Chapter 20 The Assessment #2
“Why did you join this team?” The question surprises me as much as it seems to surprise him. “You’re new. You could have walked away when you saw the mission parameters.”
Thorne is quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is softer than I expected.
“I have a daughter. Lily. She’s six.” His jaw tightens. “She just finished cancer treatment. Rang the bell the day Ghost activated me.”
My throat constricts. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. She’s in remission. She’s going to be fine.
” He meets my gaze again. “But she thinks I’m a superhero.
Her words. And I need to be worthy of that.
What Phoenix is doing—what your father is helping it do …
” Something hard enters his expression. “That world isn’t safe for her. I’m going to help make it safe.”
I don’t know what to say. This mountain of a man, this silent killer with flat eyes and lethal capability, doing all of it for a six-year-old girl who thinks he’s a superhero.
“Then we make it safe for her,” I say finally.
He nods once. Decisive.
“Get some rest. Tomorrow will be long.” He melts back into the darkness, and I’m left with my canteen and the desert stars and the weight of everyone’s reasons pressing against my chest.
The team disperses slowly.
Fuse and Talia retreat to one of the SUVs, already setting up the communication equipment they’ll need for tomorrow’s command post. Cassie follows, tablet in hand, cross-referencing something with Halo’s data.
Ghost and Brass stand at the edge of the camp, speaking in low voices, planning contingencies I’ll probably never hear.
Whisper has already vanished. I didn’t see him leave. I’m not sure anyone did.
The desert settles as night falls around us. Cooling air carries the scent of sage and distant rain—a storm somewhere over the mountains, too far to touch us but close enough to taste. Stars scatter across the sky, more than I’ve ever seen from DC, more than I knew existed.
I find a flat rock at the edge of the camp and sit, letting the quiet wash over me.
Four days.
Four days ago, I was Director Sarah Vance. Controlled. Competent. Rigid in my adherence to protocol because protocol was the only thing standing between me and my father’s shadow. I walked into Cerberus headquarters with analog files, a desperate plan, and no idea what I was stepping into.
Now I’m sitting on a rock in the Nevada desert, wearing borrowed tactical clothes, waiting to fly through a canyon on a mission that might kill me.
The codes that will save the world—or damn it—are memorized in my head, shared with a man I’ve known less than a week.
A man I married in a Vegas chapel as cover.
A man who held me while I cried and told me I was brave.
A man I’m falling in love with.
The thought doesn’t terrify me the way it should. Maybe because I’ve already faced bigger fears. Maybe because, compared to what we’re doing tomorrow, admitting I have feelings seems almost simple.
Or maybe I’m just too tired to keep lying to myself.
“Room for one more?”
Torque’s voice. I look up to find him approaching, two bottles of water in his hands. He’s finally changed into actual tactical gear, the black fabric fitting his lean frame in ways the truck-stop pajama pants definitely did not.
“Always.”
He settles beside me on the rock. Close enough that our shoulders brush. He hands me one of the water bottles.
For a long moment, neither of us speaks. The desert breathes around us. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howls and falls silent.
“We might die tomorrow.” His voice is quiet. Matter-of-fact.
“We might,” I agree.
“Does that scare you?”
I consider the question. Really consider it.
“Yes,” I admit. “But not the way it would have a week ago. Then, I was scared of dying because I hadn’t done enough.
Hadn’t proven I wasn’t my father. Hadn’t accomplished something that would make my existence mean something.
” I pause. “Now I’m scared of dying because I want to live. There’s a difference.”
He turns to look at me. The starlight catches the planes of his face, softening the edges.
“There is,” he says. “A big one.”
“What about you? You spent years not caring if you died. Does that scare you now?”
He’s quiet for a long moment. His hand finds mine in the darkness, fingers threading through mine with a familiarity that makes my chest ache.
“I’ve stopped running,” he says finally.
“That’s—new. For a long time, every mission was just another chance to outfly the silence.
Another way to fill the gap where Jake’s voice should have been.
” His thumb traces across my knuckles. “But somewhere in the last four days—somewhere between the chapel, the motel, and the drive through the desert—the silence stopped being the enemy.”
“What changed?”
“You.” Simple. True. “You filled it with something else. Something that doesn’t hurt.”
I don’t have words for what moves through me. Don’t have language for the way my heart expands and contracts simultaneously, too full and too fragile at once.
“Then we come back,” I say. “Both of us. We fly through that canyon, and we execute the Hard Lock, and we burn Phoenix to the ground. And then we come back.”
“Definitely maybe?”
“Definitely maybe.” The laugh that escapes me is wet around the edges.
He lifts our joined hands. Presses his lips to my knuckles. Soft. Reverent.
“Get some sleep, Sarah. I’ll need you sharp tomorrow.”
“You too.”
Neither of us moves.
The stars wheel overhead. The desert holds its breath. And for this moment, suspended between today’s trauma and tomorrow’s impossible mission, we just exist.
Eventually—minutes or hours, I can’t tell—we rise.
Walk back toward the camp. He squeezes my hand once before releasing it, and we separate toward different sleeping quarters because we’re still professional, still mission-focused, still trying to maintain some boundary between what we are and what the team needs us to be.
But when I lie down on the narrow cot in the supply tent, the warmth of his hand lingers in mine. His voice echoes: You filled it with something else.
Tomorrow, we fly into hell.
Tonight, I sleep better than I have in years.
Because “definitely maybe” isn’t uncertainty anymore.
It’s faith.