“Elias Voss.”
The name fell across the firing line like a live grenade.
Riley did not move.
For several seconds, neither did anyone else.
The Arizona wind whispered over the gravel, tugging at loose straps and lifting a thin veil of dust around the Barrett’s bipod.
Far across the valley, the steel silhouette waited at 3,600 meters, meaningless now compared with the name Senior Chief Grant Row had just spoken.
Cole Maddox lowered the spotting glass.
Maya Reyes unfolded her arms.
Riley’s face had gone completely still.
But inside her, a door she had spent seven years holding shut had just been kicked open.
Elias.
Rain striking a mud-brick wall.
A radio hissing in the dark.
Blood on pale stone.
A hand pushing a brass compass into hers.
And then an explosion so violent it had swallowed the entire mountainside.
Riley forced the memories away.
“Don’t,” she said.
It was barely louder than the wind.
Row stared at her wrist.
The faded tattoo was simple: a compass rose with one broken point.
“Elias had the same mark.”
Riley stood slowly.
“He was my brother.”
The firing line went silent again.
Row’s expression changed.
Not surprise.
Pain.
Maya saw it immediately.
“You knew him,” she said.
Row looked at Riley.
“I served with him.”
Riley gave a small shake of her head.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Her voice sharpened.
“You didn’t.”
Row’s jaw tightened.
“I was in Kunar Province in 2019.”
Riley’s eyes narrowed.
“So were three thousand other people.”
“I was at Black Ridge.”
That did it.
Riley stepped toward him.
Maddox instinctively straightened, suddenly aware that the quiet Navy woman he had mocked thirty seconds earlier looked capable of breaking the Senior Chief’s nose.
Maya moved slightly closer.
Not interfering.
Just ready.
Riley stopped inches from Row.
“Black Ridge doesn’t exist.”
“It did.”
“Not officially.”
“Neither did Elias’s team.”
Riley stared into his eyes.
There was no triumph there.
No satisfaction in knowing classified information.
Only exhaustion.
Old exhaustion.
The kind carried by men who had spent years waking up to the same memory.
Riley’s voice dropped.
“Where were you?”
Row swallowed.
“Below the western saddle.”
Her face changed again.
The western saddle.
Only six people knew that position.
Five were dead.
The sixth—
Riley looked at him differently.
“You were Overwatch Two.”
Row closed his eyes for half a second.
“Yes.”
Maddox looked between them.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Neither answered.
Maya did.
“A mission you don’t have clearance to ask about.”
Maddox shut his mouth.
Riley turned away from Row and looked toward the distant target.
For years she had imagined meeting someone who knew what happened that night.
In those fantasies, she demanded answers.
Sometimes she screamed.
Sometimes she hit him.
Sometimes he told her Elias had died instantly, and that lie somehow made everything easier.
But standing in the Arizona heat, Riley felt none of the things she had expected.
She only felt cold.
“You saw him die?” she asked.
Row said nothing.
Riley turned back.
“I asked you a question.”
Row looked toward Maya, then toward the other shooters.
“This isn’t the place.”
Riley laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“You said his name here.”
Row lowered his voice.
“Because I saw the tattoo.”
“And?”
“And because Elias told me that if anything happened to him, one day I might see that compass again.”
Riley’s throat tightened.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“He said his sister would come looking.”
“I stopped looking years ago.”
Row studied her.
“No.
You stopped asking.”
That one landed.
Hard.
Riley looked away.
Senior Chief Row reached into the breast pocket of his uniform.
Maya tensed.
He removed a small weathered object wrapped in clear plastic.
Riley saw the shape before he opened it.
Her breath caught.
A brass compass.
Dented along one edge.
Blackened by fire.
The glass cracked across the face.
The needle frozen pointing northwest.
Riley forgot how to breathe.
Elias had carried that compass from the time he was seventeen.
Their father had given it to him before his first deployment.
After their father died, Elias had worn it on every mission.
Riley had asked for it after Afghanistan.
The official report said no personal effects had been recovered.
Her eyes lifted slowly toward Row.
“Where did you get that?”
Row did not answer quickly enough.
Riley lunged.
Maya caught her arm.
Maddox stepped forward, then wisely stopped.
“You had it?”
Riley shouted.
“Seven years?”
“Riley—”
“Seven years!”
“I couldn’t contact you.”
“You could have mailed it!”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because the people who killed your brother were looking for it.”
Everything stopped.
Even Riley.
Row held the compass between them.
“They still are.”
The desert suddenly felt too open.
Too exposed.
Maya’s gaze swept the surrounding ridgelines.
“What’s inside it?”
Row looked at her.
“I don’t know.”
Maddox frowned.
“Then why would anybody care?”
“Because Elias died protecting it.”
Riley stared at the compass.
“No.”
Row’s eyes hardened.
“You want the truth?
Then stop protecting the version you’ve been living with.”
She stepped closer again.
“Tell me.”
Row looked toward the target.
“Make the shot.”
Riley almost thought she had misheard him.
“What?”
“Make the shot.”
Her expression darkened.
“You think this is a game?”
“No.”
“Then talk.”
“I will.”
“When?”
“When I know you’re still the person Elias said you were.”
Riley looked at him with open disbelief.
Behind them, Maddox muttered, “This is insane.”
Row ignored him.
“The woman Elias described could read terrain better than instruments.
She could make a correction after watching dust fall off a rooftop.
She could tell when two wind layers were fighting each other.”
Riley’s gaze flickered toward the valley.
Row continued.
“He said you never shot where the target was.”
A memory surfaced.
Elias sitting across from her in a crowded base cafeteria, stealing her coffee.
Never shoot where the target is, Ry.
Shoot where the world is taking it.
Riley blinked.
“He told you that?”
“He told me a lot of things.”
The anger remained.
But beneath it, something else had begun.
Fear.
Not of Row.
Of hope.
Hope was dangerous when the dead were involved.
Riley looked down at the Barrett.
Then at the target 3,600 meters away.
Maya stepped beside her.
“You don’t owe anybody a demonstration.”
Riley nodded.
“I know.”
“Then why are you getting back down?”
Riley lowered herself behind the rifle.
“Because now I’m angry.”
Maddox almost smiled.
Almost.
Row stepped back.
Riley placed her cheek against the stock.
The world narrowed.
Scope.
Reticle.
Heat.
Distance.
Breath.
The target shimmered on the horizon.
At that range, the bullet would travel for several seconds.
Several seconds in which gravity, air, wind, spin, temperature, and simple bad luck could ruin everything.
The shooters before her had treated the valley like a single environment.
It wasn’t.
Riley had been watching three separate wind systems.
Near the firing line, the air moved steadily from the southwest.
Midway across the valley, heated ground pushed turbulence upward, creating a boiling layer that distorted the mirage.
Farther out, near the target ridge, dust from an old service road drifted in the opposite direction.
But that still wasn’t the whole problem.
Riley had noticed something else.
The target was not where everyone thought it was.
Not exactly.
The desert heat had bent the apparent position enough to make conventional visual corrections deceptive.
The shooters had been adjusting toward an illusion.
Riley breathed out.
She remembered Afghanistan.
Black Ridge.
2,700 meters.
A hostage being dragged between two stone buildings.
Elias whispering into the radio.
You have one window.
She had made that shot.
The official record credited an airstrike minutes later.
The man Riley killed had never officially existed.
Neither had the shot.
But Elias knew.
He had watched it through glass.
And he had laughed afterward.
Not because he found death amusing.
Because Riley had just done something impossible and immediately complained that her shoulder hurt.
Her eyes stung.
She blinked once.
Focus.
Maya watched her.
“So what did they miss?”
Riley answered without lifting her face.
“They’re reading the wind.”
Maddox frowned.
“That’s the job.”
“No.”
Riley adjusted elevation.
“They’re reading this wind.”
She indicated the firing line.
“Not that wind.”
She shifted again.
“And they’re trusting the mirage.”
Maddox looked downrange.
“The mirage tells you wind.”
“Usually.”
“Usually?”
“It’s lying.”
That irritated him.
“A mirage can’t lie.”
Riley’s mouth almost curved.
“Neither can a scope.
People still misunderstand both.”
Maya looked toward the target.
“What are you seeing?”
“Three layers.
Opposing drift beyond two kilometers.
Thermal lift in the center.”
Row crouched behind a spotting scope.
“And the target?”
Riley paused.
“Appears eleven inches left of where it really is.”
Maddox stared at her.
“At thirty-six hundred meters?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t know that.”
Riley settled her finger.
“No.”
She breathed in.
“I can see it.”
The firing line went quiet.
Riley’s heartbeat slowed.
The rifle rested beneath her like something alive.
Elias’s voice returned again.
Not as memory this time.
As instinct.
Wait for the valley.
A gust moved past them.
Riley did nothing.
Five seconds.
Ten.
Dust curled near the two-kilometer marker.
Still she waited.
Maddox shifted impatiently.
Riley ignored him.
Then the nearest wind dropped.
Not entirely.
Just enough.
At the same moment, the distant dust changed direction.
The three invisible rivers of air aligned for less than two seconds.
Riley exhaled.
Pressed.
The Barrett thundered.
The recoil drove into her shoulder.
The sound rolled through the valley.
Everyone immediately looked toward the distant steel.
Nothing.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Maddox leaned harder into his glass.
Five.
Then—
Clang.
Faint.
Almost delicate.
But unmistakable.
Maddox jerked away from the spotting scope.
“No.”
Nobody moved.
A second observer checked the electronic sensor.
The screen flashed.
IMPACT.
Center-left.
Inside the scoring zone.
For a moment, there was no reaction at all.
The result was too absurd.
Then someone whispered, “Holy—”
Maya’s eyebrows rose.
Maddox looked back through the optic as if the target might change its mind.
Riley lifted her cheek from the stock.
No smile.
No celebration.
She looked at Senior Chief Row.
“Talk.”
Row stared at her.
Then slowly nodded.
They moved into a portable operations building fifty yards behind the range.
Maya came with them.
Riley insisted.
Row did not argue.
Maddox tried to follow.
Maya stopped at the doorway.
“No.”
“You’re serious?”
“Very.”
“I just watched her make a shot nobody—”
The door closed in his face.
Inside, the air conditioner rattled weakly.
A folding table occupied the center of the room.
Maps hung on one wall.
A humming refrigerator stood in the corner beside stacked ammunition cases.
Row placed the damaged compass on the table.
Riley did not touch it.
Not yet.
“Start from Black Ridge.”
Row pulled out a chair.
Nobody sat.
“Elias’s team was tracking a courier connected to a private intelligence network.”
Riley frowned.
“Taliban?”
“No.”
“CIA?”
“No.”
“Contractors?”
“Some.”
He hesitated.
“That was the problem.
The network crossed boundaries.
Military.
Intelligence.
Private defense.
Local assets.
People working for governments without their governments knowing.”
Maya’s expression tightened.
“What were they selling?”
“Access.”
“To what?”
“Anything.”
Row looked at Riley.
“Names. movement schedules. extraction routes. informant identities.”
Riley felt cold again.
“Black Ridge.”
“Elias discovered someone had compromised the mission before his team arrived.
Their location had been sold.”
Riley’s jaw clenched.
“The ambush.”
Row nodded.
“They were waiting.”
“Who betrayed them?”
“We never proved it.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not.”
“You said people are still looking for the compass.”
“They are.”
“Then you know who.”
“No.
We know what they call themselves.”
Maya folded her arms.
“What?”
Row looked at the damaged compass.
“Northstar.”
Riley almost laughed at the coincidence.
The compass.
The tattoo.
Northstar.
Then she saw Row’s face.
“It wasn’t a coincidence,” he said.
“Elias found something.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“A list.”
Riley stared at him.
“What kind of list?”
“Names.”
“How many?”
“We don’t know.”
“American?”
“Yes.”
Maya spoke quietly.
“Military?”
“Yes.”
“Senior?”
Row looked at her.
“Very.”
The room seemed smaller.
Riley finally reached for the compass.
Her fingers shook when they touched the scorched brass.
She hated that they shook.
She turned it over.
The back plate was scratched.
There.
Almost hidden beneath the fire damage.
Two letters.
R.V.
Her initials.
Riley closed her eyes.
For years, she had imagined Elias dying alone.
Now she pictured him carving those letters.
Leaving something for her.
“Why didn’t you open it?”
Row’s answer came immediately.
“I tried.”
She looked up.
“It’s sealed.”
“You said you don’t know what’s inside.”
“I don’t.”
“Then how do you know the list is in there?”
“I didn’t say the list was in there.”
Riley stopped.
Row leaned forward.
“I said Elias died protecting it.”
Maya studied the compass.
“So it’s a key.”
Row nodded.
“Or part of one.”
Riley turned it in her hand.
“Key to what?”
“That’s what Elias never got to tell me.”
Riley looked up sharply.
“Then how did you get it?”
For the first time since entering the room, Row hesitated.
Riley saw it.
“Grant.”
His expression changed when she used his first name.
“Tell me.”
Row looked down.
“I took it from Elias.”
Riley’s fingers closed around the compass.
“After he died?”
Row said nothing.
Maya’s voice became quiet.
“Senior Chief.”
He finally looked at them.
“When I reached him, he was still alive.”
Riley stopped breathing.
The room disappeared.
“What?”
“Barely.”
“No.”
“He was hit twice.
Shrapnel.
Internal bleeding.”
“You said—”
“I never said he died instantly.”
“You let me believe it.”
“I met you ten minutes ago.”
“You knew who I was!”
“I suspected.”
Riley slammed the compass onto the table.
“You knew his family was told he died in the explosion!”
“Yes.”
“But that wasn’t true.”
“No.”
The word nearly broke her.
Riley turned away.
She put both hands on the table.
Her head dropped.
For seven years, she had survived one comforting assumption: Elias had never known the end was coming.
Now that mercy was gone.
“How long?”
Row answered softly.
“Maybe six minutes.”
Riley shut her eyes.
Six minutes.
Long enough to be afraid.
Long enough to feel pain.
Long enough to know no rescue was coming.
“What did he say?”
Row looked at her back.
“Mostly operational details.”
Riley turned.
“What did he say?”
Row’s voice roughened.
“He told me the mission was compromised.
Told me not to trust the extraction order.
Told me to take the compass.”
Riley waited.
“And?”
Row looked directly at her.
“He asked if you had made it out.”
Riley’s eyes filled.
She didn’t wipe them.
“What did you tell him?”
“The truth.
That you were alive.”
A tear slid down her cheek.
Row continued.
“He smiled.”
Riley looked toward the wall because looking at him had become impossible.
“And then?”
“He said, ‘Good.
She’ll finish it.’”
Riley slowly turned back.
“Finish what?”
“I asked him the same thing.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘She’ll know when she sees the mountain.’”
Riley stared.
“The mountain?”
Row nodded.
“That was all.”
Riley looked down at the compass.
For years, the words would have meant nothing.
But now—
Something moved in her memory.
Not Afghanistan.
Earlier.
Childhood.
Elias at sixteen, Riley at eleven.
Their father driving them through northern Montana.
A mountain range rising beneath storm clouds.
Elias handing Riley the brass compass.
Never trust the needle near the old mine, he had joked.
Too much iron in the mountain.
Riley suddenly looked up.
“What date was Black Ridge?”
Row frowned.
“You know the date.”
“Tell me.”
“October seventeenth.”
“What time did Elias die?”
Row’s eyes narrowed.
“About 0210 local.”
Riley picked up the compass.
The frozen needle pointed northwest.
Not north.
Northwest.
She looked at the cracked face.
It had never been broken by the explosion.
She realized that now.
The crack pattern was too clean.
Deliberate.
“Do you have a knife?”
Maya handed her a multitool.
Row watched.
“What are you doing?”
Riley inserted the smallest blade beneath the compass rim.
“Elias hated broken equipment.”
She carefully lifted the glass.
“If this cracked during the blast, he would’ve thrown it away before trusting it with anything important.”
The glass shifted.
A tiny metallic click came from beneath the compass face.
All three froze.
Riley lifted the damaged dial.
Underneath it was a paper-thin black wafer no larger than a fingernail.
Maya whispered, “Data storage.”
Row stared.
“Seven years.”
Riley picked it up.
On the underside was a microscopic engraving.
Not a serial number.
Coordinates.
Maya photographed them and entered the numbers into an offline map terminal.
The screen zoomed.
North America.
United States.
Montana.
Riley’s stomach dropped before the final image loaded.
The coordinates settled over a remote section of the Lewis Range.
Riley knew the place.
She had been there once.
With Elias.
Maya looked at her.
“You recognize it.”
Riley nodded.
“My father owned a cabin near there.”
“Still in the family?”
“It burned down seventeen years ago.”
Row looked at the coordinates.
“And the mountain?”
Riley stared at the screen.
Behind the cabin site rose a narrow granite peak.
Locals called it Widowmaker Mountain.
Elias had called it something else.
Northstar.
Riley whispered the name.
Row went very still.
Then an alarm sounded outside.
Not a range alarm.
A security alarm.
Three short blasts.
Pause.
Three more.
Maya moved instantly to the window.
Men were running toward the firing positions.
Maddox burst through the door.
“You need to see this.”
Maya reached for the radio on her vest.
“What happened?”
“Range control lost camera feeds on the east ridge.”
Row’s face hardened.
“How many?”
“All of them.”
Riley looked toward the window.
The desert shimmered beyond the glass.
“Equipment failure?”
Maddox shook his head.
“Cables were cut.”
Nobody spoke.
Then came a distant crack.
A bullet punched through the window.
The glass exploded inward.
Maya dropped.
Row grabbed Riley and dragged her behind the table.
A second round hit the wall exactly where Riley’s head had been.
Maddox threw himself beside the ammunition cases.
“Shooter!”
Outside, men shouted.
Another crack.
Then another.
Not aimed at the building this time.
Cover fire.
Maya crawled toward the opposite wall.
“Direction?”
Maddox shouted, “East ridge!”
Riley’s eyes went to the black data wafer still pinched between her fingers.
They were not attacking the range.
They were attacking her.
Row understood at the same moment.
“They know.”
Maya looked at him.
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
Riley’s mind raced.
Who had seen the compass?
Who knew Row was here?
Who knew she was here?
Then she remembered something.
At the firing line.
Before her shot.
One man had left.
One of the thirteen shooters.
She had barely noticed.
Tall.
Gray cap.
No unit patch.
He had packed his rifle immediately after missing and walked toward the vehicle lot.
Riley looked at Maddox.
“The shooter before Jensen.
Gray cap.”
Maddox frowned.
“Hale?”
“Where is he?”
“He left.”
“When?”
“Maybe twenty minutes ago.”
Maya’s radio crackled.
A voice shouted through static.
“Vehicle breach!
North gate!
Black SUV moving east!”
Maddox grabbed his rifle.
“I’ll—”
“No,” Riley said.
He looked at her.
“They want us chasing.”
Another round struck the building.
This one low.
Not intended to kill.
Intended to pin them.
Riley looked toward the firing range.
The Barrett was still outside.
So was her single spent casing.
And so was the target.
3,600 meters away.
She suddenly understood.
“Hale wasn’t watching the competition.”
Row stared at her.
“What?”
“He was measuring us.”
“For what?”
Riley looked toward the mountain ridge.
“For the shot.”
The attacker had positioned himself at distance.
Not 3,600 meters.
Closer.
Maybe 1,500.
Maybe 1,800.
He had observed thirteen elite shooters struggle in impossible conditions.
Then Riley had shown him exactly how she read the valley.
Maya understood.
“You exposed your corrections.”
“Yes.”
Maddox looked furious.
“So you taught the bastard how to shoot us?”
Riley shook her head.
“No.”
She listened to the wind.
The building creaked.
Dust scraped across the broken window frame.
Then she smiled.
It was a small smile.
Cold.
“He thinks I did.”
Riley crawled toward the rear door.
Maya caught her sleeve.
“Where are you going?”
“To borrow Maddox’s rifle.”
Maddox blinked.
“My rifle?”
“Unless you’d rather keep hiding behind the refrigerator.”
He stared at her.
Then shoved the weapon toward her.
Riley checked it.
Different platform.
Different optic.
Different zero.
Bad conditions.
Unknown range.
Limited time.
Maddox saw the problem.
“You’ve never fired that rifle.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know the dope.”
“No.”
“You don’t know the exact range.”
“No.”
He looked at her as if she were insane.
Riley peered through a narrow gap in the damaged wall.
Far across the east ridge, heat shimmered over broken rock.
No visible shooter.
But one patch of mirage was wrong.
A tiny distortion.
Something interrupting the airflow.
A rifle barrel.
Maybe.
Riley’s thumb brushed her compass tattoo.
Row whispered, “Riley.”
She ignored him.
Her breathing slowed.
The entire world compressed into angles and wind.
The hostile shooter had made one mistake.
He had studied her first shot.
He believed the valley behaved the same way twice.
It didn’t.
The thermal layer was weakening as afternoon heat shifted.
The far wind had rotated.
And the shooter—
Riley saw it.
A faint flash.
Optic glass.
“There.”
She adjusted.
Maddox looked through binoculars.
“I don’t see anything.”
“You don’t need to.”
“Range?”
“Sixteen-forty.”
“Guess?”
“Sixteen-thirty-eight.”
He stared at her.
“That specific?”
Riley settled behind the rifle.
“Stop talking.”
Maddox stopped talking.
The shooter fired.
His round struck two feet above Riley’s position.
He had used her earlier correction.
Exactly as she expected.
Riley breathed out.
Pressed.
The rifle cracked.
Less than three seconds later, a figure on the ridge jerked backward and disappeared behind the rocks.
Silence.
Maddox slowly lowered the binoculars.
“Hit.”
Riley remained behind the optic.
“No.”
“No?”
“That wasn’t Hale.”
Row turned.
“How do you know?”
“Wrong build.”
Maya’s radio erupted.
“East shooter down!
Repeat, shooter down!
We have movement near the north access road!”
Riley stood.
“Hale’s leaving.”
Maya’s expression hardened.
“Then he was never the shooter.”
“No.”
Riley looked at the black wafer in her hand.
“He was here to confirm the compass.”
Row suddenly went pale.
“What?”
Riley saw it.
The thought behind his eyes.
“What?”
Row reached into his pocket.
Nothing.
Checked another.
Then another.
“Grant?”
His face went white.
“My phone.”
Maya stared.
“What about it?”
“It’s gone.”
Riley’s stomach tightened.
“Since when?”
Row looked toward the shattered window.
“I had it at the firing line.”
Riley understood instantly.
The compass had never been the real objective.
The coordinates were.
And Row had photographed the compass years ago.
Possibly stored files.
Possibly messages.
Possibly enough fragments for someone patient enough to assemble the puzzle.
Outside, engines roared.
A black SUV appeared briefly beyond the perimeter fence, accelerating into the desert.
Security vehicles followed.
But Riley wasn’t watching the SUV.
She was looking at the map terminal.
At Montana.
At Widowmaker Mountain.
At the place Elias had told her she would understand.
Then Maya’s radio crackled once more.
A security officer’s voice came through.
Confused.
“Commander, we found Senior Chief Row’s phone.”
Row grabbed the radio.
“Where?”
A pause.
Then:
“Inside the downed shooter’s vest.”
Everyone stared at Row.
Maya spoke first.
“That’s impossible.”
The voice continued.
“There’s something else.”
Riley’s grip tightened around the data wafer.
“What?”
The officer hesitated.
“The shooter is carrying military identification.”
Row’s face hardened.
“Whose?”
Another pause.
Longer this time.
Then the answer came.
“Elias Voss.”
Riley stopped breathing.
Nobody moved.
The desert wind pushed through the broken window.
Maya stared at Riley.
Maddox looked as if he had forgotten every word he knew.
Row whispered, “No.”
Riley’s heart began pounding so hard she could hear it.
“That’s not possible.”
The radio hissed.
Then the security officer spoke again.
“Ma’am… there’s a photograph in the ID.”
Riley’s voice barely worked.
“Does it match?”
Silence.
Then:
“Yes.”
Riley grabbed the radio.
“Show me his face.”
“Ma’am?”
“Turn him over and show me his face!”
A few seconds of confused movement followed.
Then the officer said something Riley would remember for the rest of her life.
“He’s gone.”
Row snatched the radio.
“What do you mean gone?”
“He was right here.”
Shouting erupted over the channel.
Boots running.
Someone yelling about tracks.
Another voice calling for medical personnel.
Then—
Gunfire.
The transmission died.
Riley stared at the silent radio.
On the table, the map still displayed Montana.
The coordinate marker blinked over the mountain.
Northstar.
Then the computer screen flickered.
Once.
Twice.
The map disappeared.
Blackness replaced it.
A line of white text appeared.
Maya stepped closer.
“What is that?”
Riley read the words.
Her blood turned cold.
HELLO, LITTLE SISTER.
A second line appeared.
YOU STILL SHOOT TOO FAST.
Riley’s eyes widened.
Only one person had ever said that to her.
Elias.
Then the final message appeared.
DON’T TRUST ROW.
Behind Riley, there was a metallic click.
The unmistakable sound of a pistol being cocked.
Riley slowly turned.
Senior Chief Grant Row was aiming his weapon directly at her.
…If you want to know what happened next, please type “YES” and like for more.
Source: Stories of Destiny · Huyen Huyen
