Chapter 5. The Supply Log #4
It was a practical statement. It felt like something else.
Lila seemed to feel it too. Her gaze held his for one long second, and in that second the attraction that had been moving beneath fear and respect rose closer to the surface.
Not heat for heat’s sake. Not a distraction.
Something quieter and more dangerous. The knowledge that trust, once given, created its own gravity.
Nate wanted to touch her hand, her shoulder, the place on her wrist where he had seen her fingers find a pulse that was not there.
He wanted to ask what she carried when the calm went quiet.
He wanted to tell her that when she had stood between Reeve and Sophie, he had understood courage in a shape he had spent years underestimating.
He did none of that.
Lila picked up her pack. “Ninety minutes,” she said.
“I’ll wake you at three.”
She nodded and walked toward the sleeping quarters with Juniper at heel, shoulders straight beneath exhaustion. Nate watched until she disappeared through the hall. Then he turned back to the map and the red circle around RRVC-North, because wanting had no place to go except into preparation.
He did not sleep.
At 0427, the rescue base yard was a study in controlled motion under the last dark hour before dawn.
Headlamps moved between vehicles. Rook stood still while Asher checked his harness.
Grimm allowed Nate to inspect each paw, though the dog’s patience had worn thin by the second pad.
Juniper waited beside Lila, warm breath clouding in the cold, her golden coat muted to pewter under the security lights.
Lila looked rested only in the technical sense that she had closed her eyes for an hour; the deeper exhaustion remained, but so did her focus.
She caught Nate looking and lifted an eyebrow as if daring him to ask whether she was sure.
He did not.
Declan gathered the teams beside the vehicles.
“Objective is RRVC-North annex. We locate, document, preserve. We do not chase shadows unless they present immediate threat. Sophie is alive because we followed evidence instead of assumptions. We keep doing that. Team One: Nate, Grimm, Lila, Juniper, and Asher with Rook on exterior air-scent sweep. Team Two: Rowan and Echo on lower drainage outlet with state police support. Cole and Avery document eastern access road damage and possible vehicle tracks but stay out of the annex perimeter unless called. Mara runs command from base. Elena remains on records.”
Mara’s voice came over the yard speaker from inside. “And everyone remembers that if they say something important on an open channel, I will haunt them personally.”
“Motivational as always,” Cole said.
“Effective as always,” Mara returned.
A thin thread of humor moved through the group, brief and necessary.
Then Declan’s face hardened again. “Reeve’s lawyer is already claiming he was targeted by an overzealous rescue unit and a veterinarian with a grudge.
That means whatever we find today has to be cleaner than his lie. Cameras on. Gloves. No shortcuts.”
Nate looked at Lila. She met his gaze with the same steady resolve she had carried since the hospital road.
The deal between them did not need to be repeated aloud.
Terrain and evidence. His lead and her read.
Risk shared because the case demanded it, and because neither of them was willing to pretend the other belonged anywhere else.
They loaded into the lead rescue vehicle as the first gray light began to dilute the sky.
Grimm settled in the rear compartment beside Juniper with a stiff tolerance that looked almost like professional respect.
Nate drove. Lila sat in the passenger seat with her medical-evidence kit across her lap, gloved hands resting on the case.
For the first mile, neither of them spoke.
The road curved out of the base yard, past the sleeping festival grounds, and toward Blackpine, where the trees waited black and wet against the coming dawn.
Halfway to the eastern access road, Mara’s voice came over the encrypted channel.
“Team One, hold before the bridge.”
Nate eased off the accelerator. “What do you have?”
“Trail camera ping. One of the supposedly broken units near the old mining road just came online for six seconds. It uploaded a single frame before dropping again.”
Lila turned toward the dash screen as the image came through.
The frame was grainy, rain-streaked, and pale with infrared distortion, but the old annex road was visible in the background.
So was a figure in a long dark coat standing beside the gate at RRVC-North.
The face was turned away. One hand rested on the chain across the entrance.
On the lapel of the coat, caught by the camera flash, a small silver bird pin gleamed with wings spread.
Nate stopped the vehicle in the middle of the empty road.
Mara’s voice came again, lower now. “Timestamp is four minutes ago.”
Lila looked at the image, then at Nate.
The annex was not empty.
And someone had been waiting for dawn.