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The bag was almost full, but something kept her from zipping it all the way.
In the closet, on the top shelf, the box still waited. She stared at it for a moment before reaching up and pulling it down.
Inside were the remnants of who she used to be. A cracked watch. The clipped lanyard of her old badge. A field knife. She took it out, held it in her hand for the first time in months. The weight was familiar. The grip worn smooth where her thumb used to rest. A part of her remembered how it felt to carry it like an extension of her own body.
Her sleeve slipped back as she moved.
The scar was faint in the overhead light. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t touch it. Just stared for a second too long before pulling the sleeve back into place.
She tucked it into the corner of her checked bag, out of sight but not out of reach, closed the box, and slid it back onto the shelf.
When she zipped the bag closed, it felt heavier than it should have. She sat on the edge of the bed and placed her hands on the fabric, fingers spread. The room was quiet.
But that was how she liked it.
No mess. No noise. No reminders.
Nothing to pull her out of herself.
* * *
The plane beganits descent over Colorado Springs Headquarters for OrdoTech Strategies, her home for the next two weeks. She lifted the window lid just as the sun dipped behind the snow-covered Rockies, staining the clouds in bruised purples and burnt copper. There was light snow, and the glass was cold. Grace looked out the window, her tablet dark on her tray, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Below, the city sprawled in organized lines, low buildings framed by rugged peaks and red earth that glowed strangely soft in the fading light. It didn’t look like Phoenix. It didn’t look like anywhere she had lived, really.
It looked raw. Unpolished.
The kind of place where the sky could swallow you if you weren’t careful.
Fifteen minutes after she got home, she hacked the CIA. They never even detected her. She found Ma’am ten minutes after that. Director Lynne Caspari, Senior CIA Operations Officer Black Tech Division. She had indeed lost a man, and his picture burned into her brain. He was a casualty, and Grace had survived. She’d do this for him, too. Justice. Not revenge.
She stepped off the plane into crisp, thinner air that caught in her lungs like a challenge. Prepared with her dark pea coat, she slipped into it, wrapped a matching scarf around her neck, but left her gloves in the pockets.
Her ride was waiting, a plain sedan, government plates. The driver was efficient, quiet, exactly the type of man who would forget her face the second she stepped out.
They drove west, past blocky industrial parks and shuttered gas stations, past strip malls and chain restaurants, the kind of suburban sprawl that blurred into itself. But in the distance, always, the mountains. Immovable. Watching.
Along the empty lots and drainage ditches, tall dead sunflower stalks still stood, brown and skeletal against the snow, their faces long since stripped of petals but still tilted stubbornly toward the sunless sky.
Her hotel sat just outside the city, tucked near the edge of a bluff where the buildings gave way to trees and open scrub. Clean lines, polished wood floors in the lobby, the faint scent of lemon and old pine cleaner in the air. Someone had set a pot of cut sunflowers at the check-in desk, bright, forced blooms out of season, leaning toward the glass doors like they still believed in spring. The clerk checked her in and handed her a keycard without looking up from his screen.
Room 217. Second floor. Corner unit.
The space was simple. Two beds. Beige walls. A window that looked out over a darkening ridge lined with pines. A small desk. A coffee pot she wouldn’t use, and a connecting door. She set her bag down on the chair and moved to the window, fingers brushing the curtain aside. The silence in the room felt thinner than the air outside. Like it could tear if she breathed wrong.
She unpacked slowly, methodically. Clothes in the dresser. Laptop and hard drive on the desk. Toothbrush lined up exactly with the edge of the sink. She checked the closet for extra hangers, counted three, and used only one. The knife went into her pea coat’s pocket.
She sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing her palms against the coverlet.
Nashir Rahim. Callsign Prophet. Something about that name made her shiver.
She’d read the file. What hadn’t been redacted was clinical enough. Former SEAL, medically discharged, injury sustained during a black operation she had only glimpsed through shell code and buried approvals. The name had come up more than once in field chatter before she was reassigned. The kind of man who left a mark even when no one was allowed to talk about him.
She had met men like him before. Not many, but enough.
Special operator types came in with the same blueprint. Alpha under pressure. Wound too tight, always moving. Command voice in every conversation. Hyper-competent and fully aware of it. Confidence weaponized. The kind of body that looked like it could run on rage and protein powder alone, the kind that was hard-won muscle, and made you feel guilty for even thinking about dessert.
Grace didn’t like unpredictable variables. Men like Nash tended to walk, talk, and breathe them.
She didn’t need him to be pleasant. She just hoped he wasn’t difficult. Or loud. Or the kind of charming that made everyone underestimate him until it was too late.