Chapter Sixteen
~ Sterling ~
The long plank table held the weight of what I was about to say better than I could. Morning light cut through the east-facing window in a clean gold line that hit my phone screen and the boot-tread photos spread beside it, turning digital evidence into something warmer than it had any right to be.
The wood stove ticked behind me. Steady. Patient. Counting seconds while I decided how many of them to waste.
Not many.
Rawley sat at the far end with his coffee, the mug dwarfed by his hands.
Macon beside him, quiet, his eyes on the maps.
Burke had already commandeered one of Caleb’s pastries—some kind of twisted cinnamon thing dusted with sugar—and was working through it with the focus of a man who believed dessert was a breakfast category.
Jackson looked like a man running on nothing but fumes and stubbornness, dark circles under his eyes.
Cruz sat at the opposite end saying absolutely nothing, which from Cruz meant he was listening harder than anyone in the room.
Mitch sat with his boots up on the bench, his thigh pressed warm against mine.
He hadn’t put them there by accident. I knew the difference.
His arm pressed along my side, solid heat through my flannel, and I kept my eyes on the table and my voice flat because flat was the only voice that was going to get through this without cracking something.
“Two days,” I said. “The contractors hit the northeast blind spot at 02:14. Thermal camera went dark. Four men total—two on the east tree line, two on the north access road. Diamond tread pattern.” I tapped the photo.
“Same pattern we found at the cut fence Tuesday. Same pattern we’ve been tracking since the first breach three weeks ago. ”
The table was quiet. Burke chewed. Caleb moved through the kitchen behind me, the soft sound of plates, and I didn’t turn around because turning around meant seeing his face and I needed the flat voice for a little longer.
“They were coordinated,” I said. “Clean approach vectors. Knew the greenhouse blocked the sight line from the main house. Knew the tree line gave cover to the river access. Knew where Cruz would be, where Jackson would be, where the motion sensors were calibrated.” I looked up.
“Eleanor Peterson is in custody. Her faction is fractured and watched. Hughs is in federal holding. Neither of them is running contractors with that kind of operational knowledge.”
Burke set his pastry down. “So.”
I grimaced at the truth that had been sitting in my gut for days. “So someone else is running them.”
“Someone with inside information?”
“Yes.”
Burke held my gaze. His eyes were sharper than his posture suggested. “You’ve known this for three days and you’re just now telling us.”
“I wanted to be sure.”
“Sure like ‘I checked twice’ or sure like ‘I ran the whole thing in my head until three in the morning every night.’”
“The second one.”
“Great.” Burke picked up his pastry. “That’s healthy.”
Caleb set a fresh plate in the center of the table. More pastries. Burke reached immediately, which was how Mitch knew Burke wasn’t actually that worried. Mitch had a chart for that.
I’d seen the chart. It lived in the same mental filing cabinet where he kept track of how many times I’d almost smiled, and it was approximately as scientifically rigorous.
Mitch leaned forward. Elbows on the table. He’d been quiet through most of this, which was its own kind of signal—Mitch quiet was either asleep or about to say something that would land like a direct hit.
“It’s not a leak,” he said.
The word sat there. Plain. Unadorned. He said it the way he said most things that mattered—without drama, like naming the thing correctly was basic courtesy.
“It’s a traitor. Someone with inside access who actively worked to keep Hughs and Peterson operational.
Someone who used that access to shield them from countermeasures.
Someone running cleanup now because the trials mean testimony and testimony means exposure.
” He looked at me. “Not a leak. A choice. Someone chose this.”
Rawley’s mug hit the table. “There’s a difference.”
“Yeah,” Mitch said. “One of them is an accident.”
I held Mitch’s gaze. He looked back steady and warm and not remotely smug about being right, which was almost more impressive than being right. His arm pressed against mine, heat through fabric, and the contact was deliberate and grounding and exactly what I needed at exactly the wrong moment.
“Mitch is correct,” I said.
Rawley’s jaw worked. “Who?”
“I have a short list,” I replied. “I need forty-eight hours to confirm before I put a name to it.” I looked at the table. “I’m not burning a career operative on a short list.”
“That’s fair,” Burke said. “And also slightly terrifying.”
Jackson shifted in his seat. He looked exhausted, the kind of exhausted that lived in the bones. “Whoever it is knew about the greenhouse blind spot. That’s not in any briefing.”
Cruz said nothing. From Cruz, nothing meant he already had his own list and it was shorter than mine.
Macon’s hand settled on the table. “What’s the play?”
“No pattern changes,” I said. “No signals that we’ve identified the problem. Let the traitor believe the raid accomplished something. I pull on the threads only someone inside my network could have touched.”
“And then?” Burke asked.
“Then I handle it.”
“Define handle it.”
I looked at him.
“I’m asking for legal reasons,” Burke said.
Cruz spoke for the first time. “No, you’re not.”
Burke sighed. “No, I’m not.”
Rawley pushed back from the table. “I want daily check-ins.”
“Fine.”
Macon stood. “I’ll tell Carter to keep the kids closer to the house.” His tone closed the subject. Macon closed subjects the way other men closed doors.
Cruz rose. “I’ll take the northeast corner overnight.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I’m aware.”
I looked at him. Cruz held my gaze with the flat certainty of a man who had made a decision and expected it to be respected rather than thanked. I’d seen that look on nineteen continents. It meant the same thing everywhere.
“Okay,” I said.
Cruz nodded. That was the whole negotiation.
Jackson ran a hand through his loose ponytail. “Cruz volunteering for overnight surveillance. Nothing obsessive about that.”
“I heard that,” Cruz said.
“I know.”
Something passed between them. Warm. Private. The particular look of two men who had stopped pretending they didn’t need each other and were still figuring out what to do with the admission.
I filed it away.
That cabinet was getting crowded.
The meeting broke up slowly. Burke stole the last pastry on his way out and told Caleb it was the best thing he’d ever eaten, which he said every time and meant every time.
“The icing sets fast,” Caleb said. “So, I made the right call.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Burke pointed at him. “Tactical.”
Rawley paused at the door. Gave me the look. The one that said several things without any of them being words—concern, trust, the particular weight of a man who had built something and was watching someone try to burn it down. Then he was gone.
Jackson lingered by the coffeepot. Refilling his mug with the careful movements of someone conserving energy.
Caleb brushed past him, touched his arm briefly—no words, just contact—and Jackson’s shoulders dropped about half an inch.
Small. Measurable. The kind of relief that came from being seen without having to ask.
Cruz waited at the door. Patient. Certain. The absolute certainty of a man who had decided where he was standing and who he was standing there for.
I looked at my notes. The short list I hadn’t written down because names on paper made them real, and real meant I had to do something about them.
Mitch’s thigh pressed warm against mine. His boot nudged my ankle under the table. Not a question. A statement.
I was still here. He was still here. The wood stove ticked. The morning light held.
Forty-eight hours.
The bunkhouse settled around the three of us the way it always did when everyone else left—quieter, warmer, the wood stove’s tick louder in the absence of Burke’s voice and Rawley’s coffee mug hitting the table.
Caleb cleared plates. The east window had gone full bright, mid-morning light cutting across the long table in a line that made my notes look friendlier than they were.
I sat with my hands around my mug and didn’t drink.
The coffee had gone cold. Betrayal had a specific shape.
It never stopped being personal. It never stopped feeling like something I should have caught sooner, should have seen coming, should have prevented through the simple act of paying better attention.
I’d been paying attention. That was the problem.
I’d been paying attention to everything except the right thing.
I didn’t say that.
Mitch did. Without preamble, the way he did most things that mattered. “You’re going to find him.”
I looked up. Mitch’s boots were still on the bench, his arms crossed, his eyes steady on mine. Not a question. A statement delivered with the flat certainty of a man who had watched me work for four months and had drawn conclusions.
“Yes,” I said.
“And then?”
“I’ll handle it.”
“I know.”
The certainty in it landed somewhere behind my sternum.
Complete. Uncomplicated. The kind of certainty that didn’t come from assessment or probability—it came from Mitch looking at me and deciding, without debate, that I was capable.
The weight of that was its own kind of warmth, and I filed it under a category that was getting crowded.
Then Mitch said, “I want credit for the traitor theory.”
“I’ll put it in the debrief.”
“I want it in writing.”
“I’m not putting Mitch Pruitt’s name in a classified debrief.”
“What if I used a code name?”
“No.”
“The Handsome Consultant.”
“Absolutely not.”
Caleb’s voice came from the kitchen, pleasant and warm. “What about The Asset?”
Mitch pointed. “That’s better.”
“Neither of you are going in the debrief,” I said.
“Then I want Caleb to know I was right.”
“I already know,” Caleb said.
Mitch’s head turned. “How?”
“I’ve been paying attention.”
Mitch looked at me. “He’s been paying attention.”
“I noticed,” I said.
Mitch gestured between us. “You two are unsettling when you do that.”
“Do what?”
“That,” he said. “The knowing things without saying them. It’s not just conversation, it’s like you both live in the same room in your heads.”
I picked up my pen. “That’s just conversation.”
Caleb appeared in the kitchen doorway. Leaned against the frame, dish towel over one shoulder, and said, pleasantly, “We do.”
I looked at him. Caleb was smiling—the kind of smile that lived in his eyes first and reached his mouth second, warm and certain and entirely without performance.
I looked back at my notes.
The warmth did something inconvenient in my chest, spreading outward from somewhere behind my sternum, and I didn’t say anything about it because saying things made them real, and real meant I had to do something about them.
Caleb came back from the kitchen. Leaned down. Pressed a kiss to the side of my jaw, easy and warm, like punctuation. Like: you’re not doing this alone.
His lips were soft. His stubble rough. The contact lasted approximately two seconds and contained more certainty than most things that took longer.
I turned my head. Caught his mouth properly. Brief. Deliberate. My hand found his hip through his flannel, fingers curling into the warm muscle there, and Caleb smiled against my lips before pulling back. His eyes were warm. Hazel, catching the morning light.
Mitch watched this from across the table with the expression of a man experiencing genuine suffering. “I’m right here.”
“I’m aware,” I said.
“I was also right about the traitor.”
“You were.”
Mitch waited. I said nothing else. The wood stove ticked. Caleb moved back to the kitchen, humming something low.
“That’s it?” Mitch said. “You were?”
“Would you like it in writing?”
Mitch’s grin went wide and slow. The kind of grin that said he’d been waiting for this moment and had prepared absolutely nothing for it because he hadn’t expected it to arrive. “Yeah, actually.”
I looked at him for a long beat. His eyes held mine, steady and warm and completely, devastatingly present. I reached over. Tore a corner off the nearest paper. Wrote three words in my clean, block print: Mitch was right.
Slid it across the table.
Mitch picked it up. Stared at it. His expression did the thing it did when something actually got through—the warm and slightly undone look he kept just under the humor, the man underneath the performance deciding he was needed. His thumb traced the edge of the paper. Once. Carefully.
“I’m keeping this,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
He folded it. Put it in his shirt pocket. The gesture was deliberate. Reverent, almost, which from Mitch Pruitt was approximately equivalent to anyone else writing poetry.
Caleb’s voice came from the kitchen. “I want one too.”
“You didn’t have a theory,” I said.
“I had a feeling.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It led to the same place.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Tore off another corner of paper. Wrote: Caleb’s feeling was correct. Slid it toward the kitchen without looking up.
Caleb hummed. The sound was pleased. Warm. I heard the paper fold.
I uncapped my pen. The short list finally went down on paper—names I’d been carrying in my head for seventy-two hours, names that belonged to men I’d trusted, men I’d worked with, men who had stood where these men stood and had chosen something else.
The ink was black. The paper took it without complaint.
Mitch watched from across the table, his gaze deliberate and grounding and exactly what I needed. His eyes were steady. Unhurried. The warmth of a man who had decided that sitting here, watching me work, was exactly where he wanted to be.
Caleb hummed something low in the kitchen. I kept my head down. Worked. Let the warmth be there without explaining it away.
Forty-eight hours.
I had time.