Chapter 14
Chapter
Fourteen
SLOANE
The mountain traps sound. Wind through the pines. Water dripping from rock. The low creak of old wood settling against the cold.
I lie awake listening to all of it. And to Rhys moving too near… not sleeping either.
The cabin feels smaller after last night. Like the truth took up physical space between us, pushing against the walls, stealing oxygen.
I stare at the ceiling, wrapped in my sleeping bag, trying not to replay every word.
He wasn’t following orders. The sentence loops endlessly.
Phoenix laughing in our backyard at fourteen. Phoenix cracking up when we learned how to drive together. Phoenix shoving a cupcake in my face after my first article got published.
Phoenix risking an entire Marine team.
None of the versions fit together. The version I knew feels real. But the one Rhys described fills gaps… gaps I couldn’t miss, though maybe I wanted to.
Gray light slowly fills the room. Morning in Hollow Peak arrives muted and cold, fog clinging low across the mountains outside.
I finally push upright, still half snuggled in the sleeping bag. Reluctant to leave, to face reality.
Rhys stands at the kitchen counter with a mug in his hand, staring out the window toward the washout.
Fully dressed already. Bandaged arm hidden beneath flannel. As if yesterday never happened. And my hands were never on him.
His eyes cut toward me briefly before returning to the window. “Coffee’s hot.”
I stretch, then rise, stepping toward him slowly. My muscles ache from the climb and storm, and too little sleep. The cabin smells of pine smoke and coffee, and rain-soaked earth.
I pour myself a cup.
The silence stretches endlessly.
Outside, clouds hang thick over the mountains again. Colorado weather. Violent one minute. Beautiful the next. Then violent again before you can trust it.
“What’s the slope look like?” I ask finally.
“Worse.”
My stomach tightens.
“The Jeep?”
His jaw shifts once. “Still there.”
No easy way out. The realization settles heavily between my ribs. I’m still stuck here. With him.
Rhys reaches for his jacket hanging beside the door. Immediately, tension spikes through me.
“Are you really going back out there?”
“I need to check the anchor points before the ground gets any worse.”
“It already is.”
“Exactly.”
I hate how calm he sounds, as if hanging off cliffs in storms is normal. And bleeding out yesterday was an inconvenience.
“You tore your arm open.”
“I noticed.”
“You could’ve died.”
His eyes meet mine then, quiet and sharp. “You could’ve, too.”
I shove the thought away before it finishes forming.
Rhys pulls on his Carhartt carefully over the injured arm. I watch the tiny flicker of pain he tries to hide.
“You shouldn’t be doing this alone,” I say.
“I shouldn’t be doing any of this.”
Before I can answer, he steps outside into the chilly morning mist. The door shuts behind him, and the cabin feels colder and emptier than I want.
An hour later, the fog still hasn’t lifted. Neither has the pressure sitting inside my chest.
I sit at the small kitchen table, surrounded by notebooks, printed reports, interview transcripts, and my laptop. The official narrative sits neatly organized in front of me. Too neatly.
I hit play on an audio file. Static crackles.
Then Sergeant Miller’s exhausted voice fills the cabin. “Phoenix was intel-adjacent. Quiet guy. Smart. Didn’t really fit with recon… after.”
Click.
I find another recording. This time, Corporal Diaz. “He kept getting calls outside normal channels.”
Click.
Then another… Lieutenant Brooks. “We were told not to ask questions. Just cooperate.”
My pulse slows. Everything narrows and focuses. I’ve felt this before… the moment when a story breaks wide open.
I spread photographs across the table. Mission briefings. After-action reports. Medical timelines.
Coordinates. The tattoo on Rhys’s chest flashes in my mind, more a memorial than a wound.
I replay Rhys’s words from last night. He wasn’t where he was supposed to be.
I grab the official report again and scan it. There’s no mention of a broken formation or deviation. No mention of Phoenix moving.
My breath fails. Because if Rhys is telling the truth… that omission isn’t accidental.
The cabin door squeaks open suddenly, and I jerk upright.
Rhys steps inside, carrying wet rope over one shoulder, boots smeared in mud. Cold air rushes in with him. “You’re pale,” he says immediately.
“I’m thinking.”
“Dangerous hobby.” His tone is dry, but exhaustion lingers beneath it.
My gaze drops to his bandaged arm. The gauze is spotted faintly pink again. “You reopened it.”
“I’m fine.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it’s true.”
I almost laugh. Instead, I hold up the reports. “You lied.”
Rhys freezes. “I omitted.”
“That’s called lying in journalism.”
“That’s called survival in the military.”
The answer irritates me because part of me understands it. I hate that part. I stand slowly. “Yesterday, you told me Phoenix left position.”
“He did.”
“But none of this says that.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Rhys sets the rope aside carefully. His gaze drifts toward the window before returning to me. “Because once someone dies, everybody starts protecting different things.”
His response slides under my skin, and I step closer. “Were you protecting him?”
A long silence follows.
“Yes.”
The word catches me off guard. Not because of what it means. Because of how much regret lives inside it.
I swallow hard. “Then why tell me now?”
“Because you weren’t going to stop digging.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Rhys exhales slowly through his nose. “No,” he agrees. “It doesn’t.”
The tension shifts again, different now. Sharper. More dangerous, too.
I set the reports down carefully. “You said he told you to leave him.”
His expression slams shut. There it is. The line he doesn’t want crossed.
I cross it anyway. “Why would he do that?”
Rhys looks away first—not avoiding—remembering. The cabin goes unnaturally still. Even the wind seems quieter. “Because he knew what was coming.” The words drop heavily between us.
I stare at him. “What does that mean?”
His jaw flexes once. “It means he knew more than I did.”
Fear slips cold fingers down my spine. Not because of Rhys. Because for the first time, I think I’m starting to understand Phoenix. Or maybe realizing I never did.
“You think he expected the ambush?”
“I think he expected something.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.” Rhys’s eyes darken. “It isn’t.”
I shake my head slowly, trying to force the pieces together. “Then why move? Why leave cover?”
Rhys’s voice lowers. “Because he chose to.”
The ground shifts beneath me again. No, that isn’t right. Phoenix wouldn’t knowingly risk people. Wouldn’t knowingly… “He wouldn’t do that.”
Rhys doesn’t argue. That somehow feels worse. “He believed in what he was doing,” he says quietly. “Enough to risk us for it.”
The breath leaves my lungs. Risk us. What does he mean? Us.
His team. His Marines. My brother.
I stare at the reports spread across the table, the clean black text, and all the things left unsaid. “You still don’t know what he was trying to do,” I whisper.
“No.”
“And you covered for him, anyway.”
Rhys’s eyes meet mine. “He died there.” His voice fades into the silence. “That was enough punishment.”
Emotion swells suddenly, violently. Grief, confusion, anger… and love. I don’t know where to put any of it.
The problem with journalism is eventually, you learn people aren’t stories. They’re fractures. Contradictions. Living things that refuse to fit inside neat narratives.
And sitting here now, staring at the man I came to expose, I realize something horrifying.
Phoenix may not have been a victim.
He may have been willing to sacrifice everything for something I still don’t understand. And that means I no longer understand him.