She brushed one last kiss over his lips before climbing off his lap. As she settled at his side again and picked up her mug of tea, she said, “You’ve given me something to hope for too.”

Chris sat high in a tree with his binoculars trained on the dock in front of the lodge. He’d been watching the beach for the last hour, waiting for the rain and fog to lift and for the mercs to reveal themselves as twilight set in.

There’d been no discernible movement on the dock or beach all day, but now they were nearing dusk, and with the rainstorm finally abating and the clouds expected to clear, the waxing gibbous moon—they were just days away from full—meant the night would be too bright for covert maneuvers on the water.

If the mercs wanted to use their fishing boat to move people or supplies, they’d need to do it before the clouds dissipated.

The fog thickened again, and Chris lost sight of the dock. He kept the binoculars fixed and waited for the fog to thin, knowing the mercs could take advantage of this cover.

Minutes passed and finally, so did the low cloud. Where the dock met shoreline, the dark shape of a shrub next to one of the waist-high park interpretive signs emerged, but unlike the previous times he’d watched the fog dissipate, now he saw the shrub move.

Once again, he wished their damn radios worked. Without it, he’d have to climb down to tell his team what he saw.

The figure moved slowly, crouched low. For a moment, Chris had to wonder if it could be an animal—this was bear country—and he never got a clear view of the figure as it jetted off into the woods.

But it didn’t head toward the lodge. No, it stayed to the shadows just beyond Chris’s clear line of sight, an uncanny ability to never quite show itself.

If it had been bigger, he’d wonder if it was a sasquatch. This was the Pacific Northwest, after all.

In moments, the figure was gone.

Chris scanned the boat and dock again. Nothing looked out of place. Darkness crept in slowly, the white fog mists taking on shades of gray, each one a pixel darker than the last.

He waited until his replacement climbed the tree to relieve him, then passed on the binoculars after explaining what he’d seen.

Someone had been on the boat, and he was certain the person hadn’t been an enemy tango.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Would you consider…staying here while I search for the team tonight?”

The look Audrey gave Xavier let him know exactly how much she loved that idea. Her words made it even clearer. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”

“Did I sound funny?”

“You promised you wouldn’t leave me alone again.”