She knelt beside him, afraid to touch him, as if wishes and wanting could keep him alive and reaching for him might be the curse that expelled his final breath.

But he was already gone.

She slid beside him, pulled his shoulders into her lap.

Guilt and self-loathing chased each other around her head, taking her back to the night before, to the warning she’d given him about a trap, to his decision that regardless, the operation was go. Protest had gurgled up her throat then, nausea mixed with desperation compelling her to argue, to convince him he had to convince headquarters to look at the bigger picture and postpone the hit, but she’d clenched her jaw to keep the words from forming. She couldn’t press him in front of the team and had known it’d do no good to argue with him in private, either.

If Nick had a fault, it was loyalty, so she had consigned herself to confronting whatever fate had to offer, and hadn’t spoken.

Hadn’t spoken, hadn’t spoken, hadn’t spoken.

She rocked forward and back, forward and back.

Didn’t matter if he would have listened or not. She hadn’t tried.

A part of her split and calved, ice shelf shearing off into the sea.

On the barren cliff behind, there were no tears, only cold.

She smoothed his hair, closed his eyes, wiped the blood off his face, pulled herself free, and lowered his head to the floor.

She checked his ears, his neck, his chest.

The earpiece was missing, as was the receiver unit, and it took a few minutes to find them, and a few minutes more to find his weapon and kit. He’d stashed it all and dragged his body as far away as he could before he’d gone under, his final moments spent trying to protect his team from whoever came looking for ways to trace them.

He’d been a foot soldier in a machine that didn’t deserve him.

She picked up the rifle, shouldered his gear.

Her feet moved her toward the window with a will of their own.

She zeroed in on the last coordinates she’d given Aaron.

He hadn’t had a clean line of sight, hadn’t confirmed the kill.

Patience rewarded her with movement.

Shadows danced, her brain reacted, and her finger kissed the trigger. Thunder rolled out from beneath her cheek. Red spattered against the curtain.

Another report rang out, and self-defense kicked in.

She retreated behind the wall, shoved the rifle into its custom-built case, strapped it to her back, stepped over Nick on her way into the hall, and started down the way she’d come. There’d be a time for grief, a lifetime for self-recrimination, but no matter how much blame she laid at her own feet, she wasn’t so gluttonous for punishment that she forgot where true responsibility belonged.

—Information withheld.

—Missing pieces.