Chapter 2
two
Dutch
I knew this would go badly. Didn't expect it to go quite this badly.
The cell they put me in is clean and secure, with a good lock, solid walls, small window that's too high to reach.
I'd be impressed if I wasn't so busy replaying the look on Avery's face when I told her the truth. The way her eyes went from suspicious to devastated to murderous in the space of three seconds.
She should have killed me. Part of me wanted her to.
Three years I've carried that distress call. Three years of wondering who lived, who died, what happened to the settlement I abandoned. I told myself I made the tactical choice—Clearwater sounded overrun, the other settlement had confirmed children, the math favored saving the larger number.
The math was wrong. The math is always wrong when you're trying to justify leaving people to die.
Through the window, I hear the settlement waking up. Voices. Movement. The clang of morning routines. They're organized here. Disciplined. They survived because of the woman I heard screaming on the radio that night.
She survived. She rebuilt. She made something worth saving.
And now I'm trying to save it again.
I run through what I know about Old Hawk's pattern while I wait.
Dawn attacks, multiple entry points, leadership targeting.
He's done it successfully four times now—the settlements he hits either die or scatter, leaving behind supplies and sometimes survivors to track and enslave.
The daughters make it work. Teenage girls trained to observe and report, used as advance scouts because no one suspects children.
It's brilliant, in the most disgusting way possible.
Jenna is the oldest. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. She's been doing this long enough that the empty look in her eyes look is permanent, but I've seen the way she flinches when her father raises his voice. She's not evil. She's trapped.
Like the five people Avery locked outside her gates. Trapped between impossible choices while someone else decided their fate.
The lock clicks open. Two guards, then Avery herself.
She looks different in daylight and that difference hits me like a punch to the gut.
Harder, yes. The exhaustion I glimpsed last night buried under layers of command presence. Dark hair pulled back severely, revealing a face that's all sharp angles and sharper focus. Eyes that miss nothing and forgive less.
But there's more. There's the way she moves, like every motion has been calculated for maximum efficiency. The way she fills a room without raising her voice. The way I can see the weight of forty-three lives pressing down on shoulders that are strong enough to carry them.
She's beautiful in the way a well-maintained weapon is beautiful. Functional. Lethal. Necessary.
And I'm the bastard who left her to die.
"Talk," she says.
"I've told you everything I know."
"About Old Hawk. Not about why I shouldn't slit your throat and dump your body outside the walls."
Fair point. "You want me to justify abandoning you three years ago? I can't. There is no justification."
"Then what can you offer?"
"The truth. All of it." I meet her eyes, don't look away even though looking at her makes my chest tight.
"I was a rescue operative even then. Freelance.
Worked the routes between settlements, responded to distress calls when I could.
That night, I was tracking an Iron Wolf raiding party that had hit two settlements already.
When your call came through, I was forty miles northwest."
"Close enough to help."
"Close enough that I had to choose. Your settlement, or the one the Wolves were heading toward next. Intel said they had thirty people, including a school. Twelve children." I swallow hard. "Your distress call said you were overrun. Said the walls were breached. Said—"
"Said we were dying." Her voice is flat and raw. "I remember what I said."
And I remember. I remember her voice on that radio. Young. Terrified. Determined even in the face of death. The voice burned itself into my brain, followed me through three years of nightmares.
I never knew the voice had a face until last night. Never knew it belonged to someone who survived through sheer force of will and impossible choices.
"I calculated the travel time. Factored in the herd size you described, the breach reports, the number of defenders you mentioned. By the time I could reach Clearwater, you'd be dead or scattered. But the other settlement, if I moved fast, I might get there before the Wolves."
"Might."
"Might. It was a gamble. It was always a gamble.
" I look down at my hands. "The other settlement was empty when I arrived.
They'd evacuated two days earlier, moved south when they heard about the Wolf attacks.
The school, the families, the thirty people I thought I was saving—they were already gone. "
"So you saved no one."
"I saved no one. And your settlement survived without me." I look up again. "I didn't know until last night. Didn't know Clearwater pulled through. Didn't know who led the defense, who made it, who didn't. I just knew I made the wrong choice and people died because of it."
Avery is silent for a long moment. I watch emotions war across her face, a storm of rage and grief.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't." The word snaps out like a whip. "Don't apologize. Sorry is worthless. Sorry doesn't bring back dead children."
"I know."
"Do you?" She steps closer, and suddenly the cell feels too small.
Close enough that I can see the pulse hammering in her throat.
Close enough to catch the faint scent of gunpowder and soap.
Close enough that I have to fight the urge to reach out and—what?
Touch her? Like that would fix anything. No, it would make it worse.
"Because I've spent three years not apologizing for the choice I made that night. Not making excuses. Just living with it."
Her eyes are locked on mine. Understanding that cuts both ways. She sees the guilt I carry. I see hers reflected back.
"I chose to let five people die so forty would live," she continues, voice steady even though I can see the cost of those words in her eyes. "You chose to let my settlement burn so you could save children who didn't need saving. We're the same kind of monster, you and me."
"Maybe."
"Definitely." She holds my gaze for another long moment. She’s close enough that when she speaks again, I feel the words as much as hear them.
"Bring the girl. I want him to watch."
They bring Jenna, and I watch Avery interrogate her with surgical precision. Watch the girl's cover story crumble piece by piece until she's sobbing confessions about her father's operation, her captive mother, the settlements that have burned because of intelligence she provided.
"He took us after he killed our parents," Jenna gasps. "Uses us as scouts. If we fail, if we warn anyone, he hurts our mother. He keeps her separate so we never know if she's alive or dead."
Avery's expression doesn't change, but I see her hands tighten on the table edge.
"You were outside the gates," Avery says quietly. "When your 'father' came for you. Were you outside looking for something? Running an errand?"
Jenna nods miserably. "Medicine. My little sister was sick. I went back for the antibiotics."
The silence in the cell turns suffocating. I watch Avery process the parallel of another teenage girl, outside the walls for medicine, caught by violence not of her making.
"We're going to protect you," Avery says. "You and your mother, if we can find her. Old Hawk is going to die for what he's done. Do you understand?"
"Yes." The girl whimpers around tears.
"Good." Avery stands, turns to me. "You were right about the threat. That doesn't mean I trust you. That doesn't mean I forgive you. But you know how Old Hawk operates, and I need that knowledge to keep my people alive."
"I'll tell you everything."
"You'll do more than tell me. You'll fight beside us. And when it's over, if we're both still breathing, you'll walk away and never come back to Clearwater."
"Avery."
"Those are my terms. Take them or die in this cell."
I stand, stretch muscles that have been cramped for hours. "I'll take them."
"Good. Then let's go plan how to kill the bastard who's threatening my settlement. Again."
She walks out without looking back. I follow, knowing I've been given something I don't deserve: a chance to make right what I got wrong three years ago.
Whether it's enough remains to be seen.