Chapter 13
Coop
The tracker fell from my fingers into the dirt.
Every instinct screamed to crush it under my boot heel, but that would tell Oliver we’d found it.
Instead, I picked it up carefully and clipped it back exactly where it had been on her dress collar.
Let Oliver think his test had worked, that we’d never noticed. But now we knew.
Mia stood frozen beside me, her whole body trembling. Not the fine tremors from before but full-body shudders that started in her chest and radiated outward.
Thunder rolled across the mountains again. Lightning flickered in the darkening clouds, and I made my decision.
“Come on.” I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, guiding her toward our cabin. “Let’s get inside.”
She moved like a sleepwalker, feet stumbling over the uneven ground.
Her breathing had gone ragged, each inhale sharp and shallow.
Three days of accumulated terror—the claustrophobia, the cameras, the constant performance, being tracked like an animal—it had finally broken through her last defenses, and she was coming apart.
Nothing was going to stop that now. But I could give her a safe place to crash.
We made it to the cabin just as the sky opened up. Rain hammered the tin roof like gunfire, drowning out everything else. Perfect. The storm would give us cover for what I needed to do.
I guided Mia to sit on the edge of the bed, her hands still shaking as she wrapped them around herself. “Just breathe. I’m going to take care of something.”
Lightning flashed, bright enough to light up the whole room for a split second. Then darkness again. The lights flickered once, twice, then died completely. The power grid had taken a hit.
I couldn’t have asked for more perfect timing.
I pulled out the RF detector from my bag, the same one I’d been carrying since we arrived. With the electrical interference from the storm, Oliver’s surveillance system would be glitching. Cameras might be down, audio feeds crackling with static. This was my window.
I swept the device across the walls, ceiling, every surface.
I knew there were cameras, just not how many.
The detector lit up immediately—multiple signals, just as I’d suspected.
Corner of the main room where I’d already spotted the camera.
Audio bug near the window. Another camera in the light fixture.
Even one tucked under the dresser, angled to catch anything the others might miss.
Oliver had wired this place like a fucking reality show set.
The lights flickered back on, dim and unsteady. I moved fast, collecting each device expediently. Four total, not counting the one I’d already destroyed in the bathroom.
“Damn storm,” I said loudly, for the benefit of any devices still transmitting. “These lights are going crazy, and I can’t even get Wi-Fi on my phone. Electrical surges play hell with electronics.”
Mia stared at me like she couldn’t understand what I was saying, still shaking.
I pulled out a metal ammunition box from under the bed—standard military surplus.
The metal would block any signals, create a Faraday cage that would cut off the devices from their receivers.
I dropped the transmitters into the box, then closed the lid tight.
The latches clicked into place with finality.
Silence. Real silence, not the performed kind we’d been living in. For the first time since we’d arrived in this hellhole, we were truly alone.
I moved over to Mia. “I got all the bugs and cameras. We’re completely alone. With the storm, they won’t be able to hear anything, even if they happened to be using external recording devices.”
She still stared like I was speaking another language. I cupped her face. “It’s okay. Let it out.”
The dam broke.
Mia’s control shattered completely. A sob tore from her throat, raw and primal, like something being ripped from her chest. Then another. And another. Her whole body convulsed with the force of them, tears streaming down her face as three days of terror poured out at once.
I pulled her against me, and she collapsed into my chest, her fingers twisting in my shirt as she cried. Not gentle tears but body-shaking sobs that sounded like they hurt coming out.
“I’m sorry.” The words came out broken between sobs. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Shh. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“I’m falling apart. I can’t—I can’t keep it together. I’m going to get us killed because I can’t—”
“You’re not falling apart. You’re having a completely normal reaction to an insane situation.” I held her tighter, one hand stroking her hair. “You’ve been incredible. Stronger than anyone could expect. I’ve never been as proud to know someone my whole life as I am to know you.”
She shook her head against my chest, tears soaking through my shirt. “I’m not strong. I’m terrified every second. I can’t breathe in this place. The walls, the cameras, the way they look at me—”
“And you’ve handled it all. You’ve played the part perfectly, kept your head when Snake was threatening you, when Oliver was testing us. You’ve been extraordinary.”
The sobs kept coming, each one tearing through her like she’d been holding them back for years, not just days. Maybe she had. Maybe this wasn’t just about the compound but about every accumulated fear and trauma finally finding release.
I guided us down to the floor, sitting with my back against the bed frame. She curled into me, still crying, but at least she’d stopped apologizing between sobs. The tears, I could handle; the apologies were completely unacceptable.
Rain pounded the windows, thunder rolling almost continuously now. The storm outside matched the one she was finally letting happen inside.
I held her through it all. Through the crying that turned to hiccups. Through the shaking that gradually slowed. Through the exhausted silence that followed. My shirt was soaked with her tears, her body heavy against mine as the emotional exhaustion took hold.
Finally, she quieted. Her breathing evened out, and I thought she might have fallen asleep. The rain had settled into a steady rhythm, no longer violent but consistent. Cleansing.
“I don’t know how you do this.” Her voice was hoarse, barely above a whisper. “How you don’t crack under the pressure.”
“Military trained me for it. Compartmentalizing, staying focused on the mission even when everything’s going to hell.
” I shifted slightly, looking down at her.
“But this is different. In combat, I knew who the enemy was. Had my unit watching my six. Here, having you in danger, watching you go through this—it’s harder than any deployment I’ve been on. ”
She shifted against me, and the dress Oliver had forced her to wear rode up above her knees. I froze as I saw her bare legs clearly for the first time. Scars ran up both calves and higher where I couldn’t see, some thin and white, others thicker and still pink.
She saw me looking and tugged at the dress, trying to cover them.
“Don’t.” I caught her hand gently. “You don’t have to hide them.”
“They’re ugly.”
“They’re proof you survived something.” I traced one of the scars lightly with my finger, feeling her tense then slowly relax. “Your car accident?”
She nodded, not meeting my eyes.
“Will you tell me about it? If you don’t mind?”
For a long moment, I didn’t think she would answer. Then she took a shaky breath.
“Four months after you left. January. Everything was covered in ice.” Her voice was distant, like she was watching it happen to someone else. “I was driving home from working late at a client’s office downtown. The road looked fine, but black ice is invisible until you’re sliding.”
My chest tightened. Four months after I’d left her. While I’d been drinking myself into oblivion, trying to forget everything that had happened overseas, she’d been—
“The car went off the embankment. Rolled several times before it stopped.” She was still looking at the scars, not at me. “The frame crushed in. The roof pressing down on my skull, the dashboard cutting into my legs. I could hear my bones breaking but couldn’t feel them yet. Adrenaline, I guess.”
Jesus Christ. I forced myself to stay still, to let her tell it at her own pace.
“Four hours.” Her voice broke slightly. “Four hours trapped in that tin can while it compressed around me. I could hear the rescue crews. Could hear them saying they had to be careful or the whole thing would collapse completely. Every time they cut into the metal, the car would shift, get smaller. I kept thinking I was going to die in there, crushed like a bug.”
“Mia—”
“The claustrophobia started after that. I couldn’t get in an elevator.
Couldn’t even close the bathroom door all the way.
Took months of therapy just to be able to sleep with a blanket over me.
” She finally looked up at me, her eyes still red from crying.
“It changed who I was. Made me this broken, fearful thing. A shell of the woman you knew.”
“No.” The word came out harder than I intended. “It didn’t make you a shell of anything. It made you stronger.”
She started to protest, but I continued.
“You survived something that would have killed most people. You didn’t let it stop you.
You found ways to adapt, to keep living.
You became a successful photographer, found work that gave you what you needed.
And when you got grabbed by militia assholes and shoved into your worst nightmare, you didn’t just survive—you helped with the mission. You’ve been courageous as hell.”
“I screamed myself raw in that closet. You saw me. That’s not courage.”
“That’s human. Courage isn’t about not being afraid. It’s about functioning despite the fear. And that’s exactly what you’ve done for three days straight.” I cupped her face, thumb brushing away a tear. “I just wish I’d been there. After the accident. To help you through it.”
“I wish you’d been there too.”