Page 62 of When the Silence Breaks

“Have you got something against the CIA?” she asked.

He finally shook off the stupor and took a step back from her, as if she had slapped him. Oh, please ... don’t. Weird that she hated his reaction so much. She shouldn’t care. It shouldn’t matter.

But it did.

Then. Of course. He turned his back on her and walked closer to the lake, leaving her. She wished she was back inside the cabin, and he was outside alone.

“Ryder, please.”

But what was she going to say? Nothing. That’s what. Except an explanation—her original plan, maybe. What was it? She’d been making it up as she went.

He threw a stone into the lake, startling her back to the present. She thought back to the fragile map they’d found with the image of the wing of the downed Sentinel One—it had seared into her mind. And that vial ... just left in the box. None ofthis was what she’d expected when she’d started this venture. Not even close.

Maybe she should share everything—everything—with Ryder. More than he was asking.

“Ryder . . .” His name came out in a whisper.

And he’d heard it. He turned from the lake and trudged over to where she stood by a tree, then looked at her expectantly. That he’d heard her and responded shifted something inside her.

She lifted her shoulders, rallied her courage. “When I came to your little town at the foot of the mountain—Mercy Ridge—I was driven by grief and fury. I had one goal. I was single-minded.”

“You wanted to uncover the truth about your brother’s murder,” he said. Maybe he was simply prompting her to continue.

Right. She’d told him that much.

“The truth ... I want to find something—anything—that could expose the people responsible for his death. Responsible for silencing him. And maybe I was hoping for too much to think I could force the world—the powers that be—to acknowledge what they’d done.” Sarah crossed her arms. “But this was never about revenge. It was always about justice and closure. Maybe even ... redemption, if that makes sense.”

Tears once again burned behind her eyes, and she blinked them away. This wasn’t the time to be that vulnerable, even though she was sharing her heart. She slowly shook her head as she unscrambled her thoughts about finding the vial. Learning about a bioweapon. “But this?”

Her stomach roiled as she stared out over the lake near a cabin that held a closed Army box containing the vial, as if that could protect them if the vial were to break. There’d been no label. No explanation. And the weight, the burden of what this all meant, was almost too much.

“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” Ryder asked. “I mean, in your line of work?”

He’d been patient enough and given her space. He was listening, but she’d drifted back into her own thoughts. She wasn’t supposed to share anything. Ever.

“Once. Just a quiet briefing at Langley about old threats. They never made the news, of course. On weapons designed to not just kill but erase. Experimental pathogens. Ghost projects. No one would ever admit their existence. And I remember thinking ... if news of this sort of thing ever got out—it would bring the country to its knees.”

“And now, here we are,” he said. “Here it is. Practically in our hands. In a box buried beneath the floor. Your grandfather mentioned more vials. Maybe the one in the cabin was the only one to survive. But if there are more remaining at the crash site, I don’t think it’s a good idea to actually find the plane.”

“But your grandfather wouldn’t have survived if the bioweapon had leaked,” she said. That gave her some hope that she could convince Ryder to help her finish this mission. “You thought the same or you wouldn’t have held it in your hand.”

“That’s a fair point.” Ryder stared at her as if he was thinking something but wasn’t prepared to say it.

“So does that mean we can head to where X marks the spot?” she asked.

Raking his hand down his face, he was clearly unprepared to agree to that. “What about your brother? Was he also a federal agent or CIA operative?”

She was in this far. “No. He was who I told you he was.”

“Did he know about you?”

She sucked in a breath between her teeth. “Yeah. We dreamed of being spies when we were kids. Dumb. So dumb. I mean,how could I keep that to myself? But I knew that he would never reveal that secret.”

“It feels weird, like something’s really off, when you consider the fact that he got caught up in a decades-old secret military operation.”

“I agree.” No doubt she was missing important pieces.

“So, what if he wasn’t chasing this,” Ryder said, “but he wasprotectingthe secret that could still kill? Or what if he died because someone knew he was getting close and would learn the truth?”