But then I think about Niko in that flat, then about Vladimir, too young to understand anything properly and old enough for it to matter anyway.
Then, because timing has always enjoyed being cruel, I think about Caiden.
Not because this has anything to do with him. But because five minutes ago I was thinking about Amsterdam. About him asleep beside me, the trip we are meant to take later this year, and all the stupid private things I’ve started letting myself want. Then this letter arrives and reminds me, very efficiently, that life doesn’t care what I’ve allowed myself to want.
That’s the part that gets under my skin.
I had been happy. Really happy, in my own quiet, idiotic way. I was happy enough that the men annoyed me less than usual and missing Caiden had started to feel more inconvenient than painful. Happy enough that I had stopped flinching from the thought of later. Then this arrives, and suddenly all of that feels naïve.
I drag a hand down my face and force myself up. Sitting here doing nothing won’t help Niko. It won’t bring Cassie back, and it definitely won’t make this easier to understand.
I know that I need to answer him, so I take out some paper and write at the table.I’m sorry. I’m thinking of you. I’ll come back as soon as I can.Then I stop there. I don’t ask questions or offer any advice. There’s no nonsense about strength, endurance or any of the other things people say when they don’t know what else to do with grief. Niko doesn’t need any of that from me. He needs the truth and as few wordsas possible.
When I’m done, I fold the page, seal it, and leave it with the outgoing mail for the morning. Then I go back outside.
There’s still work to do. Men to correct, routes to confirm, and reports to finish.
I do all of it. I speak when I need to and I don’t when I don’t. No one notices anything off because I don’t let them.
The exercise will run for another few weeks, and the men will improve because they have no choice. I’ll keep making notes, keep handing out corrections, and keep adjusting expectations. Everything will stay moving because I’llkeep it that way.
TWENTY-ONE
CAIDEN
They pull me into the briefing with no warning, which usually means something has been royally fucked up. The room is windowless, and there are two officers I don’t know well enough to read. I stand where they tell me to stand, with my hands loose at my sides, already shitting a brick.
Then they say Russia.
I blink once, just to confirm I heard correctly.
Temporary reassignment.
Six months.
Effective immediately.
It takes a second for the words to sort themselves into something my brain accepts as real, and when they do, the reaction catches me completely off guard. Relief hits me first, so fast it’s dizzying, followed by something dangerously close to joy.
Not just because it’s Russia, though that would be enough. Because it’shim. Same country. Same sky and the same bit of frozen miserable earth under our feet again, instead of months of emails, phone calls, and me lying awake afterwards feeling like I’ve been haunting my own damn life.
Six months.
I repeat it in my head because it sounds too good to be true the first time. Six months means shared geography,which isn’t the same as shared space, but it’s close enough that my whole body seems to unclench around it anyway. It means I can see him, I can stop picturing him and hoping memory is doing him justice. It means I can look at his face when he says something cutting and unhelpful instead of reading it in twelve flat lines on a screen three days later.
The officers explain the rationale. They say it’s prior experience, familiarity with the region and continuity. I nod where I’m meant to nod, sign where I’m meant to sign, and get through the rest of the briefing on automatic because all the useful bits of me are already halfway to Murmansk.
I pack faster than I ever have before. Kit, papers, and whatever I can throw in a bag without regretting it later. By the time I’m sitting outside on the truck with my kit stacked by my feet and the engine humming underneath me, the cold doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
Murmansk.
Six fucking months.
Ari is still away on exercise. So he won’t know I’m coming. For all of ten seconds, I consider writing to tell him. Then I realise it’s pointless. By the time he gets a chance to get anywhere near an email, he will probably already be back on base.
Another surprise it is then.
The road stretches out in a wet grey in front of us. It’s all mud, frost, and military scenery so ugly it becomes almost abstract if you stare at it long enough. The menaround me doze in the way soldiers always do, folded into themselves at impossible angles.
