Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
IRIS
He's been gone thirty-one hours.
The cabin is wrong without him. Too quiet. Too still. The chair by the door sits empty, which is stupid to fixate on because it's a chair. Wood and cushion. But every night since I arrived, Jax sat in that chair until I pulled him into bed, and now the chair just sits there.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
Jax:
Sully's lead was good. We've located the operational cell. Extraction planning underway.
Me:
How long?
Jax:
48 hours. Maybe less.
Me:
Be careful.
Jax:
Always.
Me:
That's a lie and we both know it.
Jax:
Fine. I'll be careful this time. You're giving me a reason.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard. A dozen responses cycle through my head, most of them too honest for a text message on an encrypted line that Sully is probably monitoring.
Me:
Come home.
No response for forty seconds. Then:
Jax:
Home. I like the sound of that.
Setting the phone down, I press my face into his pillow. Cedar. My chest hurts. Not the sharp, crisis driven fear of being hunted. A deeper ache. The bone level terror of caring about someone who is walking toward danger on purpose.
This is why he pushed me away in Prague. This exact feeling. He didn't want me carrying this weight.
Now I understand. And I hate that I understand, because it means his logic wasn't wrong. Just his conclusion.
Sleep doesn't come. By 5 AM I'm up, dressed, making coffee in his kitchen. The routine is automatic now. French press, four minutes, black. His mug says nothing on it. Plain white ceramic. Of course.
A knock at 0630. Mace.
"Morning." He fills the doorway, easy smile, hazel eyes scanning the cabin in one sweep. Professional but warm. "Cade made breakfast at the lodge. Thought you might want company."
"I'm fine here."
"You've been alone for twenty two hours. Fine and alone aren't always the same thing."
The gentleness in his voice catches me off guard. Mace Hunter doesn't push. He suggests. Offers. Leaves space. But the suggestion has weight because he means it.
"Give me five minutes."
The lodge is warm. Cade has made enough food for twelve people even though only six are at the table.
Ryder sits cleaning a weapon that's already clean.
Boone reviews maps on a tablet, contingency plans updated hourly.
Hayes leans back in his chair telling a story about a training exercise in Alaska that apparently involved a moose and a C 130.
Natalie laughs from the kitchen, one hand on her belly.
This family absorbed me in three days. Without question. Without hesitation. Jax's people became my people because he brought me to Sunday dinner. One meal was all it took.
Sitting down, I pull a plate toward me. Eggs. Toast. Bacon. Cade slides a mug of coffee across the table without being asked.
"He checked in?" Cade's voice is low. Medic voice. Calm regardless of the crisis.
"A few hours ago. They've located the cell. Forty eight hours."
Cade nods. His hand finds Natalie's back when she passes behind his chair. Automatic. Unconscious. A man who touches his wife because proximity to her is his baseline state.
That's what Jax and I could have had for seven years. Breakfast tables and automatic touches. Morning coffee made from memory. A hand on my back as I walked past.
The thought stings. Anger flares, brief and hot, at the years we lost. At the hotel room in Prague. At the part of Jax that believed sacrifice and love were the same thing.
My phone buzzes.
Sadie:
Hey! Vivian and I are coming to the lodge this afternoon. Girls' afternoon. Non negotiable. Bring snacks if you have them, Cade already said he'd watch the kids.
Me:
I don't think I'm great company right now.
Sadie:
That's literally why we're coming. Also I have wine. The good stuff, not the box kind. Wolfe keeps a secret stash he thinks I don't know about.
The laugh comes before I can stop it. Small. Surprised.
Me:
Fine. But I'm not talking about my feelings.
Sadie:
Liar. See you at 2.
By afternoon, Vivian and Sadie have commandeered the lodge's living room. Vivian pours wine with the precision of a former prosecutor organizing evidence. Sadie tucks her legs under her on the couch, baby Jake asleep in a carrier at her feet.
"So." Vivian swirls her glass. "How long have you been in love with him?"
"I said I wasn't talking about my feelings."
"That was this morning. It's afternoon now. New rules."
Sadie grins. "She's got you there."
Leaning back in my chair, I take a long drink. The wine is actually excellent. Wolfe has taste. "Fifteen years. Give or take."
Vivian's eyebrow lifts. "That's a long time to love a man who lives alone on a mountain."
"He wasn't always on the mountain. Before that he was in basements and bunkers and war zones. I loved him there too. Loved him when he was Priest, the guy who scared grown men into talking. Loved him when he was Jax, the man who reads his Bible at 2 AM because he can't sleep."
The words keep coming. Everything I've kept locked up. The Prague hotel room. The seven years of silence. The way he said none of them are you while firelight cut his face into sharp planes.
Sadie's eyes are wet by the time I finish. Vivian's are not, but her jaw is set in a way that suggests she's restraining herself from marching to wherever Jax is and having a word.
"He chose option three," Vivian says. "That's huge for him."
"Deck helped."
"Deck always helps. That's what he does." A soft smile. "These men are idiots about their own feelings. Brilliant at everything else. Combat, tactics, survival. But ask them to sit with an emotion for more than ten seconds and they'd rather defuse a bomb."
"Wolfe once told me he loved me by leaving a dead rabbit on the porch," Sadie says cheerfully. "Like a cat. A six foot two cat with a sniper rifle. I cried. He thought he'd done something wrong."
The laugh that breaks out of me is real. Full. The first one in thirty one hours that doesn't feel borrowed.
My phone buzzes. Not a text. A call. Jax's encrypted line.
Stepping onto the lodge porch, I answer.
"Iris." His voice is tight. Background noise. Movement.
"What's wrong?"
"The cell isn't just Volkov's people. Sully cracked the metadata fragments from Frankfurt. There's a second layer. A handler running Volkov's network from inside the U.S. intelligence community."
Cold. Instant.
"A mole."
"Active CIA. Someone with access to the original Meridian files.
That's how Alexei got the team roster. That's how he's been one step ahead.
" A pause. Voices behind him. Deck giving orders.
"Iris, whoever this is, they've been inside the system the entire time.
Which means they know you're at Whisper Vale.
The wine glass in my hand goes very still.
"How long?"
"Sully's working on the identity. Could be hours. Could be days."
"You need to come back."
"I can't. We're forty eight hours from extracting the cell. If we pull out now, they scatter. We lose them."
"And if the mole sends a team to Whisper Vale while you're gone?"
"Then Mace and four operators protect you until I get back. That was the plan."
"The plan didn't account for an inside threat."
"No. It didn't." His breath is rough. Controlled. A man fighting every instinct to turn the truck around. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize. Finish the mission. Come home."
"Iris."
"I mean it. Finish it. All of it. So this ends."
Silence. Then: "Forty eight hours."
"Forty eight hours."
The line goes dead. Standing on the porch, the Nevada mountains dark around me, I press the phone against my forehead.
Inside, Vivian appears in the doorway. One look at my face tells her everything.
"How bad?"
"There's a mole. Active CIA. They know I'm here."
Vivian sets down her wine glass. Pulls out her phone. Dials.
"Mace? It's Vivian. Get everyone to the lodge. Now."
The warmth of the afternoon evaporates. Sadie appears behind Vivian, baby Jake gathered against her chest. Her sunny expression has gone flat. Focused. The wife of a SEAL sniper who knows what a threat escalation looks like.
"Iris." Vivian's hand grips my arm. Steady. Strong. "You're not alone in this."
Forty-eight hours. Jax in the field. A mole in the system. A target on my back.
And a family of strangers who just went to war for me.