Chapter 15 Hawk
Hawk
The cabin was half chaos, half quiet—Aaron on the radio, Miles buried in code, rain hammering the tin roof like artillery fire.
Julia stood near the window, still in her damp clothes, hair curling at the ends from the downpour.
The laptop drives sat on the table between us, humming softly as Miles extracted another stream of encrypted files.
I’d been through firefights, raids, and warzones, but nothing felt as dangerous as the distance between us.
She was all sharp edges and quiet exhaustion, eyes flicking between the screens and the storm outside. When she caught me looking, she didn’t turn away.
“You’re staring,” she said.
“Observing,” I corrected.
“That’s your excuse for everything.”
“Because it’s true.”
Her lips curved, just slightly. “What do you see?”
“Someone who doesn’t know when to quit.”
She stepped closer, slow enough that I could hear the soft drag of her boots on the wood floor. “Is that’s a problem?”
“Only if you expect me to,” she said.
The air shifted—so subtle it almost wasn’t movement at all. My pulse found hers in the quiet. For a long heartbeat, neither of us spoke. Outside, lightning cut through the fog, painting her face in quicksilver light.
She smelled like rain and gunpowder and adrenaline—an intoxicating mix that reminded me too much of the field, of everything I swore I’d left behind.
Aaron’s voice broke through from the corner. “Halcyon’s network is going dark. They’re scrubbing servers. We have hours, maybe less.”
Julia blinked, the moment fracturing. “Then we go,” she said, already reaching for her jacket.
Aaron held up a hand. “No. We move only when we’ve got a clean line. One mistake, and Reese vanishes.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but I caught her arm before she could. My hand slid over the damp sleeve, feeling the tremor she tried to hide. “He’s right,” I said quietly. “You’re running on fumes.”
“I’ve run on worse,” she shot back, but her voice cracked just enough to give her away.
“Julia.”
The way I said her name stopped her cold. She exhaled, slow and shaky, and let the fight drain from her shoulders.
Aaron and Miles took the hint, retreating to the far end of the room. For a moment, it was just us—the storm, the low hum of the computers, and everything unsaid hanging between.
“You keep saving me,” she whispered.
“Maybe I like the excuse.”
Her eyes lifted to mine, dark and certain. “And what if I don’t want saving?”
“Then maybe I’m the one who needs it.”
She didn’t smile this time. She just looked at me, rainlight flickering in her eyes, and I knew we were standing on the edge of something we wouldn’t come back from. The one night we had together was only the first of a million.
Her hand brushed mine, brief but deliberate. The contact lit every nerve in my body. I could’ve kissed her right then—wanted to—but the mission loomed like a shadow between us.
She drew back first. “We’ll finish this,” she said, voice steady again. “Then you can tell me what that means.”
“Count on it.”