Page 47 of Damian
Morgan
Dawn came too fast.
The cottage was quiet, Ruby still curled beneath the blanket on her bed, but I was already awake, watching the faint light creep across the ceiling. Damian had risen before me, moving with the kind of soundless precision that told me he’d slept with one ear open. When I sat up, he was already dressed, checking his weapon, his shoulders set like stone.
“We’re moving,” he said simply.
I nodded, even though my chest tightened. This had been our home—our fragile little slice of normal—but I knew last night had sealed it. Luthor’s men had found us once. They’d find us again.
Ruby’s door opened, and she stepped out in jeans and a hoodie, hair braided, backpack slung over one shoulder. No complaints, no questions. Just that solemn look she wore when she understood more than she let on.
“Where?” she asked.
“Somewhere safer,” Damian answered. “Cyclone locked down a location. Not far, but hidden.”
Outside, the team was already moving—Oliver loading bags into the SUV, Gage walking the perimeter, Cyclone hunched over his laptop in the passenger seat, muttering into his comms. Everything precise, everything measured.
Damian guided me and Ruby to the vehicle with a hand at my back, steady and warm. The gravel crunched under our boots, the morning chill biting, but the moment we slid into the SUV, I felt the cocoon of the team close around us.
“Any movement overnight?” Damian asked.
“Van never came back,” Gage reported, climbing in after us. “But they’ll know they lost their men. We don’t get a second chance.”
The engine roared to life. I glanced back once, through the foggy glass, at the cottage shrinking into the trees. A lump formed in my throat—every laugh with Ruby, every late-night breadcrumb I’d left on that kitchen table, every whispered prayer that no one would find us. All of it was behind me, and none of it was safe anymore. I hid my computer under the floor in my attic.
Damian’s hand found mine, lacing our fingers together where Ruby couldn’t see. He didn’t look at me, didn’t need to. The pressure of his grip said it all:We’re not losing you. Not now. Not ever.
The SUV bumped onto the main road. Cyclone glanced up from his screen, eyes sharp. “Safehouse is primed. We’ll be ghosts before Luthor even knows where to look.”
I leaned back against the seat, Ruby’s shoulder pressed to mine, Damian’s hand still wrapped around mine. The fear was still there, curling in my stomach—but for the first time, I felt like maybe, just maybe, we weren’t running anymore.
Maybe we were fighting.
63
Morgan
The safehouse didn’t look like much from the outside. A weathered cabin tucked into a cluster of pines, half-hidden by the bend of the road. Inside, though, it was all reinforced locks, blackout curtains, and the faint hum of Cyclone’s gear taking over the dining table.
Ruby disappeared down the short hall, earbuds in, pretending she wasn’t listening. She was good at that. Sixteen and sharp enough to know when to keep her head down. sometimes I would see her whispering to one of the men like she was giving them information.
I lingered near the kitchen, trying not to hover while Cyclone worked. His laptop screen glowed pale against his face, lines of code spilling so fast it may as well have been another language. Every so often, he muttered something—“not right… no, that’s intentional…”—then tapped harder, like the keys had personally offended him.
Damian stood behind him, arms folded, watching. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the screen once.
Finally, Cyclone exhaled, the sound sharp. “They weren’t just probing.”
My chest tightened. “What do you mean?”
He turned the laptop toward Damian. Even from where I stood, I could see it—two streams of data layered over each other, one mine, the other an echo.
“They mirrored her breadcrumbs,” Cyclone explained, his voice flat but laced with anger. “Every file she sent me, every coordinate she tagged—they duplicated the path. Let her do the work, then watched where it went.”
Cold spread through me. “So… Luthor knows everything I found?”
“Not everything,” Cyclone said, pointing to a section highlighted in red. “You hid better than you think. Half the trail dead-ends in my firewall. But the other half…” His jaw tightened. “They have fragments. Enough to know you were feeding us. Enough to know you matter.”
Damian’s expression didn’t change, but the air around him did. Darker. He leaned closer to the screen. “Where’s the tracer end?”
