Chapter 15 Sage
SAGE
Morning tears me from sleep like tape ripped from skin.
Cold air kisses my cheeks. A pale strip of light sneaks around the curtains and lies across the quilt.
For a few seconds, I forget where I am. Then the scent of cedar and coffee reaches me, the low hum of the cabin, and the steady thud of boots somewhere down the hallway.
Vega stretches by the bedroom door, his paws drumming lightly as he rises.
When I swing my legs to the floorboards, he pads over and noses my palm, his warm breath fogging the thin morning chill.
His brown eyes hold an alert patience, as if he understands that the day already holds more than it should.
I dress quickly in jeans, a sweater that still carries a whisper of coffee beans from the life that burned, and my hair pulled into a low knot.
In the bathroom mirror, my face looks leaner, worn down at the edges, with dark smudges under my eyes that no amount of sleep could erase.
I force a breath in and hold it until my ribs protest, then release it slowly.
One thing at a time. First, the café. I have to see it.
I have to know what can be saved, even if the answer is nothing.
Murmurs rise through the cabin when I step into the hall. Voices from the kitchen. Metal clinks. A chair scrapes. I follow the sounds until the room opens around me.
Luka stands near the counter, a mug steaming in his hand, his suit jacket undone over a charcoal-gray shirt.
His presence sharpens the air. Misha leans against the butcher-block island, a phone in one palm, his pale eyes scanning some report with surgical focus.
Kolya is at the window, shoulders angled toward the glass, his attention hooked on the trees.
All three turn slightly. Vega goes ahead of me and plants himself at Luka’s side.
“I need to go into town,” I announce, bracing my elbows on the back of a chair to keep my hands steady. “Bean & Bloom.”
Kolya’s brows lift a fraction. Misha’s gaze slides to Luka like a quiet signal.
“It is not secured,” Misha observes, his voice flat as a blade laid against wood.
“I know.” I meet Luka’s eyes. “I’m going anyway.”
The silence stretches long enough to feel like a line has been drawn in the sand. Luka lowers the mug and sets it down without a sound. “You will not go alone.”
“I wasn’t asking for permission,” I murmur, the fight still there, just buried under fatigue.
He studies me without blinking. “I understand why you want to see it,” he replies, his voice low but threaded with command. “We’ll go now, under escort.”
Misha pockets his phone, and Kolya pushes away from the window. The decision is already in motion before I can argue. Vega swishes his tail once and looks up at me as if this is settled, and perhaps it is.
Ten minutes later, we walk into the freezing morning.
Frost needles the porch rail, and the sky carries that thin, almost-winter brightness that promises nothing.
Kolya opens the rear door of the black SUV, and I climb in, sliding across the leather.
Vega follows and folds into the footwell, his head angled so he can watch both me and the doors.
Misha takes the driver’s seat and checks the side mirror, the rearview, and the feed on the dash camera. Kolya claims the passenger seat. Luka slides in beside me, his shoulder inches from mine, heat radiating through the layers of winter fabric.
When Misha pulls out, gravel crunches under the tires in a slow grind. The cabin shrinks in the side mirror, swallowed by pine.
Vega presses his head under my hand, and I stroke the coarse fur between his ears, the touch anchoring me to the leather under my thighs, the cold seeping through the glass, and the faint scent of Luka’s cologne.
The mountain road curves like a ribbon caught in the wind. Misha drives as if the road answers only to him, while Kolya scans the trees, his mouth set in a hard line. Luka moves once, not a fidget exactly but a recalibration of space, the way a man adjusts before a fight.
I watch the world pass and try to smother the ache inside my chest. The café rises in my mind the way it used to look.
Amber light in the early hours. Ceramic cups lined up in neat rows along the shelf.
Jenny humming under her breath as she frosted muffins.
The bell over the door chiming. Steam clouding the big front windows in winter.
How a room keeps a town’s small joys alive through the hands that never stop tending it.
We roll into town in under twenty minutes. Misha takes a back street, then another. He parks at the end of the block, two doors down from what’s left of my café.
No one speaks at first, we just look. Bean & Bloom stands draped in black and mineral gray, a ghost of what it was.
The glass of the front windows is gone, the frames torn open, the insides charred with twisted metal.
A strip of police tape sags from one corner of the door, bright yellow against soot-stained brick.
The hand-painted sign that used to hang over the entrance lies tilted near the curb, the letters warped by heat, my mother’s elegant curves bruised but not erased.
My throat locks, and the breath breaks past it in a shudder.
“Clear it,” Luka instructs.
He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t need to. Misha and Kolya move at once. Kolya sweeps the sidewalk, his eyes ticking like a metronome.
Misha strides to the door and peels the tape aside, disappearing into the dark interior for a breath. When he reemerges, he nods once. “No eyes,” he reports, then gestures to the empty storefronts across the street. “Two cameras there. Already on loop.”
Luka steps out of the SUV. Vega hops down after him, then pauses to glance back at me. For one suspended second, my legs hold the line, refusing to move toward what waits beyond the threshold. Then I climb out and close the door softly.
Ash grits under my soles. The air has that after-burn metallic taste that sticks to the back of the tongue. I cross the sidewalk slowly, my fingers skimming the edges of the sign as I pass. Paint flakes onto my palm, but I don’t wipe it off.
Inside is worse. Blackened studs arch overhead.
The counter where I used to lean to chat with regulars is a skeletal line of char.
The espresso machine is an animal that died mid-scream.
The chalkboard menu lies face down under a beam, the chalk dust melted into a gray smear on the floor.
I step carefully between broken ceramic and metal.
My mind starts cataloging even as grief drags at my insides.
Tiles are still intact near the back. The steel sink is warped but salvageable if I want it.
The back office door stands crooked but present.
Luka keeps close without crowding me. His eyes sweep the perimeter, then return to me, studying each small tremor I can’t disguise.
Kolya plants himself at the threshold, one hand inside his jacket, his stance loose but lethal. Misha moves in a slow grid, checking corners, scanning the soot-streaked ceiling, and listening for something I can’t hear.
This used to be warm. This used to be a home that smelled like cinnamon and ground beans. Now it looks like a rib cage pried open and forgotten.
Near where the pastry case stood, a sheet of roofing collapsed in a warped oval, heavy enough to crush a person who didn’t see it coming.
The sight narrows my focus until all I can hear is my own breath.
I try not to picture the night itself, the first lick of flame, the hand that sparked it, or the rush of heat as everything I once touched gave itself over to ruin.
“Careful,” Luka murmurs when a board near my boots groans. He reaches out on instinct, and I feel his fingers bite lightly into my forearm. The contact centers me more than it ought to. He lets go only when my stance is solid again.
“I need the office,” I state matter-of-factly, turning toward the back, where a small corridor used to run alongside the kitchen. Everything is different, yet my feet find the path the way muscle remembers a dance.
The door hangs off one hinge. I nudge it with my knuckles and wiggle through.
The room beyond is half burned. Papers are turned to ash.
The filing cabinet is blackened at the top, the drawers swollen with heat.
A safe crouches in the corner, stubborn under a skin of soot.
My desk is a bent skeleton, one leg crushed, the others clinging to balance.
On the floor, under where the small shelf used to sit, lies a metal box with daisies stamped into the lid. Scorched but whole. My chest stutters, my knees fold without my permission, and I kneel in the mess with the box in my lap.
Misha steps forward and goes still, understanding without a word that this small object draws a line he won’t cross. “We pulled that the night it burned,” he explains softly. The road was hot. We stashed it here until the heat died down. Nothing inside has been disturbed.”
I trace the daisy petals with my thumb. The metal is cold and a bit greasy with soot.
A tiny latch rests under my fingertip. I lift it, just enough to peek.
The cards show my mother’s familiar script, a careful slant that used to guide me even when she was not there.
Lemon loaf. Molasses sugar cookies. Her Sunday cinnamon rolls.
The tightness in my throat draws tighter until it threatens to tear. I pull the box closer, pressing it to my chest. The touch hurts and heals in the same breath.
Luka stops beside me, ash rising around his boots like smoke that refuses to die. For once, he doesn’t look carved from command and iron will.
“You kept it safe,” I manage, glancing up at Misha. Tears burn behind my eyes, but I won’t let them fall.
Misha tips his chin. “Your mother’s hand is inside. We do not leave family on the floor.”
Family. The word splits me open and settles the ache all at once.
Kolya’s voice reaches us from the main room. “Two pedestrians paused to look,” he reports, his tone cool. “Then kept walking. Nothing anchor-worthy.”
“Five minutes,” Luka replies, not taking his eyes off me. “Take what you need.”
I press my palms into the box until the corners bite. When the burn behind my eyes eases enough to breathe, I rise. Luka is ever watchful, every inch the predator who never truly rests. Vega slips around his leg, nudges my hip once, then stations himself in the doorway like a sentry.
I take one slow circle of the office and let my mind do its work.
I note what can be cleaned, what must be replaced, and what I would do differently.
The old, tiled back wall can be sanded and sealed.
The layout near the service line was always too tight, leaving Jenny and me with bruised hips most Saturdays.
If I push the bar three feet toward the windows, I could improve the flow and hide the reinforced steel supports within a white oak facade.
I could build the bakery into a visible corner, put the daily bread behind glass.
We can rivet the logo into a copper plate and hang it inside, not on the street, where wind and winter can’t scar it.
“I’m going to rebuild it,” I whisper to the broken room. “Not the same. Better and stronger.”
Luka turns slightly toward me. I can’t read him, not really, but a subtle change softens the line of his mouth, maybe admiration, curiosity, or a new calculation. Maybe all three.
“You do not yet know the scope of what stands against you,” he replies, almost gently. “It will not be a problem solved only with walls and permits.”
“That never stopped my mother,” I return, lifting my chin. “It won’t stop me.”
We move through the main room as a unit on the way out.
Kolya exits first, sweeping the sidewalk with a lazy swagger that fools no one.
Misha follows, slipping his phone back into his jacket.
Luka falls in beside me, his hand finding the small of my back as we step over a split plank.
The touch is light, but his presence is impossible to ignore.
Vega threads between us and the ruined counter, as if he had walked this route a hundred times.
At the threshold, I hesitate, looking back one final time. It still aches to breathe, but the pain feels purified, numbed by resolve.
Outside, the cold stings my cheeks, brisk enough to wake what’s gone numb.
I blink against the wind. Across the street, the diner that never liked me still hangs its open sign crooked.
A teenage couple hurries past, heads ducked against the chill, their laughter spilling into the air in small white clouds.
The rest of the town moves as if nothing ever changed.
We return to the SUV with purpose. Misha opens the rear door and waits while I climb in. Luka follows, sealing us in a leather-and-heat cocoon. Vega hops up and settles with his head on my boot. Kolya checks the mirrors. Misha pulls away as smoothly as if we were leaving church.
The silence stretches for three breaths, then five. I keep my palms pressed to the box in my lap, chewing on my bottom lip as I decide what to say.
“I want to bring Hope home,” I begin, my voice tough as steel. “You said later. I can’t accept that. Not anymore.”
Luka’s focus moves to me, down to the box, then back to my face. “We have been planning while you slept,” he answers, his tone even. “Transport is already in motion. Denver to Aspen Ridge. Two vehicles. One scout and one primary.”
Misha cuts his eyes to the rearview. “The scout does not stop,” he reports. “He runs point and flag. The primary carries your sister and two medics. I am inserting two of ours beside them.”
Kolya twists in his seat just enough to study me over his shoulder. “I chose the route,” he adds. “I’m not fond of surprises.”
I grip the box harder, pulling it to my chest. “When?”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” Luka answers. “By then, the night watchers will be gone, and their replacements won’t be fully alert. It’s the best window, when vigilance fades and men start to relax.”
My heart stutters, then surges. “Tell me the rest.”
He studies me for a moment that feels like a test. “No straight highways,” he continues. “Too easy to set up a kill box. No long tunnels. I prefer mountain roads with more exits than entries.”
Kolya nods. “They can bottleneck a tunnel with two trucks and a cigarette. Open curves punish them.”
“Two decoy ambulances on standby,” Misha adds. “One will roll half an hour ahead. One will leave Denver the opposite direction.”
“And if they try anyway?” I press, my heart pounding. “If they come?”
“Then they meet us,” Luka replies, final as a closing door. He glances down at Vega, then back at me. “We will be with her. Or near enough to arrive before anyone can pull a trigger.”
I lower my eyes to the recipe box and nod once. The plan is set, and the clock is already moving. Tomorrow, I will get my sister back.