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Paul sighed. “I’ll give you two a minute.” He left the room, closing the door behind him as Noah turned back to Ruth.

She licked her lips, her voice barely above a whisper. “I thought I was dying.”

Noah swallowed hard.So did I.Instead, he leaned in, his voice steady. “Not on my watch.”

Her weak smile widened slightly. She squeezed his hand, barely there—but there.

Noah exhaled. She was fighting.

Thirty-Two

Ruth was still weak, but for the first time in days, she was stable.

Paul had checked her vitals almost constantly, monitoring her oxygen, her pulse, the color slowly returning to her skin. The vitamin K had worked. Noah hadn’t let go of her hand. She was still exhausted, drifting in and out of sleep, but every time she stirred, every time her fingers weakly curled around his, it sent a rush of relief through him. She wasn’t out of the woods yet, but she was no longer dying in front of them.

Paul sat across the room, arms crossed, watching him. Noah ignored him for as long as he could.

Then—“So…”

Noah sighed. “Don’t start.”

Paul smirked slightly. “You really should tell her.”

Noah finally looked at him. “She just came back from the edge of death, Paul. Now is not the time.”

Paul leaned forward. “You don’t get to wait forever. She won’t stay in the dark about all of this much longer.”

Noah clenched his jaw. “She still doesn’t remember what she saw. If she saw anything. What if pushing her makes it worse?”

Paul studied him for a long moment. Then, with a sigh, he leaned back. “Fine. But the second she asks, you can’t lie to her.”

Noah didn’t answer. Because he wouldn’t lie. But telling her everything? That was something else entirely.

Paul left the room to make some food. Noah stayed, but his focus shifted. With one hand still wrapped around Ruth’s, his other hand moved to his laptop. The thumb drive. It was still there, still waiting, still hiding the answers they needed. He had been working on breaking the encryption between checking on Ruth, and now, he was closer than ever.

Noah’s fingers flew over the keys, bypassing layer after layer of security. Whoever had locked this drive had done it with serious expertise. But they hadn’t counted on someone like him getting his hands on it.

Almost there. Another sequence. A breach in the firewall. A final override. And then, the files opened.

Noah’s heart slammed into his ribs. The screen filled with rows of names, transaction records, hidden memos. This was bigger than he thought.

Noah scanned the files, his jaw tightening. Fairchild was beyond dirty. He owned Verdant Horizons—the largest contracting company in South Dakota. Every roadway project, every public building, every infrastructure deal ran through him. The contracts were rigged. The money was laundered through fake development projects. And Hilton, the man who gave Noah the drive, was the one keeping the books.

Noah clicked into another file. A ledger full of bribes. Politicians. Judges. Law enforcement. Everyone had a price. And then, the last file. Two lists:Transactional Leverage, Leverage Failure.

Noah scanned the names… journalists, activists, people who had gotten too close.

His own name wasn’t there. But there were two names that jumped out at him. Two that made his pulse pound—Thomas Calloway, the U.S. Attorney for the State of South Dakota, and the other, Ruth’s boss, Dylan Grant.

He was an afterthought for Fairchild. The random agent who met with Hilton. A thought that happened after Hilton passed on the thumb drive. And Ruth? Noah searched the file, his stomach twisting. Her name wasn’t there. None of it made sense.

Why did they try to kill Ruth? Why was she even involved? Noah rubbed his temple. The only person who could answer that was Ruth herself.

* * *

A soft sigh.

Noah’s presence shifted beside her, and Ruth felt the warmth of his grip tighten just slightly around her hand. She stirred, her fingers weakly flexing, the lingering fog of sleep pressing against her thoughts.