Take away everything personal about it, and it was still gut-wrenchingly terrifying.

This was a meticulously planned assault on a United States special operations team on US soil. It didn’t get more dire than that.

Add in the personal aspects, and she could barely breathe.

She’d wanted her baby from the moment she’d realized she was pregnant, and now, after a month of heartache and turmoil, she had a new truth: she wanted Xavier with the same ferocity.

And she could lose him. Tonight. In a matter of minutes. And there was nothing she could do about it. She’d played every card she had already.

Then there was George, who’d been something of a mentor to her along with Roy when she was young, and who’d become a friend in adulthood. If any of them survived this, it would be thanks to George. His cunning. His knowledge. His badass guerilla fighting skills that he’d acquired a lifetime ago in a foreign land, forced to serve in the military by a government that had betrayed his people for hundreds of years.

George was an artist. A carver of totem poles and other Native art—yet there was no monument great enough that could fully honor him.

She swiped at tears that fell without permission. She wanted to blame pregnancy again, but this was straight-up fear. She’d be crying now even if she weren’t pregnant.

She returned to the back room and locked the door that separated the two areas. She stood behind the wall of post office boxes—a grid of cubbyholes, with each rectangle measuring five by four inches. There was a box for each cottage, plus extra for local businesses and renters who wanted a coveted Lake Olympus address. George’s cabin had a box, as did tour operators who held park concession contracts, but were based in Port Angeles.

Audrey scanned the boxes. Jeb’s box—identifiable because “McCutcheon” was printed on a label taped to the back end of the cubbyhole—contained a grocery store mailer, junk mail that couldn’t be avoided even in the most remote of places, and a notice from the US Navy that access to Lake Olympus Road would be cut off as of Monday of this week—four days ago, given that they were now minutes into Friday morning.

The Navy had been required to send these notices in a timely manner to all inholding property owners, but now it occurred to her to wonder, did everyone with a PO Box receive a notice?

She checked the rental boxes for tour operators and felt a surge of adrenaline at seeing the same notice. These groups didn’t have a gate key and wouldn’t be able to access their box until the road opened, but they’d received the same notice as all box renters.