Chapter 4
MAGNUS
She starts talking and I listen without interruption. Professional habit. You learn more when you shut up and let people fill the silence with information they don't realize they're giving.
The stew sits untouched in front of her while she explains.
Wildlife biologist. Grant-funded research on wolf pack dynamics.
Trail cameras positioned along migration corridors in a remote section of the Alaskan interior.
Standard scientific methodology that should have produced footage of animals doing animal things.
Instead, she captured something else entirely.
"The timestamp shows three nights ago. After midnight.
" Her voice is steady now, the scientist in her taking over.
Compartmentalizing. Good survival skill.
"The infrared picked up movement in an area where wolves shouldn't have been active.
I thought maybe I'd caught a rival pack encroaching on territory. "
"But it wasn't wolves."
"No." She wraps her hands around the bowl like she needs the warmth even though the cabin is heated. "Women. Maybe a dozen of them. Hands bound with zip ties. Men with rifles herding them toward a plane. The way they moved, the coordination, it was military precision. Professional."
Before she shows me, I already suspect what I'm going to see. But I need to confirm. Need to see landmarks and faces and aircraft details that will tell me exactly how deep this mess goes.
"Show me."
She hesitates. Smart enough to recognize that showing me the footage makes me more complicit, more invested, more dangerous to the people who want her dead. But she doesn't have much choice. We're already in this together whether she likes it or not.
She left her laptop behind, but I've got equipment. I retrieve my own from the desk, boot it up, take the SD card from her shaking fingers. Our hands don't touch but I feel the heat of her anyway, the awareness that's been building since she hauled herself into my plane.
The footage loads. Grainy infrared, typical wildlife camera quality. Trees. Snow. Movement at the edge of the frame.
Then women stumbling into view.
I've seen bad things. Done bad things. Flown cargo I didn't ask questions about because questions get you killed in this business.
But this hits different. Watching human beings reduced to products, watching terror play across faces captured in that ghostly infrared glow, watching men with weapons treat women like livestock being moved to market.
My jaw locks tight. I force myself to watch the entire clip. Every second. Every detail. Because Neve was right to keep this evidence and wrong to think she could do anything with it except get herself killed. And because the landmarks are familiar.
"Stop." I pause the footage on a frame showing the plane and the crude airstrip behind it. "Zoom in on that location marker. The terrain features."
She leans closer, fingers moving over the trackpad. The image enlarges. Rocky outcropping. Specific treeline. Mountain ridge in the background.
That ridge. I've flown past it dozens of times. It's less than a hundred miles from one of my regular routes, a corridor I use when I need to move cargo without filing flight plans or checking in with any authority that might ask uncomfortable questions.
"What is it?" She catches the tension in my shoulders. "Do you recognize it?"
"Yeah. I recognize it." I lean back, mind already calculating distances and fuel ranges and the very real possibility that the people running this operation have seen my plane in that area.
Might already be checking flight records and fuel purchases and trying to figure out which pilot grabbed their witness.
"That location is in my operating zone. Near routes I fly regularly. "
Her face goes pale. "You think they know?"
"I think they're going to figure it out if they haven't already." I close the laptop, hand her back the SD card. "And now they know their witness was using trail cameras in an area I frequent. Coincidence becomes pattern real fast when people are motivated to find connections."
"I'm sorry." Her voice is small, scared. "I didn't mean to drag you into this. I didn't know you'd be there, I just ran and you were my only chance and now I've made you a target too."
"Too late for sorry." I keep my voice flat. Unforgiving. She needs to understand that apologies don't fix this situation. "We survive or we die. That's the only choice now. Everything else is just noise."
She flinches but doesn't argue. Good. Arguments waste time we don't have.
I pull the maps from the wall, spread them across the table.
Mark the location where she was doing research.
Mark the airstrip where I picked her up.
Mark this cabin. Draw lines connecting them, calculating angles and distances and trying to see the pattern the same way the traffickers will see it when they start piecing together what happened.
"They'll check flight records for every aircraft that left the area during the relevant timeframe.
" I'm thinking out loud, working through the problem methodically.
"Most bush pilots don't file plans for every flight but we still buy fuel, still land at legitimate strips when we need supplies. They'll narrow it down fast."
"How long do we have?" She's leaning over the map, studying it with scientific intensity. Not panicking. Using her brain. I can work with that.
"Depends on their resources and connections.
Days. Maybe a week if we're lucky." I mark another location, a different cache cabin in an area even more remote than this one.
"We'll need to move before the storm clears.
Can't stay here once they start checking properties associated with pilots in this region. "
"Do you own this place?"
"Lease. Under a shell company. But nothing's truly hidden if someone looks hard enough."
She's quiet for a moment, processing. Then she points to the map.
"This area here. The terrain looks similar to where I was doing research.
If they're using that location for moving people, they need certain features.
Flat enough for aircraft. Remote enough to avoid observation.
Access to routes that connect to larger transportation networks. "
I look at where she's pointing. She's right. The topography matches. And there are maybe half a dozen locations within fuel range that fit those parameters.
"They're not just using one site." I trace possible routes with my finger. "They're moving people through a network. Multiple landing points. Multiple routes. Reduces risk if one location gets compromised."
"And you've flown near all of these areas." It's not a question. She can see it on the map, see how my regular routes intersect with the likely trafficking corridors.
"I fly where people pay me to fly." My voice comes out harder than I intend. "I've got rules. Lines I won't cross. But I can't control what other people do in the same airspace."
"I wasn't accusing you."
"Weren't you?" I meet her eyes. Challenge in my stare. Because part of me wants her to accuse me, wants her to see me clearly for what I am instead of clinging to the idea that I'm some kind of rescuer who gives a damn about justice or righteousness or anything except survival.
But she doesn't flinch. Doesn't look away. Just holds my gaze with surprising steadiness.
"You could have left me." Her voice is quiet but firm. "You had every reason to. Every excuse. But you didn't. That tells me what I need to know about your lines."
The air between us shifts. The antagonism that's been crackling since I pulled her into my plane changes flavor, becomes more complicated. More dangerous.
I look back at the map, breaking eye contact before I do something stupid. "You're not useless, at least. Most civilians would be hysterical right now."
"I am hysterical." She almost laughs. Almost. "I'm just really good at compartmentalizing."
We work through the evening, plotting possibilities and contingencies.
She knows terrain features I don't, spots patterns in the footage I missed.
Her scientific training makes her methodical, detail-oriented, willing to consider multiple hypotheses before settling on conclusions.
Strength that adapts instead of shattering.
Dangerous combination, and I catch myself watching her instead of the map.
The way she bites her lower lip when she's thinking.
How her fingers trace routes with unconscious grace.
The intelligence in her eyes when she makes a connection I haven't seen yet.
She's not what I expected. Not some soft academic who would break under pressure. She's got steel underneath the fear, competence underneath the terror.
Our hands brush when we both reach for the same map section. Heat flares where our skin touches. We both freeze. Her breath catches. My fingers hover over hers for a heartbeat too long before I pull back.
"Sorry." She jerks her hand away like I burned her.
"Don't be."
The silence that follows is heavy. Charged. Full of the awareness we've both been pretending doesn't exist since she tumbled into my plane bleeding and terrified and alive in a way that called to the predator in me.
Outside, the storm intensifies. Wind howls against the cabin walls. Snow pelts the windows with increasing fury. We're sealed in together, cut off from everything, just her and me and the tension crackling in the air that has nothing to do with weather.
She stands abruptly, chair scraping against the floor. "I should clean up the dishes."
But she doesn't move toward the sink. Just stands there, shaking. Not from cold. From delayed shock finally catching up. From adrenaline that's been sustaining her since the chase finally draining away and leaving her system crashing.
Her hands shake. Then her shoulders. Then her whole body.