Chapter 21
I Should’ve Let You Walk Away
Ghost
Isaw it the second she moved.
Not just the direction, not just the timing, but the way everything around her shifted to accommodate it. Ironhand didn’t do random. Not at this level. Routes were controlled, movement was structured, and anything that stepped outside of that carried intent behind it.
Her assignment?
It reeked of it.
I stayed where I was, half-shadowed above the lower loading area, watching without being seen as she was escorted down toward the transport lanes.
The crew around her wasn’t the usual mix of rotating hands and forgettable faces.
These were tighter. Quieter. More deliberate in the way they moved, in the way they positioned themselves without ever looking like they were positioning at all.
That alone told me everything I needed to know.
This wasn’t just a job.
It was a test.
Silas wasn’t guessing anymore. He was verifying. Pushing her into something just far enough outside the standard flow to see how she reacted, how she handled pressure, whether she slipped when the variables stacked higher than usual.
And she was walking straight into it.
Of course she was.
Mira didn’t hesitate. Didn’t question. Didn’t slow her pace or show even a flicker of uncertainty as she moved with them like this was just another task on her list. From the outside, she looked exactly like what she’d been playing this entire time.
Composed. Capable. Unbothered. It would’ve been convincing to anyone who didn’t know her.
I knew better.
I tracked every step she took as she approached the vehicle, every shift in her posture, every micro-adjustment in the way she held herself. Not because she was slipping. She wasn’t. That was the problem.
She was doing it perfectly.
Which meant if something went wrong out there? It wouldn’t be because she made a mistake. It would be because it was designed to.
My jaw tightened as the transport doors opened, the interior dim, controlled, built to conceal more than it revealed.
I caught a glimpse of movement inside, not fighters, not equipment, something else entirely, something that matched too closely with the gaps I’d already been tracking in the system.
People.
The confirmation hit hard, settling into something colder than the anger it sparked. This was bigger than Ironhand. And she was about to be in the middle of it.
I exhaled slowly, forced my breathing to stay even as she stepped up into the vehicle without looking back, without hesitation, like she wasn’t walking into something that could spiral out of control the second it left the perimeter.
She didn’t know the full scope. She didn’t know what Saint had just confirmed. Or of how far this actually stretched. And I was standing here watching her go anyway.
That was the line. The one I’d been riding since the second I saw Silas lock onto her, since the second I realized she wasn’t just part of this anymore, she was a variable inside something that expanded faster than either of us could contain.
Let her handle it. That was the logical play.
She was embedded. She was deep enough to get what we needed. Intervening now risked everything, risked exposing her, exposing me, collapsing the entire operation before we got the full picture.
Stay out of it.
Let her do her job.
That’s what I should’ve done.
Instead, I shifted my weight forward, already tracking the alternate routes the convoy would take once it cleared the perimeter, already mapping how to follow without being seen.
Because the other option? Standing here and trusting that this wasn’t going to turn into something worse, the second she was out there?
Yeah. That wasn’t happening. Not with her. Not again.
I’d left before the transport’s cargo lanes cleared the outer gate.
Pulled through a service corridor that ran parallel to them for long enough that nobody could see me move before reaching my own destination.
The burner weighed heavily in my pocket, silent.
It taunted me that I still hadn’t replied, left a conversation open longer than was necessary.
Not how I worked. Especially not with Saint.
I ducked into a service nook, a narrow little thing designed to be completely nonexistent except in cases of equipment failure, and then usually only ignored until the issue escalated beyond pretending it wasn’t there.
Ideal spot to handle a transmission like this.
No cameras to pan in my direction. Minimal traffic flow at best—dead space in what was essentially a building made of hyper corridors and influx points.
Pulling the burner out, I flipped the screen on in my hands. Channel still open. No new messages, no follow-ups. Just sitting there staring at me like he always did.
Waiting.
Of course he was. Saint never tried to rush someone. He said what he had to say and waited for a reply.
I hesitated, then my thumb finally punched it. Short. Clean. Concise, like we were always trained to be when things happened and you didn’t have time for misunderstandings.
Alive. Embedded. Wrapping soon.
Done.
No unnecessary elaboration. No additional details beyond what we absolutely needed to exchange over lines that could theoretically still be tracked and used against us if they fell into the wrong hands.
Especially not hers.
Sent. Killed the line before it could send a read receipt. Powered the burner off and slid it back into my pocket. The whole exchange may have taken five seconds. Felt like it was too long just to let it hang, though.
Waited there another moment after, listening for the world to catch back up to where it should’ve been, but knowing it never would now.
No prompt reply. No acknowledgment that the message had been read. Nothing. Not his style.
He didn’t send things to be echoed back. He spoke when he needed to and said what needed to be said.
Wanted more? He would reach out again. Didn’t? You wrap.
But this time the silence left me uneasy.
Because it didn’t feel like silence, it felt heavy.
Like he read what I told him, understood it, and decided not to reply because there was nothing left to say.
Not because we were out of words, but because nothing he could say would change the fact that we weren’t coming home this time.
Wrapping soon. I told him that.
And for the first time since walking into Ironhand, I wasn’t so sure that was going to happen.
I shouldn’t have followed.
That was the rule. Keep a distance. Stay invisible.
Let the operation run the way it needed to run without inserting myself into every moving part just because I didn’t like how it looked.
I’d built my entire approach around that, around control, around knowing when to step in and when to let something play out.
This? This wasn’t one of those times.
By the time the transport cleared the outer gate, I was already moving.
I cut across the back routes using the maintenance corridors and external access points I’d mapped days ago and slipped out of Ironhand’s perimeter without ever touching the main exit.
The air outside was colder and cleaner, but it didn’t settle anything.
If at all, it sharpened the edge already sitting under my skin.
I tracked the convoy by pattern, not sight.
Didn’t get close enough to be seen. The timing of the exits, the staggered spacing between vehicles, the way they shifted lanes once they hit open road, all of it told me exactly where they were going without me having to sit on their bumper like an amateur.
I stayed back.
Far enough that if someone checked mirrors, checked blind spots, checked for tails the way trained crews did, I wouldn’t register as anything more than background noise. A car that happened to be there. A movement that didn’t matter.
That was the only way this worked.
Because the second I got too close, the second I made this about me instead of her assignment, it all fell apart. And I knew that. Knew exactly how thin the line was between shadowing and interfering, between protecting and compromising.
Did it anyway.
The city stretched out ahead of them, routes branching in directions that didn’t follow standard traffic flow, avoiding main checkpoints, cutting through industrial sectors that stayed quiet this time of night. It wasn’t random. It was mapped. Deliberate.
Syndicate movement.
Saint had been right.
That thought sat heavily, but it didn’t change what I was doing. Because no matter how big this got, no matter how far it spread beyond Ironhand, there was still one constant I couldn’t ignore. She was inside that transport. And I wasn’t letting her run it alone.
My grip tightened slightly on the handlebars as the convoy shifted again, taking a narrower route that cut deeper into an area I hadn’t fully mapped yet. Not ideal. Not clean. Too many variables, too many unknowns.
Didn’t matter.
I adjusted, recalculating the distance and repositioning just enough to keep them in range without crossing into visibility. Every move was measured, controlled, even if the reason behind it wasn’t.
Because this wasn’t part of the plan. This wasn’t something I’d accounted for when I stepped into Ironhand. This was me breaking my own rules. And I knew exactly why. It wasn’t the mission or the Syndicate. It was her.
That was the truth. Ugly. Simple. Dangerous as hell.
And the worst part?
I didn’t even hesitate. I’d made the call the second she stepped into that vehicle. Everything after that was just me pretending that I still had control over how far I was willing to go.
I didn’t. Not where she was concerned. Not anymore.
The road stretched out ahead of me, dark and open in a way that made everything feel too exposed and too hidden at the same time.
The convoy stayed just far enough ahead to track, not close enough to see clearly, but I didn’t need a visual to know exactly where she was.
I felt it. Knew it in the same way I knew when something was about to go wrong before it actually did.
This was already off.
Not in a way I could point to yet, not something concrete I could break down into strategy and response. Just instinct. The kind that had kept me alive long enough to know when I was stepping into something that wasn’t going to play out clean.
I should’ve stayed out of this.
That thought hit harder now, sitting heavier with every mile I put between Ironhand and whatever the hell this route led to. Not because I didn’t trust her to handle herself. That wasn’t the issue. Mira could hold her own in situations most people wouldn’t walk out of.
But this?
This wasn’t just about her anymore. This was bigger.
Messier. Tied into something that had already started to spread beyond what either of us had seen inside those walls.
And me inserting myself into it like this, breaking pattern, breaking distance, it didn’t just risk exposure.
It risked everything: the mission, intel, and fer cover.
All of it.
I knew that. I knew exactly how thin the line was between staying hidden and getting caught, between observing and becoming part of the problem instead of the solution.
And I crossed it anyway.
My hands tightened on the wheel as the convoy took another turn.
It pulled deeper into territory I didn’t like, the kind of place where things disappeared and didn’t come back.
I adjusted without thinking, kept pace, kept distance, already too far in to pretend I could turn around and walk away from it.
Because the truth was simple, I wasn’t staying out of this or stepping back. And I sure as fuck wasn’t letting this play out without me in it.
I should’ve stayed out of it. But I couldn’t.
And now?
I was already moving too fast to stop.