Chapter 11
11
ABBY
T he wind bites at my cheeks as I step out of the Jeep, wrapping my arms tighter around my body for show. It’s not the cold making my hands shake. It’s adrenaline. The cabin—a once-charming hunting lodge turned into forgotten ruin—looms ahead like a carcass of memories and broken promises. The wooden siding is weather-worn, the roof half-caved on one end, and the broken windowpanes whistle softly in the mountain gusts.
Perfect place for a trap.
Travis hated this idea, but Carlton wouldn’t go for a meeting in public. In the end Travis and I agreed Carlton needed to think he had control until it was too late for him to figure out he didn’t.
Meeting in this place meant Travis prepped for every possible failure. He didn’t just scout the area—he rigged the perimeter with fallback sensors, checked every blind corner, laid out three backup extraction points. And he still looked like he wanted to throw me over his shoulder and lock me in a bunker until this was over.
But he let me go… because he knows I can do this… because he trusts me.
I swallow the lump in my throat and walk slowly toward the cabin, boots crunching over ice and debris. I’m dressed for the part—old jeans, an oversized coat, and just enough panic in my eyes to sell the role of a terrified, desperate woman in over her head.
The front door groans on its hinges as I push it open. The inside smells like mildew and rot. There’s dust thick enough to write a novel in, and broken glass crunches beneath every step. A single figure stands in the center of the room, lit by shafts of light breaking through the broken ceiling. He turns as I enter.
Carlton.
He looks exactly like I imagined, and nothing like I expected. His face is smooth, deceptively kind. Older, but not frail. There’s a crispness to his stance, the kind of poise that comes from decades of manipulation, not combat. Designer coat. Polished boots. Gloves like he’s afraid of catching something from the furniture.
His smile is tight, eyes scanning me from head to toe like I’m a document to be studied and filed.
“You’re late,” he says.
I blink, startled. “As you instructed, I ensured I wasn’t being followed.”
He chuckles. “You think anyone in that sleepy town gives a damn? Travis might have them fooled, but not me. You’ve stirred up a hornet’s nest, Abigail.”
I keep my posture defensive, shrinking slightly, as if his presence alone is enough to make me wilt. “You said you’d help me… that you wanted to protect what Nick died for.”
That draws a spark of interest. He cocks his head. “I said a lot of things.”
I force a tremble into my hands as I unzip the canvas bag slung across my chest. The fake journal sits inside—carefully aged, full of plausible half-truths Travis and I cooked up over whiskey and intel sheets at three in the morning. It looks real. It reads real.
But if Carlton knows the truth, this won’t buy us time. It’ll get us both killed.
“I have what you’re looking for,” I say, and pull it out, clutching it to my chest like it’s my last lifeline. “Nick’s journal. He told me to keep it safe. I didn’t even read it until last week. But it scared me. There’s stuff in here I don’t understand. Things about operations that weren’t in his records. I thought Travis could help, but he—he’s not the man Nick remembered.”
Carlton moves forward with deliberate steps. Every movement is calculated. Smooth. Predatory.
He doesn’t reach for the journal. Not yet. He’s playing with me.
“He never was. You’re a clever girl, Abby. And braver than your brother gave you credit for. I see now why he worried about you so much.”
I grip the journal tighter, taking a step back. “I just want this over.”
“Of course you do,” he says smoothly. “And it can be… if you give me that.”
“I want to know why,” I say, pushing a little further. “Nick trusted you. He wrote your name. He said if anything happened to him, I should stay away from you. Why would he say that?”
Carlton’s eyes gleam, like he’s been waiting for someone to ask.
“Because your brother was a fool,” he says, stepping closer. “Loyal. Principled. But foolish. He and Travis both. A couple of fucking Eagle Scouts. I gave them everything—an edge, a purpose. I was building something greater than any of them understood. And what did they do? They turned on me.”
“You sold out your own unit,” I say, letting a little steel into my voice. “You gave up their position to foreign intel.”
He laughs—low and amused. “You say that like it wasn’t a strategic trade. One location for information that gave this country six months of warning against a foreign insurgency. One operation for global leverage.”
“They trusted you.”
“They were tools. Sharp ones, yes. But still replaceable.” His voice hardens. “Travis should’ve died in Syria. I made sure of it. Nick—he died a hero, but he died ignorant. And yet here you are, dragging their ghosts back into the light.”
My stomach turns, but I don’t let it show. I look down at the journal in my hands and force a tear into my voice. “I don’t want to be part of this. I just… I just want to be safe.”
Carlton moves in, slowly this time, and reaches out. “Then hand it over, sweetheart. Let the men play their games. You don’t belong in this war.”
I let him take it. I release the decoy journal into his hands and watch him cradle it like it’s sacred.
He doesn’t know. My heart thunders. I don’t breathe. I don’t blink.
He flips it open, starts scanning the pages. For a moment, I think he might catch the con—spot the clean handwriting that doesn’t match Nick’s exact loops, the aged pages that are just a little too uniformly yellowed.
But his expression turns pleased. “At last.”
Then his eyes lift and lock onto mine again. The cold behind them freezes me in place.
“Where’s Travis?” he asks.
I blink. “Wh…what?”
Carlton steps closer. “You think I don’t know you two are working together? You think I didn’t have eyes in Misty Mountain the moment you crossed the town line? I’ve known he was alive for years. I was just waiting for the right bait.”
He taps the journal. “And here you are.”
Something shifts outside. A creak in the wood. A whisper of snow disturbed. I don’t react. I keep my breathing shallow and panicked. Let him see what he wants to see.
“Travis isn’t coming,” I say, voice soft. “He told me I was on my own.”
Carlton smiles. It’s not human. It’s a thing made of power and arrogance and decades of manipulation stacked like bricks into a fortress no one ever tried to breach.
“Then I guess he failed you. Just like he failed your brother. Did you really think this would end differently?” he says, one eyebrow lifting with that condescending confidence only men like him can manage. “Little girl walks into the lion’s den with big brother’s old war stories and a decoy file. Cute.”
I keep my eyes wide, my body angled just enough to suggest fear, even though my heart’s steady now. Because I can feel it. Travis is close. I can’t hear him—he’s too good for that. But I know he’s here. Somewhere in the shadows, waiting for the perfect second. The man can move through a forest like a wraith. Silent. Controlled. Deadly.
Carlton gestures with his gun, nodding toward the old leather-bound notebook he’d tossed onto the crate. “That’s what this was all about, huh? Your brother’s precious words. Too bad it’s just more sentiment than substance.”
“You wouldn’t know substance if it punched you in the throat,” I mutter, barely loud enough for him to catch.
He laughs, a short bark of amusement. “Feisty. Just like your brother. Until he wasn’t.”
My hands curl into fists at my sides. “You sold them out.”
Carlton shrugs. “I sold them for a higher cause—American money and access to Russian intel. No such thing as loyalty anymore, sweetheart. Just leverage.”
“You cost five men their lives.”
“Correction.” His eyes gleam. “I made a deal. Your brother got sentimental. Would’ve been better off if he’d kept his mouth shut like the others.”
I force a small, quivering breath. Just enough to keep his ego high and his guard low. “You killed Nick.”
“I orchestrated a necessary solution,” he says. “Don’t take it personal. He wasn’t supposed to survive long enough to talk, anyway.”
I hold his gaze. “He didn’t just talk. He wrote everything down. I read it. I know everything you did.”
Carlton stiffens. Gotcha.
“And I made sure someone else knows, too,” I add. “Just in case I didn’t walk out of here.”
He laughs again, but there’s a crack in it now. He steps closer, gun raising to chest level. “You’re bluffing.”
“Am I?”
Before he can answer, a shadow slices through the air behind him. Travis. He moves like the wind—fast, brutal, surgical.
Carlton doesn’t even get a word out. The gun flies from his hand as Travis slams into him with bone-breaking force. Carlton stumbles back, cursing, trying to recover, but Travis is already there. One punch to the throat stuns him. A swift kick to the back of the knee takes him down.
I scramble to the side, heart hammering as the two men grapple. Carlton pulls a knife—of course he does—but Travis bats it away with a flick of his wrist. He’s not fighting like someone looking to win. He’s fighting like someone delivering judgment.
“You should have stayed away,” Travis growls, grabbing Carlton by the front of his coat and slamming him into the crate hard enough to crack the wood. “But you had to come for her.”
Carlton spits blood. “You think you’re the good guy in this? You disappeared, Holt. You let your men die and then faked your own death.”
“I walked away so the reputation of my team could reflect what they were… heroes. Now, I want to take you down and bring you to justice.” Travis’s voice drops to a deadly whisper.
Carlton shoves back, swinging wildly, but Travis catches the blow, twists, and pins him face-down against the crate. His knee presses into Carlton’s spine as he cuffs him with a zip tie from his pocket.
“You don’t get to run again,” Travis says.
Carlton laughs through bloody teeth. “You have nothing. No proof. No witnesses.”
“Oh, you’re wrong about that,” I say.
I step forward, Nick’s dog tags clenched in my hand. I loop the chain around my knuckles, just like Travis showed me.
“For Nick,” I whisper.
And I punch Carlton in the temple—fast, sharp, clean. He slumps, stunned, but not unconscious.
“I hope that rattles in your skull every time you try to sleep,” I say, stepping back.
Travis lifts his eyes to mine. There’s no smile. Just that steady, unshakable presence. He stands, hauls Carlton up with him, and tosses him back against the wall where he stays slumped, cuffed and gasping.
I reach into my coat and pull out the small recorder I hid in the inner pocket. It’s still blinking red. I press the button, and the audio rewinds with a soft click.
I hit stop and slide the recorder into Travis’s hand. “Sent it to Hank the moment he started talking. Signal’s piggybacked off the inn’s repeater. Ella made sure we had backup.”
Travis nods once. “You did good.”
Before I can answer, voices rise outside—shouting, boot falls, and the distinct crackle of a police radio. Travis stands between me and the door automatically, body still coiled like he’s expecting a second wave.
But then I hear Hank’s voice. “Clear! Law enforcement coming in!”
Sheriff Calder—the county sheriff—steps into the room with two deputies behind him. His eyes take in the scene in a blink—Carlton cuffed and bleeding, Travis standing tall, me holding the dog tags like a damn war medal.
“Well, damn,” Calder mutters. “Holt. Didn’t think I’d see you again.”
“You never did,” Travis says simply.
Calder’s mouth twitches, but he doesn’t argue. He gestures to the deputies. “Cuff him properly. Read him his rights. We’ve got the audio feed. Should be enough to bury him.”
As they haul Carlton out, he gives one last look back at me, but I don’t flinch. Not anymore.
“You’re dead,” he rasps.
“No,” I say, stepping closer, lifting my chin. “You are.”
Travis slides an arm around my waist, grounding me. His lips brush my temple before he speaks low enough only I can hear.
“It’s over.”
But I’m not so sure. Not yet. I look out the broken windows at the forest beyond. Somewhere out there, someone else might’ve helped Carlton. Someone might be watching, waiting for their turn. Because monsters like him don’t work alone. Not in operations like these.
I press closer to Travis, my hand gripping his shirt. “We’re not done.”
“No,” he says. “We’re just getting started.”
And as the deputies lead Carlton out into the snow, the sky opens above us. Thick flakes start to fall again—quiet, steady, a reminder that even after the storm, the mountain never sleeps.