Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
Stryker
I stand in the small office the onsite Hawkeye operatives have claimed as a command post, the one with the satellite uplink that never drops a signal no matter how hard the wind howls.
The fire in the main room still crackles faintly through the closed door, but in here, the only light comes from the bank of monitors and the cold white glow of the laptop screen.
My pulse has not settled since the phone buzzed against my thigh out there under the pines.
During our walk back, Lyra’s tears still clung to the collar of my jacket, salt and snow and the faint trace of her skin. I can still taste her mouth on mine, the way she kissed me after the branches let go and covered Remy’s name like a benediction.
I saw the flicker of fear on her face when the phone vibrated, the way her body went still against mine even as she told me not to apologize. Three weeks of borrowed time, three weeks of pretending the world outside these walls had paused just for us. Now the pause is over.
The laptop chimes.
Hawkeye’s name flashes across the secure channel.
I drop into the chair, thumb the Accept key, and his face fills the screen. His eyes are the same flat steel they have been since the day he pulled me out of a burning house in Kandahar and told me I still had work to do.
“Stryker.” His voice cuts through the satellite delay like a blade. “It’s done.”
The words hit me low in the gut, a punch I have been waiting for and dreading in equal measure. I lean forward, forearms on the desk, the wood cool under my skin. “All of it?”
“All of it.” He taps something off-screen, and a second window slides open beside his feed—official Interpol letterhead, crimson stamps, the kind of document that rewrites lives.
“Lyra Moreau no longer exists on any diffusion, any watchlist, any database we can touch. And we touched them all. She is clean. Gone. Free.”
Free.
The word rolls around inside my skull, heavy and impossible and everything I have bled for these past weeks.
I stare at the screen until the letters blur, until the weight of them sinks through muscle and bone and settles in the place that has been clenched tight since the first moment I saw her in that coffee shop, scanning exits like a woman who expected the world to bite.
Hawkeye keeps talking, voice clipped and precise, the way he delivers after-action reports that end careers or start wars.
“Swiss Federal Police hit Kress’s private vault forty-one hours ago.
Routine insurance audit turned search warrant turned jackpot.
Hollingsworth pieces were exactly where we said they’d be.
We managed to get the locket and ceramic fob into a separate biometric drawer. ”
Nice fucking work.
“Press release went out this morning. ‘Miraculous Recovery of Artifact Believed Lost Since 1918.’ International cooperation, anonymous tip from concerned private security firm, blah blah blah. Hawkeye gets the seven-figure finder’s fee wired today and full public credit for the recovery chain.
Kress is in a Zurich holding cell with his accounts frozen and his lawyers screaming into the void. ”
I exhale through my teeth, slow and controlled.
Viktor Kress—half-Russian blood, full Bratva money.
The polished philanthropist with the Zurich accent and the Huguenot mother’s name that opened every museum door from Geneva to St. Petersburg.
His father was a vor who laundered cash through banks older than nations.
Viktor took the respectable route—art, relics, Romanov pieces acquired quietly for decades to keep the pakhan smiling.
The Tsar’s Tear—if indeed it’s still in the vault—was never just a diamond to them.
Even though it had never officially been gifted, it’s considered family property, stolen from the Romanovs in 1918, therefore rightfully reclaimed when the Soviet Union crumbled and the old debts came due.
The Bratva has bigger enemies than one woman who no longer holds the keys to anything.
“No blowback.” Hawkeye has read my silence the way he reads everything. “The runner we took care of in the field was the last loose thread.”
The fire in the other room pops loud enough to carry through the door, a sharp crack that makes my shoulders twitch. I drag a hand through my hair, feel the damp from the snow still clinging to the ends. “She’s free.”
“She’s free.” Hawkeye’s eyes soften a fraction.
The call ends. The screen goes dark.
I sit there for a long moment, the silence pressing in from every side, thick and absolute. Free. The word tastes like gunpowder and pine and the salt of her tears on my tongue. I close the laptop with a soft click that sounds too final, too loud in the quiet room.
Lyra sits propped against the headboard, legs crossed under the quilt, hair still damp from the quick shower she took after we got back, dark strands clinging to her neck and shoulders.
She looks up from her laptop, eyes sharp and clear, no trace of the shattered woman from weeks ago, just quiet strength and that guarded curiosity that twists something low in my gut every time.
Instantly she snaps the lid closed.
I cross the room in three strides and drop onto the edge of the bed beside her. The mattress dips under my weight, pulling her slightly toward me. She does not resist, just shifts to face me fully, knees brushing my thigh, eyes searching mine with that intensity that always strips me bare.
The words sit heavy on my tongue, too big for the quiet room.
“It’s over.”
“Over?” Her brows pull together a fraction, body going still in that way she has, alert but not afraid. Not anymore.
“All of it.” I reach for her hand, lace my fingers through hers, feel the coolness of her skin warming instantly against my palm.
“Interpol scrubbed your name from every list, every database. Lyra Moreau doesn’t appear anywhere.
Not as a person of interest, not as a footnote.
You’re clean. Gone from their systems like you never existed. ”
She blinks once, slow, and I watch the realization sink in, layer by layer. Her fingers tighten around mine, almost painfully.
“The raid on Kress’s vault happened two days ago.
Swiss Federal Police, acting on an anonymous tip—Hawkeye’s tip.
They found everything, and more. The Hollingsworth Collection pieces have been catalogued and tagged.
The locket and fob were in a separate drawer.
Provenance will tie it back to the Romanov estate. And if there is anything the vault…”
“The Russians could wake up half a billion richer without lifting a finger.”
“Yeah.” A weight I hadn’t known I was still carrying lifts off my shoulders. “The press is calling it a miracle recovery. Hawkeye gets the credit, the finder’s fee. Kress is locked up, and his accounts are frozen. Moscow thinks he skimmed what was theirs.”
Her breath catches, audible in the quiet.
“There will be no blowback. You’re not a target. Not legally, not physically. Not ever again.”
She stares at me, eyes wide and shining, lips parted like she’s forgotten how to breathe.
“You’re free, Lyra.” The words come out rougher than I intend, scraped raw.
“Completely. Permanently. We can leave tomorrow if you want. Or the day after. Or never. The lodge is yours as long as you need it. But the world outside—No one’s hunting you.
You get to choose. Where you go. What you do.
” I pause, then force the words that I don’t want to say but have to. “Who you’re with.”
The silence stretches, thick and charged. Her hand trembles in mine, just once, then stills.
She shifts closer, knees sliding over my thigh as she moves into my space, quilt pooling around her waist. Her free hand comes up to cup my jaw, thumb tracing the stubble there, eyes locked on mine with an intensity that steals the air from my lungs.
“Stryker.” My name on her lips is soft, steady, absolute.
She leans in, so close that we breathe the same air.
“I choose you.”
The words hit me harder than any bullet ever has.
Her mouth finds mine, not gentle, not tentative—hungry and sure and everything I’ve been waiting for without realizing it.
She kisses me like she’s claiming, like she’s choosing with every press of her lips, every slide of her tongue. Her fingers fist in my shirt, pulling me down with her as she reclines back against the pillows, dragging me over her until I’m braced above, her legs parting to cradle my hips.
I groan into her mouth, the sound ragged, and she swallows it, arching up against me, heat searing through layers of fabric. Her hands slide under my shirt, nails raking up my back, urging, demanding.
She is free.
And she chooses me.
I pull back just enough to meet her eyes, dark and fierce and shining with something that looks a hell of a lot like forever.
“Then you’re mine,” I rasp against her lips.
She smiles, slow and wicked and utterly unafraid. “And here’s the truth. I always was.”