Chapter 16
NOAH
I dropped Hallie Mae off at her apartment, the truck’s engine idling low as she climbed out, her silhouette tantalizing me.
She didn’t look back—just slipped inside, the door clicking shut, leaving me alone with the hum of the road and a hollow I couldn’t name.
I pulled away, the Lowcountry stretching out dark and quiet, and it hit me—hard, like a slug to the chest—I was lonelier than I’d ever been without her.
The thought landed wrong, heavy, and I gripped the wheel tighter, trying to shake it.
Didn’t work.
Her absence was a hole, raw and nagging, chewing at the edges of my mind as the pines leaned in, their shadows clawing across the pavement.
I’d never felt this before—this ache, this pull toward someone who wasn’t just a body or a mark.
Hallie Mae wasn’t a mission, wasn’t a target, but she’d gotten under my skin, deep, and I didn’t know how to cut her out.
Didn’t want to.
My mind drifted, unbidden, to Mom—her face blurry now, faded by years, just a ghost of a smile and hands that smelled like dish soap.
She’d left when I was a kid, no note, no goodbye, just an empty porch swing creaking in the wind on Sullivan’s Island.
My brothers had tried to hold it together, raising me with rough hands and rougher words, but the hole she left never closed.
Then Dad—Byron Dane—gone, too, his death a shadow that hung over us, his mysterious billions a chain I’d never wanted.
I’d spent my life running from both—Mom’s absence, Dad’s legacy—chasing blood and bullets across deserts and jungles, thinking I could outrun the quiet.
Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Indonesia—places where life was cheap and death was clean.
I’d stacked bodies higher than I could count, warlords and traffickers, men who’d begged for mercy I didn’t give.
Never felt a thing after—no guilt, no weight.
Just the next mission, the next kill.
But her—Hallie Mae—she’d cracked something open, let light into places I’d kept dark.
In my bed, her grief and need burning through us both, I’d felt it—joy, sharp and fleeting, like a blade catching sunlight.
I imagined …
Her laugh at dinner, soft against the hum of Shem Creek.
Her weight in my lap on that dock, her lips opening under mine.
The way she’d fucked me raw, desperate, like she could outrun death itself.
Could I leave it all behind—the blood, the ghosts, the life that’d carved me into this?
For her?
The question burned, twisting in my gut as I drove, the road blurring under a sky gone bruise-gray, heavy with rain that wouldn’t fall.
I wasn’t halfway to Dominion Hall when my phone buzzed, snapping me out of the spiral.
Atlas.
I hit speaker, voice rough from the thoughts I couldn’t shake. “Yeah?”
“Got a name,” he said, low, clipped, no preamble. “Pastor’s killer.”
My pulse kicked up, cold and steady, the old rhythm—hunt, track, kill—sliding into place. “How’d you get it?”
“You don’t wanna know.”
I smirked, grim. Fair enough. “Who?”
“Edward Holstein.” He rattled off an address—a shithole corner of Charleston, where the city forgot to care. “Sending it now.”
“How sure?” I asked, already eyeing the road ahead, calculating turns.
“Ninety percent.”
“Good enough,” I said, and hung up.
Didn’t think twice—peeled a U-turn, tires screaming against wet asphalt, and gunned it toward Holstein’s.
The joy was gone, buried under the weight of what I did best.
Some bastard had put that pain in her eyes, taken her dad, and I’d make him pay—slow, bloody, the way I’d been trained to make it hurt.
The drive was quick, Charleston’s edges fading into a blur.
Holstein’s neighborhood was a dead-end kind—squat houses, chain-link rusting into the dirt, yards choked with weeds and junked cars.
This place didn’t talk to cops, didn’t snitch, just let the shadows run their own game.
I did a slow drive-by, taking it in—his place was a wreck, overgrown grass swallowing the porch, mailbox spilling letters like it hadn’t been touched in years.
Windows dark, shutters sagging, paint peeling in strips, the kind of disrepair that screamed no one gave a shit.
Parked a few blocks away, grabbed my lockpick kit from the glovebox, and hoofed it back on foot, sticking to the alleys, boots quiet on cracked pavement.
The air was thick, humid, carrying the stink of rotting garbage and something sharper—weed, maybe, or worse.
Back door was locked, but the mechanism was cheap, rusted through.
I slid the picks in, felt the pins give way, and popped it open in seconds, slipping inside without a sound.
The house hit me like a wall—hoarder’s haven, shit stacked floor to ceiling, newspapers, boxes, trash bags spilling clothes, cans, broken toys.
Smelled like mold and stale smoke, the kind of rot that settles into your lungs if you stay too long.
A narrow path snaked through the clutter, barely wide enough for my shoulders, and I moved slow, pistol low and ready, ears sharp for any creak or shuffle.
Every step was careful—didn’t want to knock over a pile and announce myself.
The TV’s glow flickered ahead, a cartoon laugh track cutting through the quiet, tinny and wrong in a place like this.
I found him in the living room, kicked back in a grimy recliner, sucking on a glass pipe, eyes dancing under a mop of greasy hair.
Skinny, unshaven, wearing a stained wifebeater and jeans that looked like they’d been on for weeks.
A pistol sat on the table next to him—cheap 9mm, no holster, tossed there like trash.
I swiped it before he noticed, tucked it in my waistband, and kicked the recliner over—hard.
It crashed to the floor, him spilling out, pipe clattering, but he didn’t react like a sane person—didn’t scramble, didn’t fight.
Just lay there, high as fuck, grinning up at me like I was delivering pizza.
“It’s you!” he said, bright, almost cheerful, voice slurred around the edges.
I froze, gun steady on him, finger light on the trigger guard. “What?”
“You’re the guy who’s supposed to pay me the rest of the five K,” he mumbled, eyes half-lidded, like we were buddies catching up. “That’s what they said.”
My blood went cold, but I kept my face blank, calculating. “Who’s they?”
He didn’t hear me—or didn’t care—babbling on, words tripping over themselves. “Only got a grand upfront, man. Shoulda asked for more, y’know? Killin’ a fuckin’ pastor ain’t cheap. Fuckin’ preacher, all high and mighty, thinkin’ he’s untouchable?—”
I stepped closer, extended my gun hand, pointed straight at his face, Holstein’s eyes catching the TV’s glow—SpongeBob laughing like nothing was wrong.
That got his attention, finally—eyes widening, hands shooting up from where he sprawled on his back, pipe rolling away in the filth.
“Whoa, whoa, man, I’m just doin’ what they said, like on the paper!”
He pointed at the TV stand, a cluttered mess of ashtrays, empty bottles, and pizza boxes, and I saw it—a folded sheet of thick paper, sticking out like it didn’t belong.
Kept my gun on him, stepped over, and picked it up, unfolding it slow, careful.
Top half—a grainy photo of Jamie Calhoun, Hallie Mae’s dad, smiling in a suit, his name and the church address typed neat below in cold, black font.
Bottom half—my face, a candid shot, probably pulled from some security feed, grainy but unmistakable, with words printed underneath: “The guy who will pay you.”
My stomach dropped, ice spreading through my veins like poison.
I pocketed the paper, turned back to Holstein, voice low, cold as the barrel in my hand. “Who gave you this?”
He blinked, like the question was a math problem he couldn’t solve, then grinned again, lopsided. “The guy, man. You’re the guy.”
I crept closer, slow, deliberate, the pistol steady, its weight familiar, grounding. “Who. Gave. You. The. Paper?”
Holstein squinted, brain sluggish under the haze, then mumbled, “Somethin’ ‘bout 77, like a department store or some shit.”
My blood froze solid, a chill that started in my gut and clawed up my spine.
Department 77.
The shadow outfit that’d been dogging us, twisting our lives into knots, always one step ahead, always out of reach.
This wasn’t just a hit—it was a setup, and I was the fucking bait, my face tied to their game, my name dragged through their blood.
My fault.
Her dad was dead because of me—because they’d looped me in, made me the payout for a kill I hadn’t ordered, hadn’t even known about.
Hallie Mae’s grief, her screams in that morgue, the way she’d broken against me—it was all on my hands, my failure, my shadow pulling her world apart.
I switched my pistol for the 9mm I’d swiped from his table, checked the mag—full, ready, the grip slick from his greasy hands.
Holstein’s eyes lit up, like we were bartering at a flea market. “That’s my gun, man, but I’ll sell it to ya—couple extra hundred bucks, we’re square.”
“No thanks,” I said, voice flat, and shot him twice in the forehead.
The rounds punched clean—red mist blooming, his head snapping back, body slumping fast, cartoons still blaring in the background, SpongeBob’s laugh a sick counterpoint to the silence that followed.
He was gone before he settled, pipe rolling away, smoke curling lazy in the stale air, his grin frozen like he’d never seen it coming.
I stood there, gun still raised, breath steady, watching the blood pool under him, dark and thick on the filthy carpet.
I didn’t feel a thing—no rush, no guilt, just the cold clarity of a job done.
But it wasn’t done, not really.
This was just the start, a loose thread in a web I hadn’t mapped yet.
I wiped the 9mm down—slow, thorough, no prints, no trace—and dropped it next to him, the metal clattering soft against the clutter.
Slipped out the back, locked the door behind me, and melted away, the neighborhood quiet like it hadn’t heard a thing.
The air was heavy, wet, carrying the faint bite of salt from the harbor miles away.
I walked back to the truck, the paper burning a hole in my pocket, its weight heavier than the gun I’d just fired.
Knew I was in deep shit—deeper than I’d ever been, deeper than any desert firefight or jungle ambush.
Department 77 didn’t just kill a pastor—they’d framed me for it, tied me to a hit I didn’t call, made me a cog in their machine.
And Hallie Mae—her grief, her pain, the way she’d looked at me like I could hold her together—it was all on me, my fault, my shadow dragging her into this.
I climbed into the truck, started the engine, and sat there, hands tight on the wheel, the reality sinking in like a blade twisting slow.
Didn’t know how to fix it—didn’t know if I could.
But I’d find them—every last bastard who’d touched this, who’d written my name on that paper, who’d taken her dad and left her screaming.
I’d hunt them, track them, make them bleed—slow, personal, the way I’d learned in places where mercy was just a word nobody spoke.
For her.
For him.
For the joy I’d tasted with her—bright, fleeting, gone now, drowned in the blood I’d just spilled.
The drive back to Dominion Hall was a blur—empty roads, the city holding its breath like it knew what I’d done.
I parked, killed the engine, and sat there, staring at the dashboard, the paper still in my pocket, a ticking bomb I couldn’t defuse.
My phone buzzed—Ryker, probably, or Atlas with more intel—but I didn’t answer.
Not yet.
Needed a minute to let it settle, to feel the weight of what I’d learned, what I’d done.
Holstein’s face flashed behind my eyes—grinning, high, oblivious to the end—and I wondered if he’d even known what he’d stepped into.
Didn’t matter.
He’d pulled the trigger, taken her dad, and now he was gone, just another body in a life full of them.
But this wasn’t over.
Department 77 was out there, pulling strings, playing games with lives—mine, hers, her dad’s—and I’d burn their world down before I let them touch her again.
I got out, slammed the door, and headed inside, the Hall’s bulk swallowing me whole.
The stairs silent under my boots, each step heavier than the last, the paper in my pocket a reminder of the shit I’d waded into.
Didn’t know what came next—didn’t know how to tell her, if I’d tell her, how to carry this without breaking her more.
But I’d figure it out.
I always did.
And when I found them—when I had their throats under my hands—they’d wish they’d never heard my name.
Because this wasn’t just a kill anymore.
It was personal.
And I’d make it hurt.