy, metallic smell of diesel exhaust hangs in the damp air.
Frost stands by the passenger door of the lead vehicle. He turns at the sound of the motel door opening.
He doesn't look like the man I spent three days with at the safe house. The casual, protective warmth is gone, replaced by a rigid, cold professionalism. He looks exactly like the commander of a black-ops element.
I walk toward him, the laces of my boots dragging over the wet gravel.
"Where is he?" My voice shakes, but it isn't from the cold.
"He's gone." Frost meets my gaze. His eyes are dark, guarded, and laced with a bitter exhaustion.
"Gone? What do you mean gone?" The words hit me like a physical blow, punching the air out of my lungs. "He wouldn't just leave."
"He geared up and walked into the timber two hours ago." Frost's jaw tightens. "He handed over the job. You're secure. The intel is secure. And he walked away."
"No. You're lying. Or you're wrong. He wouldn't abandon me." I shake my head, refusing to let the panic take root.
"He walked out. Looked me right in the eye and said he had business to handle." The tactical commander bleeds out of Frost's voice, leaving a raw, jagged anger. "He's a ghost. He operates in the dark. You can't drag a man like that into the light and expect him to stay."
"You don't understand him. He isn't the unredeemable monster you think he is. He wouldn't cut ties." I cross my arms over the damp thermal, fighting a violent tremor in my hands.
"He's a killer." Frost's voice drops, harsh and uncompromising. "You saw it on the mountain. He's lethal, and he's broken. He did his job, he kept you breathing, and then he cut ties before he had to face the reality of living with you." Frost holds my stare, uncompromising and cold.
I stare at him. The absolute certainty in his eyes makes me physically sick. He believes it. He truly believes his own brother is that far gone.
I turn my back on him.
"Get your things. We're moving you to a secure facility." Frost's command follows me as I turn my back.
I don't answer. I walk back into the motel room and slam the door shut.
The silence presses in on me again. The red light from the clock. The empty bed.
I'm not leaving.
My mind races, tearing through the data, the timeline, the variables. I'm a forensic accountant. I don't operate on emotion. I operate on evidence. I track numbers. I find anomalies. I follow the thread until the truth unravels.
Wyatt didn't leave because he's broken.
He left because he believes he has to.
I walk back to the circular table. The terminal. The hard drive. The motel stationery pad.
I stare at the pad. The cheap ballpoint pen rests in the center of the top sheet. The sheet is completely blank.
He handed over the job. You're secure. The intel is secure.
Before I shut down the uplink, I tracked the final, panicked transfer of hard assets from the Ares shell accounts. I found where the physical gold was being routed. A fortified compound thirty miles south of the Mexican border. The broker's last redoubt.
If Guardian HRS has the intel, they'll build a case. They'll wait for jurisdiction. They'll wrap the broker in red tape while he rebuilds his network and sends kill squads after me.
I don't build cases. I end them.
He didn't abandon me. The realization hits me with the force of a detonating charge. He did the only thing he could do. He's going to end this. He's avenging the death of that federal witness, enacting the justice only he can give, and he's protecting me.
Frost has it all wrong. Wyatt is more than a killer. He's a protector. An avenger. And he's the only man I've ever trusted.
I grab the notepad. I tilt it toward the harsh light of the bedside lamp.
The top sheet is blank, but the paper is cheap. Thin.
I grab the ballpoint pen. I don't use the tip.
I angle the pen, using the side of the ballpoint casing, and begin to shade rapidly across the top sheet of the pad.
The ink catches on the smooth paper, darkening the surface, but skipping over the deep, jagged indentations left by whatever was written on the sheet above it.
Numbers emerge from the dark shading.
A string of GPS coordinates.
I rip the sheet off the pad, and walk back out the door.
Frost is still standing by the lead SUV. He looks up as I march across the gravel.
"I told you to get your things?—"
"Shut up."
I stop two feet in front of him and shove the shaded piece of motel stationery against his chest. He instinctively catches it.
"Look at it."
"Where did you get this?" Frost glances down at the paper. His eyes scan the coordinates, his tactical mind instantly recognizing the GPS string.
"He wrote it down before he left. I used the pen impressions on the pad to pull it. Do you recognize the coordinates?" I shiver, fighting the freezing wind.
"It's thirty miles south of the border. It matches the intel on the Ares broker's secondary safe house." Frost looks up, his expression guarded.
"He didn't walk away from me. He went to kill the broker." I step closer, refusing to let Frost look away.
"Guardian HRS has the intel. We'll handle the broker." Frost's jaw tightens.
"When? In a month? In six months? When you get the clearance to cross the border?
Wyatt knows how this ends. He knows the broker will never stop hunting me as long as he has breath in his lungs.
" The anger finally breaks through the panic, hot and absolute.
"So you'll do what? Sit on your ass and wait for orders while he's out there alone?
" I gesture wildly toward the dark timber line.
"He's going to die out there, and you'll let it happen because you're judging him for a mistake he made four years ago.
But he was just as much a victim as the man who died.
He's been trying to atone for it ever since, and you've spent four years making sure he believes he's worth nothing. "
Frost stares at me. A muscle feathers along his jaw. The rigid, uncompromising line of his shoulders finally drops.
"He made his decision. He walked out with a sidearm and a knife." Frost stares at the piece of paper in his hand.
"Because he thinks he deserves to die in the dark.
" I step directly into Frost's space, grabbing the thick canvas of his tactical vest. "He's the most honorable man I've ever known.
He's throwing his life away to protect me because his brother convinced him he has no honor left.
If you let him walk into a suicide mission while you stand here following orders, you're the one who is morally bankrupt. Not him."
Frost doesn't move. The wind howls across the asphalt, rattling the heavy chain-link fence at the edge of the lot.
I let go of his vest. I take a step back.
"You can put me in that SUV. You can drive me to a fortified safe house and put me in a cage for the rest of my life.
You can follow your orders. Or you can stand by his side and be his brother.
You can get in that truck, you can track those coordinates, and you can save him. " I point to the dark timber line.
"He never told me it was a mistake." The words are quiet, stripped of all their tactical authority. "He never told me he was trying to make it right. That's on him."
"Why would he?" I step forward, driving my index finger hard into the center of his chest. "You shut him out. You left him in the cold and told him he was an unredeemable monster."
Frost flinches, the absolute certainty finally shattering.
"You're the reason he's out there." I poke him again, refusing to back down.
My entire life, men have tried to overshadow me, treating me like I was weak. It's exactly why I became A.D. Hart. I will not let this man intimidate me. Not when Wyatt's life is on the line.
"You're the reason he's going to die. Tell me, is that something you can live with? Or do you have the guts to be the brother he deserves?"
Frost looks down at the piece of paper in his hand. The GPS coordinates stark against the dark shading.
"You can stand by his side and let him live, or you can turn your back on him and let him die." I point to the dark timber line. "I know what an honorable man would do. The question is, do you?"
He looks at the tree line. The silence stretches, heavy and thick, as the truth finally breaks through his armor.
He turns to look at his teammates. Flint, Hawk, Kade, and Riot. They are tier-one operators, strictly loyal to the chain of command.
"She's not wrong, boss." Flint shifts his stance near the lead vehicle.
Frost looks back at me. The tactical commander is gone. The older brother is back, and the look in his eyes is pure, unfiltered violence.
"This isn't a sanctioned op." Frost holds the gaze of his men. "None of you have to come. But if you do, I'm not turning you away. I need one of you to stay with her. We can't leave her alone."
"I've got her overwatch." Hawk steps out of the formation. "Go get your brother."
"Mount up."
The command cuts through the freezing air.
The rest of the team snaps into motion, converging on the lead SUV and leaving the second vehicle parked for Hawk. Doors slam. Weapons are racked. The heavy diesel engine roars, shattering the quiet of the night.
Frost opens the passenger door. He doesn't look back at me. He doesn't have to.
"We're going hunting."