Chapter 10 #2
"You have green tea." He squinted at the screen. "Dan made it, didn't he? Is he treating our safe house like a hotel? Because I have some thoughts about—"
Raven growled out his name, "Ring."
"Right. Yes. Check in after recon." He paused. "And Raven? Be careful. I mean … both of you."
The iPad went dark.
She looked at Dan, who was looking at the iPad with an expression she couldn't quite read.
"He's protective of you," Dan said.
"He's protective of his operational assets."
"That's not what that was."
She didn't argue because he was right. Ring was like a big, annoying brother. They fought, but no matter how much she said she hated him, she didn’t. He was there for her, and they both knew it. Ring was too much, but he was always there for her.
* * *
They went out at dusk on foot, moving through terrain that they remembered, even if they'd tried to forget it. The mountain paths were unchanged.
That was the thing about places where you'd been formed.
They seemed to accommodate your absence.
They just waited, patient and indifferent.
There was the same cedar smell, the same quality of light through the trees, the same loose stones on the eastern path that had always required a specific adjustment in stride …
and yes, her feet made the adjustment automatically.
She felt it happen, and a chill moved through her. Muscle memory. It’s just muscle memory. Still, she’d tried so hard to build a different life. A different self. Guardian's training, Fury's brutal redesign of everything she knew, years of becoming Raven instead of Emi.
But here, on this path, her feet still knew where the loose stones were. Dan moved beside her, slightly behind and to the left. His natural position in a two-person formation. Her right flank open for her dominant hand. His left flank open for his.
It had been years, and still their bodies fit together tactically like nothing had changed.
It should have been comforting, but it wasn't. It was heart-wrenching and painful. What had happened … nothing was comforting. It was all an open wound for her … and she assumed for Dan, too.
They found their position on the ridge above the compound as the last light left the sky.
Below them was Kuro's compound.
“God, it’s so much smaller than I remember.” She didn’t mean to say the words out loud, but she did.
“Much smaller,” Dan agreed.
She'd carried it in her mind for years as something vast and consuming, a place that had swallowed her whole.
Looking at it now from the ridge, it was just a collection of buildings in a mountain valley with stone walls and tiled roofs.
A hue of electric lighting that hadn't existed when she'd been there illuminated the area.
As a matter of fact, it looked old and tired. Like structures past their purpose. That shifted her perspective, and something that was large and ominous became so small that it wasn’t. She glanced at Dan, who was looking at her.
“Monsters of our youth aren’t so big when we’re adults,” he said quietly.
“So it seems.” She raised her binoculars and studied the layout, guard positions, and camera placements. The administrative building sat separate from the main structures and slightly to the north. Exactly where she remembered it.
"Eastern perimeter sensor gap is still there," Dan said quietly. He was glassed up beside her, scanning methodically. "They've added a camera on the southern wall, but it's angled wrong. Covers the gate approach, not the base of the wall."
"Patrol rotation is slow," she said. "Fourteen minutes on the outer circuit."
"Just a few guards."
"He's old. His operation is contracting." Raven shook her head. “He never used guards before.”
“He does now,” Dan said, distractedly.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Raven deadpanned.
"There," Dan said.
She moved her binoculars to where his were pointed.
Kuro.
He was crossing the compound yard, moving from the main building toward what had been the meditation hall.
Slowly and with a cane she didn't remember him needing.
His back was slightly bent, his movements deliberate and careful in the way of someone for whom physical effort had become a negotiation.
But his head was up.
Even from this distance, even diminished, even old, his head was up, and his eyes were moving. She could see him taking in the perimeter, the guards, the grounds. The bastard was still watching and still assessing. He hadn’t changed.
She lowered the binoculars. Beside her, Dan had done the same. Neither of them spoke for a moment.
The valley below was settling into darkness. The compound lights came on one by one.
"What do you feel?" Dan asked quietly. "When you see him."
Not a deflection question. A real one. Asked carefully. She thought about lying. About giving him the clean professional version of target assessment, operational relevance, and tactical consideration.
She didn't.
She drew a breath and looked up at the sky.
"God, it’s so complicated," she said. "He took me in when no one else would.
He gave me purpose and structure and—" She stopped.
"And he was going to have me killed. He was going to use my death to turn you into a weapon.
" She paused. "And he trained me so well that I can separate those two facts and look at that old man down there and feel both things simultaneously without either canceling the other out. "
"Gratitude and wrath," Dan said.
"Yes."
"I live those feelings every day."
She believed him.
"He looks smaller than I remember," Dan said.
"He is smaller than you remember."
"The man I was afraid of—"
Raven stopped him. "He was real. The fear was appropriate. It's just—" She looked back at the compound. "Time is the only thing that gets to all of us eventually."
“Even monsters.”
She nodded. Even the monsters of their childhood. She raised her binoculars again. Back to work.
"Look at the administrative building. On the north side, the window that's been retrofitted. It has a new frame and newer glass. The seal will be tighter than the original." She scanned. "The east side has the original windows, which means older locking mechanisms."
"East side entry it is," Dan said.
"East side entry,” Raven agreed. “The guard rotation gives us a twelve-minute window after the outer patrol clears the northern path." She calculated. "We'll need eight minutes inside. Four minutes for contingency."
Dan nodded. "Tight."
She shrugged. "I've worked tighter."
"So have I."
A moment of time passed. They were two operators who’d spent years building separate skillsets sitting on a ridge above the place that had made them both and finding that their skills still fit together. She didn't know whether to find that reassuring or devastating. She settled on both.
“We go in tonight,” Raven said, looking at Dan.
She hadn’t had much sleep, but she knew the adrenaline would kick in.
The memories this place had pulled from the closet she thought was locked and buried were vast. She needed to deal with the emotional baggage this trip had unpacked. At least they had hours to do that.
He nodded. “Agreed. Let’s go back to the safe house and get ready.”
* * *
Back at the safe house, the hours pressed in. Now that the mission was planned and the entry point confirmed, they locked the timing. They'd done everything that could be done before 0200.
Which left time. Time was usually a dangerous thing. Tonight, both of them needed it. Needed to process the sights and memories.
She made simple food that had been stocked in the safe house. Rice. Grilled fish. Miso soup from a packet that was better than it had any right to be. She set two bowls on the low table.
Dan looked at the arrangement without speaking.
She didn't look at him. But she was acutely, uncomfortably aware of the domesticity of it. The two bowls. The small table. The lack of anyone else in the area. This was what it could’ve been.
Well, maybe not. If Dan hadn’t found out about Kuro’s plans, she wouldn’t be alive.
She put that somewhere in the back of her brain and sat down.
They ate without speaking for a while. The safe house was very still.
Outside, something moved in the cedar forest. She listened, but it didn’t come again.
It was probably the wind or an animal or just the country settling into itself for the night.
"When you were watching me," she said. "That time in Virginia."
Dan looked up.
"Did you ever come close to making contact?"
Yes, she was being direct. She’d always been direct with him, and she wasn’t going to change that now.
He set down his chopsticks.
"Yes," he said. "Once."
"When?"
"The night at the bar, when you walked to your car."
She remembered the night. Or a version of it. There had been too many of them to distinguish one from another.
"What happened?"
"I got as far as the parking lot where your car was." He looked at the table. "But one of your … friends jogged over. You talked for about thirty minutes before he left."
"And then?"
"I watched you drive away."