* * * *
I was halfway down the concrete stairwell of the safe house when Sterling appeared at the landing below, one shoulderbraced against the wall, arms crossed, positioned so I’d have to physically move him to get past.
Not an accidental encounter. A deliberate block, Sterling-style—no words, no preamble, just his attention and the absolute certainty that he was exactly where he meant to be.
I stopped two steps above him, one hand on the metal rail bolted to the wall. The stairwell was narrow and dim, paint peeling off the walls in long strips, a bare bulb two flights up casting everything in flat yellow light. Behind Sterling, the door to the street stood half-open, morning traffic noise filtering up the stairwell in bursts.
We stood like that for a long moment—me on the stairs, Sterling on the landing, neither of us willing to be the first to speak. Finally, Sterling straightened, uncrossed his arms, and looked at me with the same focus I’d seen him bring to a dozen different crisis points.
“You’re throwing up every morning,” he said, his voice flat and unhurried. “You’ve lost—“ he paused, eyes moving over my frame with careful assessment, “—fifteen pounds, minimum. You’re sleeping in chairs and on comm boards at odd hours, and yesterday you snapped at Reyes’s second-in-command over a logistics call that didn’t warrant a raised voice, let alone the one you gave him.”
He delivered it like he was reading from a list—no embellishment, no theater, just the facts as he’d calculated them. The kind of assessment I’d seen him make a hundred times before, on operations where knowing exactly what was happening meant the difference between coming home and not.
“I’m fine,” I said, the words coming out rougher than I’d intended. “Just tired. Mission’s running long, sleep schedule’s off. Nothing a hot meal and eight hours won’t fix.”
Sterling looked at me the way Sterling looked at things he had already decided were not fine—no argument, no raisedeyebrow, just a flat, patient wait that carried more weight than shouting ever could.
I held the stare for three heartbeats, then looked away first. Not because I was conceding the point—though I was—but because the pressure behind my sternum made it hard to meet anyone’s eyes for more than a few seconds at a time.
Sterling nodded once, like I’d confirmed something he already knew, then reached into his pocket for his phone. He pulled up a contact, hit dial, and switched to speaker without asking my permission—another Sterling specialty, making decisions about other people’s privacy with the absolute certainty that he was right.
The call connected after three rings, Burke’s voice coming through the line unhurried and familiar. “Callahan.”
“Sterling,” Sterling said. “You on speaker with Cruz.”
A pause—Burke registering the information, making whatever calculations he needed to make. “Copy that,” he said. “What’s up?”
In the background, I could hear the sounds of the ranch—a door closing, something that might have been Danny’s voice at a distance, the soft cry of a baby that cut off almost as soon as it started.
“We’re checking in,” Sterling said. “Everything good at the ranch?”
Another pause, slightly longer. “Everything’s fine,” Burke said. “Weather’s holding, winter prep’s on schedule. Rawley’s got the east pasture fenced for the new colts. Danny’s keeping up with the tech side of things.” He paused, then added, “Jackson’s been a little under the weather, but nothing serious. Jasper’s handling it.”
I went completely still, the weight behind my sternum expanding to fill my entire chest. I heard the shape of what Burke wasn’t saying—it was in the pause before “under theweather,” in the way his voice went slightly careful around the edges, the way a man sounds when he’s been told what he can and cannot pass along.
Jackson was sick. Not hurt, not injured, but sick—the kind that warranted a pause and careful phrasing and Jasper’s “handling it” rather than Decker or someone else checking him over.
The kind that might, if I was reading between the lines correctly, explain the silence.
I didn’t push. Had no standing to push, and Burke would know better than to tell me anything Jackson hadn’t cleared. I just stood on the stairwell landing with my hand on the rail and my eyes on the narrow window cut into the concrete wall, and tried to breathe around the sudden pressure in my chest.
Sterling took the phone off speaker and stepped to the far end of the landing, giving Burke a quick rundown of the team’s timeline and when we’d be back stateside.
I turned to the window and watched the street below—foot traffic, a vendor cart selling something that steamed in the cool air, a kid on a bicycle weaving between parked cars with the confidence of someone who’d done it a thousand times before.
Jackson was sick. Not answering his phone. Not returning texts. Not doing any of the things that had become normal between us over the past eight months.
Not doing anything except being sick, apparently, in ways that warranted Jasper’s attention and Burke’s careful phrasing.
Behind me, Sterling finished his call with a quiet “copy that” and a “see you in two weeks” that made something in my chest unlock by a fraction. Two weeks. Fourteen days. A timeline I could count down, a target I could hit, a problem I could solve by being in the right place at the right time.
When Sterling stepped back to my side, his face gave away nothing—just the careful blankness I’d seen him use ona hundred different operations, when the situation had gone sideways and the only thing keeping everyone alive was his absolute certainty that they would make it through.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, his voice level.
“I’m fine,” I said, the third time I’d said it and the least convincing version yet.
Sterling didn’t call me a liar. He just said, “You throw up every morning. You can’t keep food down. You’ve lost weight, and every time I turn around you’re asleep somewhere you shouldn’t be. That is not fine.”
