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PROLOGUE

SADIE

A nchorage, Alaska

Four Years Ago

I leave with sixty-three dollars, a cracked phone, and one boot.

I don’t even realize I’m missing the other one until I’m in my Jeep, hands shaking on the wheel, gasping for air like it’s rationed. My cheek is swelling, and my lip’s split open. I keep telling myself that it wasn’t that bad. That he didn’t mean it. That I’ve stayed this long, so maybe I deserve… No.

I glance at my face in the rearview mirror and slam my hands against the steering wheel. Hard. Once, then again. It stings. No. It hurts. But it silences the voice in my head that still wants to scream.

I’m done. This—whatever it is with Brent—is over.

I drive until the gas tank dips below empty, and when the engine coughs and dies, I coast to a stop outside a diner with a sign that reads

Vacancy Upstairs. Café Hiring Below.

Somewhere off the highway between Anchorage and nowhere. I don’t remember making the turn. Don’t remember blinking. But I’m here, and my legs work, so I use them.

The bell over the door jingles when I walk in. Warm light spills onto the floor. It smells like cinnamon and coffee and something deeper—like a place that holds its breath between strangers.

Behind the counter is a woman in her sixties with steel-gray hair twisted into a knot and eyes like she’s seen it all and dares you to lie, anyway. She clocks my split lip, the bruises on my wrist, the way my right foot has a warm boot and the left has a plastic shoe I found under the seat.

“You cook?” she asks.

“I can, but mostly I bake.”

She eyes me. Not like I’m broken. Like she’s measuring. Nodding, she asks, “You got a name?”

“Sadie.”

The corners of her mouth lift. “Maggie.”

And that’s how I meet the woman who saves my life without ever once calling herself a hero.

Maggie doesn’t ask questions. Doesn’t push. She shows me the stairs that lead to the studio apartment above the café and says, “You can stay ‘til you figure it out.”

She has more faith in me than I do in myself. At this point I don’t even know what ‘it’ is. The first night, I cry into the pillow and whisper ‘thank you’ to no one.

The second day, I wake up, get myself dressed and head downstairs to make cinnamon rolls from scratch. I leave them cooling on the counter before dawn. I don’t expect anything.

When I come down an hour later, there’s a note next to the empty tray.

Not bad. Next time, double the filling. The signature reads, Maggie.

The weeks blur into months, and the months into a year.

I bake. I scrub. I learn the register and the rhythms of life here at The Hollow Hearth—which locals drink their coffee black and which ones need two sugars and a shot of whiskey before noon. Maggie teaches by doing. She doesn’t offer praise, but she never hides pride, either.

She tells me stories in pieces. About her husband, gone ten years. About how she bought the café with nothing but a war widow’s pension and a backbone made of steel. About the town, too—Glacier Hollow, nestled against the base of Talon Mountain, where snow hits in October and doesn’t quit until May.

It’s remote. Rugged. The kind of place people come to disappear or begin again. For me, it’s both. I get stronger here.

Brent stops calling after the first month. I block his number, delete his name, erase the photos I was once too scared to look at but too scared to throw away. I start wearing color again. I start laughing again. I start seeing myself not as someone who escaped—but someone who survived.

Maggie teaches me how to shoot a rifle. “Because bears are dumb,” she says, handing me a box of ammo. “And men can be dumber and far more destructive.”

By the time a year passes, I’ve learned how to stock a pantry for winter, how to read a snowstorm in the shape of the clouds, and how to hold my own when a drunken logger gets mouthy. I’m not the same woman who stumbled through the café doors with one boot and shaking hands.

But I still wake up sometimes expecting the floor to crack beneath me.

Maggie never says it, but she knows. She always knows.

When she gets sick, she tells no one until she has no choice. It starts with fatigue. Then the coughing. Then the ER visit that turns into an overnight that turns into something terminal.

Lung cancer. Fast. Mean. The kind that doesn’t care if you’re a fighter.

Maggie never smoked a day in her life.

The town rallies, but Maggie waves off the casseroles and the pity. “I’ve had a good run,” she tells me, sitting in her recliner like it’s a throne. “But you—you’ve got decades left. You gonna spend them hiding or making something that matters?”

I cry then. For the first time in front of her.

She doesn’t hug me. She just puts her hand over mine and squeezes. “I’m leaving the café to you.”

I shake my head. “No, Maggie. I can’t…”

“You already are.” She fixes me with that stare again. The one that sees too much. “You think this place runs without you? You think I gave you a home for nothing? Nah, girl. I picked you.”

I sit beside her until her breathing slows. Until the only sound in the room is the steady tick of the clock.

* * *

The funeral is small. Snow falls lightly as we lower her into the ground beside her husband. Locals huddle in coats, hats in hands, faces drawn. There’s no pastor. Just me, reading the words she left behind on a scrap of paper folded in a flour tin.

“Don’t mourn me. Mourn the ones who waste their lives being scared. I wasn’t one of them.”

When it’s over, I don’t talk to anyone. I don’t go to the potluck in the church basement or the bar down the road where her favorite whiskey sits untouched. I go back to the café… my café.

The door creaks the same way it always has. The lights hum softly overhead. It smells like coffee and cinnamon and ghosts. I lock the door behind me and walk to the kitchen. The apron she always wore is still hanging on the hook by the pantry. I take it down, tie it around my waist. My hands don’t shake this time.

I roll out dough. Measure sugar. Start a new batch from scratch.

I think about the girl I used to be. And the woman I’ve become here. Not because someone saved me—although Maggie certainly did that—but because someone believed I could do more than survive.

I press my palms into the counter and whisper, “I’ll make it count, Maggie. I promise.”

The oven clicks as it heats. Outside, the wind howls, and I no longer flinch.

* * *

ZEKE

The op went smooth. Quick in, quick out—one shot fired, none returned. That’s rare. Rarer still? My gut staying quiet. No alarms blaring beneath my ribs, no static buzzing behind my eyes. Just the steady crunch of boots on gravel, the low murmur of comms in my ear, and the solid weight of my Glock pressed to my thigh.

We exfil at 0200, load into the bird by 0215, and I’m back on American soil before sunrise. Not bad for a Tuesday.

I should feel satisfied. We did good work. Saved a life. Neutralized threats. No civilian casualties. That’s the kind of win commanders jerk off to in their sleep.

But me? I don’t celebrate wins. Not anymore. Not when it all feels the same.

I land early, grab my go-bag, and skip the debrief. I’m not on rotation for another three days and nobody argues when I walk off base. They know me. I’m the guy who doesn’t screw up. The one who always comes back. The one who doesn't talk.

Isla’s probably still asleep. She likes her silk sheets and blackout curtains. Keeps lavender oil on her nightstand, calls it ‘soothing.’ Says I don’t understand how to relax. Says a lot of things when she thinks I’m not listening.

The apartment smells like her perfume when I step inside—floral, heavy, cloying. The kind that sticks to your skin whether or not you want it to.

I drop my keys on the counter, boots still on. The place is too quiet. No music, no TV, just the muffled hum of the A/C. I move down the hall. The bedroom door’s open, and my mind takes in and processes everything in the space of a second.

My training includes assessment and appropriate responses. That works well in combat, not so much in personal domestic relations.

One heel kicked halfway under the bed. Red lace thong on the floor. Shirt—mine—draped over the dresser. The moan that breaks the silence is high and breathy, followed by a voice I know too well.

“God, right there.”

Isla.

Another voice follows, deeper. Confident. Familiar.

“No talking, princess.”

My CO. Commander Talbot.

It takes me a second to move. Not because I’m in shock. I’m not. I’m just trying not to kill him.

My hand flexes at my side. One step forward and I could end it. One pull of the Glock holstered at my back and neither of them would ever speak again. As much as I might want to, I don’t.

I stand there long enough for them to see me. Isla gasps, pulls the sheets up to her chest. Talbot doesn't even flinch. His eyes meet mine, and there’s no guilt in them. Just something colder. Dismissive. Like I was a game they got bored with.

"Zeke," Isla says, voice trembling now. “I thought you were?—”

“Gone?” I say in a cold, flat tone. “I was. You’re welcome.”

Talbot smirks, the bastard. “I always said your timing was spot on, MacAllister.”

I don’t speak… I just walk out.

* * *

The next three days pass like a movie I don’t give a shit about. I tell command I’m done. I was supposed to sign re-enlistment papers. I don’t, and I offer them no explanation. I just fill out the papers to end my Naval career, pack up my life, and put my uniform and everything else that goes with it in the trash. The trident, the ribbons, the framed photos—they all go. Nothing feels like mine anymore. Not the rank. Not the condo. And sure as hell not her.

I head north along the coast, somewhere no one knows my name. The motel outside Seattle is a dump—spotty Wi-Fi, a cracked ice bucket, and a bed that squeaks if I so much as shift. I don’t care. It’s hard to care about anything except the hollow pit in my gut and the dead space where my heart used to be.

I run through my options. I could disappear. I could burn everything down. Killing my former CO and my ex-fiancée crosses my mind, but even for me, that’s a step too far. Rural Montana’s out—too far removed from the life I’ve lived since walking away from the ranch where I was the oldest of four boys. A few defense contractors reach out, offering checks and access, but I’ve had enough of D.C. and the bullshit that comes with it. San Diego’s off the list too—too many ghosts waiting for me there.

So I do nothing. For days, I just sit. Think. Stare at the walls until the silence starts to scream. Then, finally, I open the laptop. Not for news. Not for social media. I don’t need headlines or updates. Just a blank search bar staring back at me.

Jobs for Ex-Military.

Nothing grabs me. Security gig in Denver. Bodyguard detail in Dubai. Consulting for a private firm that used to be Blackwater and now calls itself something sanitized. Pass. All of it.

I’m scrolling aimlessly when I see it, buried under a thread titled Jobs Nobody Wants.

No header. No link.

Just: Sheriff needed—Glacier Hollow, Alaska. No questions asked.

That’s it. No contact info. No salary. No sign-on bonus. Just a challenge hidden in plain sight.

No questions asked.

I stare at it for a long time. Because here’s the thing: I don’t want a job. I want a reason to get the hell out of my own head.

And something about that line—it’s not just bait. It’s a dare.

I click the message. It’s one paragraph. Short and cold. Town of less than two hundred. No other applicants. Old sheriff died last winter. Mayor’s desperate. Nearest real police presence is five hours away.

I read it twice, decide and then I pick up my phone and call the number listed. A woman answers. Tells me if I can get to Anchorage by the end of the week, someone will pick me up. I don’t ask her name. She doesn’t ask mine.

We understand each other.

The next morning, I’m on a one-way flight to nowhere.

And for the first time in months, I feel something close to steady.

I don’t know what’s waiting at the base of Talon Mountain, but I do know this… whatever the hell this is? It’s mine now.