30. Noah
NOAH
We reach Kestrel’s wire early afternoon, and by then my brain has checked out. The gate detail waves us through without a word, and Doc Ainsley meets us at the med hut door, barking orders before Bishop and Petrillo even set the litter down.
“Leg wound, gunshot, twelve hours old, field-dressed twice,” Liu rattles off, moving into the hut with her.
Wilder walks in himself, waving off assistance. The cut on his cheek has stopped bleeding, but it’s split wide enough that Ainsley takes one look and points him to a table.
I stand outside the med hut door for a second too long, watching them work, until Hayes’s hand lands on my shoulder.
“Come on,” he says, voice low. “Nothing left for us to do here.”
He’s right. I know he’s right, but I still don’t feel like moving.
Next thing I know, I’m standing under the spray in the shower with my forehead against the wall.
This time, I’m not thinking about Gabriel.
I’m not thinking about anything. Not Sykes’s leg, not the sound Wilder’s rifle made, not getting caught by Hayes.
My brain has simply stopped generating thoughts.
I almost go down twice, catching myself on the plywood at the last second, blinking water out of my eyes like that’ll wake me up.
“You’re swaying,” Petrillo says from two heads down.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re swaying like a tree in a storm, Reyes.”
Arguing with him would cost energy I don’t have right now. So I don’t.
I think about walking to Gabriel’s hut. I even get as far as picturing the door and how I’d knock on it.
But then I think of Hayes’s face on the mountain, wide-eyed, mouth open.
Tyler doesn’t have a cruel bone in him. But he also doesn’t have an off switch.
If I don’t go to my bunk now, I’m inviting him to make up stories about where I am.
And a lot of them would probably be true.
So I follow him and Petrillo to our hut, and I fall face-first onto my bunk, still half-damp.
The last thing I remember is the sound of my boots hitting the floor. And then it’s black.
When I wake up, the hut is dark and quiet, and for a minute I don’t know what day it is.
Hayes is snoring across from me, one arm thrown over his eyes like he’s on a beach in Acapulco and not soggy mountains.
Petrillo’s out too, curled toward the wall, breathing slow and even.
The window shows a darkening sky, just one purple smear left over the ridge.
My body aches everywhere, but my head is clear again, and of course the first thing I do is think about him. I ease off the bunk without a sound and pull my boots back on in the dark without lacing them all the way.
I want to see him. I don’t even know what I’ll say when I get there—I just know I want to be in the same room as him.
I make it halfway across the compound before the command hut door swings open ahead of me, spilling yellow light across the mud, and Okafor steps out into it.
“Reyes.”
I stop like I’ve been shot. “Sergeant.”
“Get in here. I want your report while it’s still fresh.”
Not a request.
I follow him inside, the warmth of the hut hitting me first, then the smell of coffee, then the sight of Gabriel sitting at the map table with his good arm braced against the edge of it, looking like a man who hasn’t slept.
His eyes come up when I walk in, and they soften for half a second before he catches himself and wipes the expression off his face.
“Sit,” Okafor says, nodding at the chair across from him.
I sit. “Any word on Callahan?”
Okafor exchanges a look with Gabriel.
“Maddox’s element caught up to the trail a few klicks past where Wilder lost it,” Okafor says. “Exchanged some fire with a rear guard. Nothing like what you ran into last night. A few rounds, nobody hit on either side.”
“They push through?”
“Didn’t get the chance.” Okafor clenches his jaw. “Light was going, and the Colonel gave the order to break contact by nightfall if they didn’t have eyes on him. They didn’t. They’re on their way back now.”
My stomach drops. “So they just left him out there?”
“They left because four exhausted men chasing a trail gone cold in the dark get themselves killed instead of getting Callahan back,” Gabriel says, his voice low and even. “I wasn’t going to lose another element to that mountain in the same twenty-four hours.”
I want to argue with that, but I can’t because he’s not wrong. I hate that he’s not wrong.
“What about the drones?” I ask instead.
“Up in the air again,” Okafor says. “Nothing yet.”
“They’ll have taken him down off the ridge by now.” Gabriel traces a finger over the map in front of him, down the contours of the mountain and toward the tree line. “Into the forest. Across into Dravosk proper.”
I look at where his finger stops, at the thin blue thread of a river marking the border, and the green shading past it.
Once they’re across, Callahan could be anywhere.
A cell in some border outpost nobody ever put on a map.
A truck bed heading toward one of the cities, Veygrad maybe, or further, into whatever building has bars on the windows and men who ask questions for a living.
Or south, into that dry scrubland where nothing grows.
The Wolves have a whole country to disappear into, and we don’t even have a direction that isn’t a guess.
“They could take him anywhere,” I say out loud.
“They could,” Gabriel agrees grimly.
I rub a hand down my face, then look at Okafor. “You wanted my report, Sergeant?”
Okafor nods, and I lean back and launch into it. I start at the wire and end at the wire, a day and a half later. I don’t gloss over details, but I don’t embellish either. I try not to look at Gabriel as I speak, because every time I do, I find myself losing my train of thought. He looks exhausted.
Okafor listens without interrupting, arms crossed, occasionally jotting a note on the pad in front of him. When I’m done, he closes his notebook.
“That’s consistent with what I got from Wilder and Liu,” he says. “Good work, Specialist. You shot straight and got an injured man down a mountain.”
“Wasn’t just me,” I object.
“Wasn’t asking you to share the credit.” He stands, tucks the notepad under his arm, and looks at Gabriel. “I’ll get this typed up for command in the morning.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Gabriel says, sounding distant.
I turn to him, look at the stubble, the dark shadows under his gray eyes, and I can’t keep my mouth shut anymore. “If I’m allowed to speak freely, sir, you look like you need a bunk and twelve hours of sleep.”
Okafor grunts. “Didn’t wait for permission to speak freely,” he says. “But for once I agree with him.”
Gabriel clenches his jaw. “I want to be here if the drones catch sight of anything.”
“I’ll have a runner wake you the second something comes in,” Okafor counters.
“You falling asleep from exhaustion doesn’t help Callahan.
” He looks at me next, and speaks matter-of-fact, like he’s just assigning a detail.
“Reyes. Escort the Colonel to his hut. Make sure he doesn’t fall over on the way. ”
For a second I just blink at him. Then the heat crawls up my neck at the subtext.
I clear my throat. “I’ll make sure the Colonel gets to his hut safely, Sergeant.”
Gabriel grumbles something under his breath and pushes up from the table. The motion pulls on his shoulder, and he hisses through his teeth.
“Should we swing by Doc Ainsley first?” I ask, concerned.
“You’re acting like a pair of mother hens,” Gabriel mutters, already moving for the door.
I follow him out into the cold, the two of us walking the short distance across the compound without a word between us, gravel crunching under our boots.
When we reach his hut, he pushes the door open and steps inside.
I hesitate for a second, not sure if I should come in or turn around, my escorting duties complete.
Then his hand closes around the front of my shirt and pulls me in.
He shuts the door behind us with his boot, and his mouth finds mine before I can say a single word. He kisses me like it’s last night, like he wasn’t sure that I’m still alive and now he knows I am, and I kiss him back just as hard, my hand finding his jaw, careful of his shoulder.
After long moments of sharing breath, he finally stops, forehead pressed to mine.
“Needed that,” he murmurs.
“Yeah,” I breathe. “Me too.”
“I don’t know if I can sleep,” he confesses in a whisper.
“Then let me help.” I nudge him toward the bunk. “Lie down. I’ll give you a massage. Might loosen you up enough to rest.”
He’s too tired to argue, and I watch him strip down to his boxers, moving carefully. Then he climbs onto the narrow mattress and settles face down with a groan of exhaustion.
I climb up and straddle the back of his thighs, careful of my weight, and press my palms flat against the muscle bunched tight along his spine. This man doesn’t let me take care of him like this often, so I’m going to take full advantage of his exhaustion and get my fill.