“Rhett… her phone has an encrypted messaging app installed.”
I press my palm to the wall, suddenly dizzy, as if the cabin tilted.
Rhett says something I can’t hear clearly—his voice is too low, too controlled—but I catch the edge of anger in it.
Silas again, harder this time: “There’s a pinned location. Coordinates. On her phone. Dated weeks ago.”
Weeks.
My throat tightens.
I want to walk in. I want to blurt out the truth. I want to sayI’m not the enemy, I’m just desperate, please don’t look at me like I’m a threat.
But the problem is… Iamhiding something. And I can’t tell them. Not yet. Not when I don’t even know who to trust outside these walls. Not when my sister’s life might depend on the wrong information staying locked in my mouth.
Silas’s voice cuts through again: “How does a civilian get a pin drop on Haven 7 weeks before she shows up?”
Silence.
Then Rhett—rougher, like something is cracking in him. “She’s not lying.”
Silas doesn’t soften. “You don’t know that.”
My eyes sting, and it pisses me off because I hate crying. I hate being the girl with tears. But I also hate this—standing in a hallway listening to the man I… I don’t even know what to call it—want? trust? crave?—get questioned about whether I’m real.
Because if Rhett looks at me and sees a threat… then maybe I really am alone again.
I step back from the wall and force my legs to move, one quiet step at a time, until I’m around the corner and out of earshot. My heart pounds like I ran a mile. I press a hand to my chest and try to breathe.
Okay. Think. Don’t spiral. If I stay, they’ll confront me. If they confront me, I either tell them everything… or I lie to their faces. And I can’t do either without risking Mia. So I do the one thing I’ve always done when fear corners me.
I run.
Except this time, it’s not because I’m weak. It’s because I have a plan. And because I can’t let Rhett see the truth in my eyes before I’m ready to explain it. I walk quickly down the hall toward Rhett’s exit, trying to look normal. Like I’m not about to make a spectacularly terrible decision.
There’s nobody in the corridor—most of the men are still in the meeting room, and Harper and Kayley are in the common area with the babies. The compound is busy in the way busy hides things.
I head toward Rhett’s cabin once I’m outside. I slip into his cabin like a shadow and lock the door behind me, hands shaking. My bag is where I left it—by the couch. I shove my phone, charger, and wallet inside. I don’t take much. I don’t have time. I don’t want to leave evidence of panic. Because if Rhett comes back and sees the bed untouched and my things missing, he’ll know immediately.
He’ll chase me. And that thought makes my chest ache in a way that’s almost unbearable. Because the stupid thing is… I don’t want him to chase me.
I want him to trust me. I want him to look at me like I’m not a problem to solve. I want?—
No. Stop.
I sling my bag over my shoulder and stand in the living room for one second, staring at the couch where he slept. The place where he looked too big for the cushions and still stayed there anyway because he wanted me to feel safe.
My throat tightens. “I thought we had something,” I whisper into the empty cabin, like the walls might answer. Then I move. I wait until I hear distant laughter from the lodge—Chase’s voice, Boyd’s low rumble—and I slip out the back, cutting through the trees the way I came in.
The mountain air hits my lungs like ice. I don’t stop. I walk fast, then faster, then I’m practically jogging down the packed snow trail toward the road. And as I go, my mind replays the truth I can’t say out loud. The reason I came here isn’t just because Mia left a note.
It’s because my father did.
My dad—Frank Lincoln—was a quiet man with tired eyes and a laugh that came easy until it didn’t. He served. Not in the flashy, movie kind of way. In the real way. The kind that leaves you with scars no one sees.
When I was a kid, he told me bedtime stories that sounded like adventure. When I got older, I realized they weren’t stories at all. They were memories he softened for me so I wouldn’t be afraid of the world.
He never talked about his team much. But once—only once—when I was in college and called him crying because a guy followed me to my car, he got very still.