Chapter Forty-Four
Brooklyn
The forest feels different now.
Not safer, not even louder but aware.
The air is thin and sharp, tasting like frozen pine resin. My breath comes out in pale clouds that hang in front of me before fading into the cold. Each step is careful, deliberatly placed exactly where Caleb steps before me.
My legs ache, heavy from exhaustion and cold. The pain in my abdomen is dull now, like something deep inside me is resting but not recovered. My body is brittle, but my mind is held together by a single, unshakable truth:
Jackson is here.
I don’t look back at him. I don’t need to. I feel him behind me the way I feel my own pulse. His presence is steady, solid, grounding, like gravity finally remembered me.
Caleb moves quietly, navigating the trees as if he’s learned this forest’s memory. He pauses every so often, not questioning, not uncertain, just listening. Reading. Translating the world around us.
The silence is still wrong.
It isn’t stillness.
It’s waiting.
"Thank you," comes Jackson's voice from behind me, but I know his aren't meant for me, but Caleb.
Caleb nods, just barely, but from my position, I see it. Then, I hear him murmur, "No need to thank me. She needed help. I'm glad I was there."
He doesn't elaborate, and he doesn't need to. His meaning is clear.
*If I hadn't been there. She wouldn't be here.*
"Who are you? Why are you out here?" Jackson asks next, and I can't blame him for being cautious under the circumstances.
"That's not a story for this moment, but my name is Caleb." Caleb responds, turning just enough for the wind to catch his quiet words.
Silence consumes us once more and that's when I hear distant movement, soft, intentional, off to our right.
Not footsteps or weight shifts. Someone used to blending in with the silence around him.
I turn and find Lincoln, barely visible but I'd recognize the brothers statures anywhere.
And to the left there's a faint, carefully patterned sound, like snow being pressed but never crushed.
There, I find Dallas.
And behind us, farther back, but in a steady line of cover, someone heavier, slower on purpose, anchoring the formation.
And I know it must be Boston.
They’re here, not beside us but around us providing a net drawn tight, but quiet.
They are searching as a unit, not as brothers in panic. They are moving like men who know how to close in on something dangerous without startling it.
Jackson’s voice comes softly behind me, low enough that only I hear, “Linc is flanking twenty meters out. Dal is shadowing him. Bos is holding the back line.”
His tone is calm, but I know the restraint inside it. I know the tension beneath the steady breath. His voice is the same voice he uses when he is seconds away from pulling a gun.
I swallow. “Do they know?”
He doesn’t ask what I mean and answers, “Yes.”
They know I’m here and that I’m alive and they know he is close.
The cold wind curls through the trees, stirring branches overhead. The sky is a pale, washed-out gray that looks more like absence than light. Snow falls in tiny grains, not flakes but like sifted salt.
Caleb stops again and I stop too.
Jackson’s hand lifts slightly behind me, an invisible signal to the others. I don’t see them move this time, but I don't turn to look, instead I feel the forest shift. Their positions adjusting, closing in tighter.
Caleb kneels near a cluster of fallen branches. They look natural at first, broken, tangled, scattered. But when he touches one, the bark splits too smoothly. Realization dawns on it, it was cut by a blade, not by the storm or time.
“This is shaped,” Caleb murmurs.
Jackson crouches beside him, jaw tightening as he studies the pattern.
“He’s guiding movement,” Caleb continues. “He doesn’t chase. He herds.”
A chill works through my spine that's not from cold. “He did this while I was with him.”
Jackson doesn’t look at me, but I see the inhale. Saw it in my peripheral vision and it's the kind of inhale that hurts. The kind that would become violence if he weren’t holding himself together for my sake.
Caleb stands again. “We don’t follow his path,” he says.
Jackson nods once. “We break it.”
He moves up beside Caleb, not in front of him, taking control but meeting him as an equal. They exchange a look, it's brief but weighted.
An acknowledgment.
Trust formed under fire.
Caleb shifts west, choosing terrain that looks rougher, less passable. Which is exactly why it’s safer.
I follow, my feet sinking through the crusted snow, each step becoming colder and heavier. The coat and sweater Caleb gave me helps, but my fingers burn, then go numb. I press them to my chest, protected by the thick fabric.
Jackson notices immediately. “Slow it down,” he says softly, but his words aren't meant for me, but for Caleb.
Caleb adjusts pace without question.
We continue moving, the trees grow denser, branches crowd lower and the wind stops reaching the ground. The silence thickens again, but this time it feels closer, tighter, like a held breath.
I can feel his gaze pressing between my shoulder blades and know that he is watching.
Caleb feels it too, his shoulders tightening ever so slightly, not out of fear but calculation.
Dallas’s voice carries from the left, barely above a whisper, shaped for trained ears, “Movement. Forty yards. Not animal.”
Lincoln responds from the right, equally low, “Wind pattern shifted. Updraft from the east—we’re being watched from elevation.”
Boston’s voice comes last, from farther back, slow and steady, “Whoever it is knows we know.”
Jackson inhales, slow and deep, grounding himself.
No one draws weapons.
Not yet.
The forest continues to listen as we move forward in silence, the elevation increasing, the slope gentle but constant.
My breath shortens and the ache in my lower abdomen returns, its's not sharp but insistent. Caleb notices the change in my breathing before Jackson does. “We stop,” Caleb says quietly.
I shake my head, too quickly. “No. No, I can keep going.”
Jackson steps around me, facing me now. His expression is not one of panic or fear, but something much heavier.
“Brooklyn,” he murmurs, voice barely audible. “Stopping means we protect you better. Not worse.”
I nod slowly, leaning back against a tree. The bark is rough, cold, real, helping ground me as I breathe through my nose in an attempt to steady myself.
Caleb scans the trees.
Lincoln appears first just as silent as the cold. He doesn’t approach us directly. Instead, he positions himself slightly ahead, watching the treeline, his face s an expressionless mask, but his eyes burn.
Dallas emerges second, from the opposite angle. He doesn’t speak as he sets his stance wide, adjusting gloves, making sure that he's ready for anything.
Boston arrives last, his presence steady and grounding. He stands with his shoulders angled outward, creating coverage behind us.
No one speaks but no one has to. It's almost as though they've done this before.
Which doesn't make sense.
*Isn't Jackson the only one who's a cop?* I can't help but wonder, even at such a time as this. *Or is it just that are able to read one another that well, that they are just that in sync with one another?*
Jackson kneels in front of me, not touching, but close enough for his warmth to reach me.
I desperately need to feel him, his strength, his warmth, but I know there's a reason he's holding back.
His eyes lock onto mine. “We walk out of here together,” he says, his voice doesn’t tremble but mine does when I reply with, “Okay.”
Caleb lifts his head, sharp and everyone goes still. It's as though even the wind stops.
He is close, there's no footsteps, or sounds of breathing, no sound at all, but I can *feel* his presence.
Caleb’s voice is barely air as he says, “He’s repositioning.”
Jackson’s hand slides to the gun. Lincoln shifts his stance, his hand going to the rifle hanging at his side and Dallas angles to cover, while Boston anchors.
The hunter, my captor, does not strike. No, instead he waits, watching to see which of us moves first.
All the while, the forest holds its breath.
And we hold ours.
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