Chapter 10

chapter

ten

"The search for your sister has been called off."

The words bounced around in Rylan's head as he watched the two sheriff's deputies exit his office. He knew each of those words, knew what they all meant, but strung together in that order, he couldn't comprehend them. He could only sink into the chair behind his desk, feeling as though another earthquake had ripped the floor from under his feet.

Deputy Isabella Delgado paused in the doorway and glanced back at him, her big brown eyes full of regret. "I'm so sorry, Rylan."

A hollow pit opened up in his chest. "So Rhia's just… gone? No body to bury. No—" His voice broke as tears flooded his eyes. "No closure. My parents—we'll never know what happened to her."

The deputy said something over her shoulder to her partner, then stepped back into the room and closed the door. She crossed to him and crouched down next to his chair. "I know no words can bring you comfort right now, Rylan," she said softly and reached out to touch his forearm. "But I want you to know that we did everything we could to find her. It's just… the highway she was last seen on collapsed into the ocean. There was just nothing to search for, but we tried. We had the Coast Guard scouring the area in boats and helicopters; we had rescue divers, and we had SAR teams from all over the country. We didn't leave any stone unturned."

His hand clenched into a fist. "But it wasn't enough."

A heavy silence filled the room, broken only by the distant barks of dogs in their kennels. Isabella's hand tightened slightly on his arm.

"You're right," she admitted. "It wasn't enough because we didn't find Rhiannon. And I'm sorry for that, Rylan. I know that sounds hollow. Words can't express how deeply I feel your loss. I really wanted to find her for you."

He lifted his gaze to hers, and for an instant, just a split second, the grief eased. She was so genuine. So kind. Beautiful inside and out.

Without thinking, he brushed a strand of hair that had escaped from her ponytail behind her ear. She didn't flinch away. Instead, she leaned into his touch, her eyes filled with an emotion he couldn't quite decipher.

Then his phone buzzed against his desk, and he looked down at the caller ID. The grief came roaring back. "My parents. They knew I was meeting with you today."

"They went back to Kentucky?"

"They didn't want to, but Ma had an important doctor's appointment she couldn't miss. She was diagnosed with breast cancer last month. Rhiannon didn't know. We were waiting for her to come home before we told—" His voice cracked. He couldn't finish.

The phone stopped ringing.

Isabella's grip on his forearm tightened reassuringly. "Give yourself some time. You don't have to take that call right now. I can talk to them if you want."

Christ, he wanted nothing more than to lean in and accept the comfort she offered. To let himself crumble and admit that he was teetering on the edge of a grief so profound it terrified him.

He'd already hit rock bottom once in the years right after he lost his arm. If he fell off that cliff again, would he survive it?

Yes.

He had to.

Simple as that.

He couldn't afford to break. He was Rylan Cross—the resilient, compassionate trauma counselor, the rock everyone else braced against when their world was shaken. He couldn't allow the cracks to show, let alone admit that he was on the verge of shattering. Because if he crumbled, what would happen to the fractured pieces of those he held together?

"No," he finally said, using every ounce of his will to mask the crack in his voice. "It has to come from me." With a deep breath, he reached for his phone. The experimental myoelectric prosthetic arm he'd been beta testing for the last few months was almost as good at fine motor skills as his real arm had been, but he couldn't seem to make it grasp the sleek device without fumbling. Every failed attempt frayed his nerves further, but he kept going out of stubborn determination until he finally had it in his hand.

Isabella smiled sadly and set a business card down on his desk before she crossed to the door. "I'll leave you to it, but please don't hesitate to call me if you need anything. Even if it's just to talk."

"Thank you, Deputy Delgado."

"I think we're past those kinds of formalities now." Her smile turned into something softer, more personal, as she glanced back at him over her shoulder. "Call me Izzy."

"Thank you, Izzy." He tried to return the smile but wasn't sure he succeeded.

The door clicked softly closed behind her, leaving him alone with his thoughts and the daunting task of breaking the news to his parents.

His gaze drifted to her card, Isabella "Izzy" Delgado, Deputy Sheriff. She'd written her personal cell number on the back in a pretty, loopy script.

He wished she had stayed.

Sucking in a deep breath, he dialed his parents. The conversation was every bit as heartbreaking as he'd anticipated. They sobbed and howled their grief over the line while he remained stoic, their rock.

Always the rock.

When the call finally ended, he was left drained and numb. He sat in silence for a long time, staring blankly at his desk until the noise inside his head became too loud to bear. He jumped up and strode from the room. He needed something to do. Something else to focus on.

A distraction.

And he found it in the rescue's operations center. Zak and Donovan were in there, which wasn't a surprise. It was where they spent most of their time between training and missions.

Sawyer and his new fiancee, Lucy, were also there. The pair had just survived a harrowing experience, the earthquake having trapped them on the side of Mount Humboldt with some truly disturbed people. They were both still bruised and battered, but the relaxed smiles on their faces, the way Lucy's hand found Sawyer's in a reassuring clasp, showed that they were healing.

Together, they were gathered around the large table in the center of the room, engrossed in hushed conversations and rifling through a stack of documents. At Rylan's entrance, their heads turned as one. Expectant looks swiftly changed to sympathy at his hollow expression.

They already knew.

Of course they did.

Zak was married to Sheriff Ash Rawlings' twin sister, and they were good friends. He knew just about everything that went down in and around town.

Or maybe they all knew because… he, himself, had known. Hadn't he? Three days ago, when another day came to a close with no survivors found, he'd felt it. Like a stone lodged in his chest. The hard, cold certainty that Rhiannon wasn't coming back.

Izzy had only confirmed for him what they all had already known.

"Rylan." Concern was etched deeply into Zak's sharp features. "You don't have to be here."

"I need to…" His voice came out rough, the words scraped from deep in his chest. He trailed off and cleared his throat. "I need work, distraction."

Anything to drown out the silence.

But he didn't tell them that because he was supposed to be the steadfast foundation of their team.

Always the goddamn rock.

Donovan reached over to pat his shoulder in silent support.

Lucy offered him a kind smile, her eyes welling up with empathy. "I'm sorry about your sister, Rylan."

Sawyer slipped an arm around Lucy protectively. "We all are."

He didn't want their sympathy. He wanted normality. A semblance of routine. Something to occupy his mind and keep the encroaching shadows at bay.

He looked down at the documents on the table. "What are we looking at?"

Zak studied him for a moment too long before finally nodding and pulling out a chair for him. "Sawyer was about to brief us on Pierce's background."

Yes, this was exactly what he needed. He could throw all of his focus at finding Pierce St. James and ignore the pain of knowing?—

No.

He couldn't think of Rhia dead at the bottom of the ocean or under a pile of rocks.

Not yet.

He dropped into the offered seat. "Did you find something interesting?"

"Interesting is an understatement." Sawyer gently set Lucy away from him before rolling his chair over to the large desk filled with several computer monitors. His seeing-eye dog, Zelda, was asleep under the desk, and he gave her a quick ear scratch before waking one of the computers. "Okay, so since we kept hitting dead ends in our search for him, I decided to go back and dig into his background…"

"And?" Zak prompted when Sawyer trailed off.

Sawyer turned in his seat and looked toward Zak's voice. He shrugged. "And he's a ghost. He doesn't exist. There was never a Pierce St. James in the army in Iraq when he claims he was there."

Rylan blinked in surprise at that news. "Impossible. There's no way he wasn't there. Or, at least, in combat somewhere. His trauma—he couldn't fake that. It was too real."

"Yeah, I've seen his panic attacks," Zak added. "If he was faking those, he deserves an Oscar."

Sawyer nodded and turned back to his computer. "Exactly what I was thinking. He was in the military, and I know he was injured because we met at the military hospital in Germany right after I lost my sight. So… I broke a few laws and hacked the hospital's records." He pressed a key on his braille keyboard and projected his monitor onto the wall screen.

A military ID appeared. The man in the photograph had the same sharp jaw and focused intensity as Pierce. His dark blonde hair was neatly trimmed, his uniform pristine. Yet there was a lightness to his eyes that didn't exist in the man they knew today, and he didn't have the ragged scars on his throat.

"What the fuck?" Donovan muttered and stood up, moving closer to the screen.

Sawyer motioned toward the ID with a flourish. "Meet Chief Warrant Officer Jameson Pierce. He was an engineer on something called Project Iron Horizon. Can't get any details on that without breaking several more laws. It's highly classified. After his injury, he was sent to the hospital in Germany, where we met." He frowned. "I only ever knew him as Pierce, and I guess I just assumed it was his first name. I never asked for his full name."

"Hey," Lucy said and crossed to him, running a soothing hand over his hair. "You had just lost your sight. You can be forgiven for not asking for details. You had your own trauma to deal with."

He smiled at her and caught her hand, bringing it to his lips before returning his attention to the briefing. "According to official records, Jameson Pierce died in the hospital. His official status with the military is KIA. He disappeared, and Pierce St. James didn't exist until two years later when he was involuntarily admitted into the Milvian Bridge Rehabilitation Center outside Stockton for drug and alcohol dependency. That's when I met up with him again. He had my contact information, and they called me when he was admitted."

Sawyer clicked a button on his keyboard, and another photo appeared, this one a hospital ID. The stark contrast between the vibrant soldier in the first image and the haunted man in the second was jarring. His hair was longer and messier, his face gaunt and drawn. The scars on his neck looked fresh, still angry and reddened, standing out starkly against the pallor of his skin. His eyes, now hardened with pain, were the only recognizable feature.

Rylan leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and stared at the two images on the screen—Jameson Pierce and Pierce St. James. The two faces seemed worlds apart, yet it was the same man.

And, still, neither of them was the Pierce they knew.

"Why would he lie to us? We're his teammates." The edge of anger in Donovan's voice had Rylan glancing over. Donovan always had a quicksilver temper, and he tended to take things too personally.

Rylan sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. "Pierce—Jameson," he corrected himself, "isn't one for sharing. He has a damn fortress built around himself, and even I haven't managed to break past those walls. I've tried to engage him in counseling, but he always deflected, always kept things surface level. I respected that and figured he'd talk when he was ready. Dammit, I should have pushed harder. I should have known he was carrying more than he was letting on."

Zak shook his head. "We all gave him space, Ry. It's what he needed. You're not a mind reader. None of us are."

"But I could have helped him. I know what it's like to carry trauma like that, especially trauma tied to classified missions. You know what that's like, too—how it feels like you can't talk about it. Like no one will understand."

"Yeah, well, he wasn't ready for help. You always say that until someone's ready, we can't do anything but offer support." Zak crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the edge of his desk as he studied the two photos. "And I think you're asking the wrong question, Van. Not why did he lie to us, but why did he feel he needed to?"

"Bet he has info on Project Iron Horizon that someone high up wants," Sawyer said.

"Or wants kept silent," Zak added. "I did enough black ops in my time to recognize the hallmarks of one when I see it."

Sawyer spun back to his computer and pulled his headphones over one ear so he could hear his screen reader as he typed. "I don't think it was a black op, but—wait, hang on. Let me try something…" He trailed off and typed furiously for a moment, then smacked his hand on his desk. "Fuck. I thought that would work. I can't access it. Not without triggering some serious alarms with all the big alphabet-soup agencies. But from what little I've found, it was some kind of weapons program."

"Even better," Donovan muttered. "So someone out there wants him either in their pocket or six feet under. That explains why he's always been a paranoid bastard, always looking over his shoulder."

"It was never just PTSD. It was genuine fear." Restless, Rylan rose to pace the room. The dogs all followed him with their gazes, except for Zelda, who was still snoozing comfortably under Sawyer's desk, with her head now resting on his foot.

Rylan paused by the window overlooking the dense forest surrounding their headquarters. Redwoods swayed in the gentle breeze. It was so calm here. As if the earthquake had never even happened.

Goddammit, why couldn't Rhiannon have made it here before the quake hit? She would've been safe here. She would've?—

He realized his hand was shaking and curled it into a fist, pressing it against the cool glass of the window. He closed his eyes and willed himself to breathe, to calm down.

So much for a distraction.

"Rylan?" He heard Lucy's soft voice behind him. "You okay?"

He turned around and managed a smile he didn't truly feel. "Yeah, I'm fine," he said, lying through his teeth. "Just… thinking."

She studied him for a moment, and he felt like those fascinating bi-colored eyes could see right through him.

"Rylan…" she began, her voice trailing off when he turned his back to her.

His prosthetic arm twitched as he clenched his fist tighter, the metallic fingers creaking with the pressure. "I'm okay," he repeated, though his voice lacked conviction.

"I know we don't really know each other, but if you need to talk to someone about your sister?—"

"Let's focus on the man we know isn't dead."

"But you don't know that your sister is dead."

"It's been a week and the highway she was last seen on collapsed into the ocean. If she didn't drown immediately, the possibility of her surviving that long, buried in the rubble, is statistically minuscule." His voice was harsher than intended, and he regretted it immediately when he saw the hurt flashing in Lucy's eyes.

"I'm just trying to help," she said softly and retreated to her fiance's side. Sawyer held out an arm, and she sat on the edge of his chair, resting her head against his shoulder.

They looked good together. Right.

Rylan closed his eyes, his jaw tightening. He knew Lucy meant well, but her words of comfort had sliced through him like a blade. The thought of Rhiannon being gone was still too raw, too fresh.

He couldn't think about it.

He turned back to the screen, ignoring all of the worried stares aimed in his direction. "We know Pierce was long gone by the time the quake hit. Right?"

After a beat of silence, Sawyer cleared his throat. "I did find his name on a flight passenger list out of Portland three days before the quake—which was the last time any of us saw him. Someone used the ticket, but there's no way to know if it was actually him or not. If I were him, I'd have had someone set up to take that flight as a red herring and head in the opposite direction."

"I really don't think he was on that flight," Lucy said with a shake of her head. "Remember the tour group I had on the mountain during the quake? One of the hikers claimed he saw Pierce headed down the trail that morning."

"Chuck." Sawyer spat the guy's name as if it tasted bad. "I don't know if we can take that asshole at his word."

"But he described Raszta. How would he know about Razzy's dreadlocks if he hadn't seen them? It's not a normal look for a dog."

"She has a point," Donovan said. "And there was the video of Pierce and Raszta at that gas station outside of Eureka."

"Yeah, but their system was fucked," Sawyer pointed out. "The timestamp on the video was all wrong… unless he's a time traveler cashing in on 1997's gas prices. As cool as that would be, I highly doubt it. So he could have been there weeks before the quake. Or days. Or hours. Or minutes. We just don't know."

"All right," Zak said, his voice firm and authoritative as he took control of the meeting. "We need to figure out our next steps. Pierce… Jameson… whatever his name is… he may be a broody bastard, but we all know he's a good guy. He only left because he didn't want us caught up in whatever mess was following him."

Sawyer leaned back in his seat and scrubbed his hands through his hair, making it stand up on end. "So… are you saying we need to stop looking for him?"

"Fuck no." Donovan's outburst drew everyone's attention. His hands balled into tight fists at his side. "That man is our brother. Doesn't matter what name he goes by. He's part of Redwood Coast Rescue, and we don't abandon our own."

Zak nodded in agreement. "Sawyer, dig up whatever you can about Project Iron Horizon. I know it's classified, but maybe there's a backdoor we can use to get more intel without setting off alarms."

Sawyer smirked. "Always a backdoor. I'll find it." He turned in his seat to look in Zak's direction. "But you might want to reach out to your mercenary friends again. Something tells me they'll be able to get the intel faster."

Zak winced and dragged a hand around the back of his neck.

Rylan knew from their therapy sessions that Zak hated contacting the team that rescued him from Afghanistan. Not because he was ungrateful or he disliked them, but because every contact brought back the horrific memories of his captivity. Memories he had worked hard to leave behind.

"I… can't face them again," Zak said finally, his voice rough around the edges as he studied his prosthetic leg, a physical reminder of the hell he'd survived. "Not so soon after the last time. Seeing them fucked with my head."

They'd already called in HORNET a few weeks ago to rescue Pierce and Cal Holden from a cult. Which, now that Rylan thought about it, seemed to have set off this whole chain of events. Pierce had been even more withdrawn after his rescue, but Rylan had just figured it was because those fuckers had tortured him with electroshock therapy. He'd planned to give Pierce some time to recuperate, then approach him about treatment. That kind of experience was enough to fuck with anyone's head—not to mention one as full of demons as Pierce's.

But what if his withdrawal had more to do with his past than what the cult had done to him? What if something at the Hope's Embrace compound had awakened old ghosts?

A sick feeling curled in the pit of Rylan's stomach. In hindsight, Pierce's behavior now seemed glaringly obvious. The brooding silences he'd always displayed had grown heavier, more intense. He'd pulled back from everyone, even from Raszta.

"Guys," Rylan said, drawing everyone's attention back to him. "I think... I think Pierce's past caught up with him at Hope's Embrace. He saw or heard something up there that made him leave. Do we still have all the research we did on them?"

Everyone looked at Sawyer. He held up his hands. "I don't. I gave everything I had to Alexis and Ellie. They're doing a podcast about their sister and the cult."

There was a chime from Sawyer's computer, and he swiveled around to face it, shoving his headphones on as he started typing again. His fingers flew over the keys at an impressive speed, and Rylan found himself holding his breath as he waited for whatever information Sawyer was going to dig up this time.

"Fuck me," Sawyer muttered darkly under his breath.

"What is it?" Zak asked as he leaned in closer over Sawyer's desk, trying to decipher the sea of code and encrypted messages flowing across the screen.

Sawyer held up a finger, signaling for silence. His fingers were a blur of movement against the keyboard, and after a tense moment of silence, he finally pulled off his headphones and ran an agitated hand through his unruly hair. "There was a data dump on the dark web. Half of it is encrypted so tight it'd take me weeks to crack it, but what I can read… it isn't good."

Rylan felt his heart pound against his rib cage. "It's about Pierce, isn't it?"

Sawyer nodded grimly. "Project Iron Horizon was building a seismic weapon."