Chapter 4:
Ash and Ambition — What We Used to Be
The fire had burned down to its embers, a soft orange pulse in the early morning dark. Crickets had quieted, giving way to the breathless stillness that comes just before the sun thinks about rising. The desert air held a chill that clung to skin, but under the blanket, Baz was warm.
Her back pressed lightly into Silas’s chest, the rhythm of his breathing steady but too controlled. She could tell he wasn’t asleep — not fully. The kind of half-sleep soldiers learn when silence might mean danger.
Her fingers brushed against his under the blanket, a small tether in a world always threatening to unravel.
“Are you awake?” she whispered, barely audible over the crackling of the dying fire.
A long pause. Long enough, she almost believed he’d stayed silent on purpose.
Then, softly:
“I’m never not.”
She let out a quiet exhale, somewhere between a sigh and a smile.
“I was hoping you’d lie to me,” she said.
“I could.”
“But you won’t.”
“No.”
“Still stubborn.”
“Still impossible,” he replied, the faintest warmth in his voice.
The coyness faded quickly. The silence that returned wasn’t awkward — it was heavy, mutual, and known. The kind of silence that comes from two people carrying too much history and not enough excuses.
Baz stared up at the stars, still pinned across the sky like bullet holes through velvet.
“You ever wonder what we’d be if we weren’t… this?” she asked, unsure where the sentence even ended.
Silas shifted slightly behind her, adjusting so her head nestled just under his chin.
“Like if we were normal?”
She smirked at the word.
“No such thing. Just… something quieter. A porch, maybe. A dog too big for the couch. Arguments about coffee filters instead of body counts.”
He chuckled softly. “You’d still win every argument.”
“Damn right, I would.”
She felt the laugh rumble in his chest behind her. For a second, just one, it felt like peace.
Then it passed.
“The note’s still in your coat, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“You haven’t stopped thinking about the number.”
“No.”
She nodded against him. “Seventeen hours, forty-two minutes. You think it’s a countdown?”
“I think it’s a sentence.”
They didn’t speak again for a while. Just listened to the pop of cooling embers and the hush of a world not quite ready to wake up.
Finally, Baz whispered, “We’re not those people, are we? The porch. The dog. The quiet.”
Silas didn’t answer.
But his arm tightened around her — slow, deliberate, sure.
And it was answer enough.
Eventually, Baz’s breathing evened out. Silas stayed awake a while longer, watching the sky shift from black to the faintest shade of blue, like the world exhaling. The fire died to ash.
When sleep finally took him, it was thin, fragile, but real.
The kind you take when you know it won’t last.
Silas woke with a start — not from a sound, but from the absence of one.
The warmth at his side was gone. The blanket had fallen away. The embers from the fire were cold now, just gray memory and soft smoke. The sky had bloomed into dawn — all low oranges and tired blues, the kind of light that makes everything feel both sacred and unfinished.
He reached for the sidearm beside his bedroll before he was fully upright, adrenaline dragging him to his feet like an old friend with bad timing.
“Baz?” he called, low but sharp.
No answer.
He stepped away from the campsite, boots crunching softly over the coarse desert sand, every muscle pulled tight as wire. His eyes scanned the horizon, the edges of scrub and brush, the dunes beyond.
Then — music.
A sudden wall of distorted guitars and guttural drums bled into the air from behind a rise in the landscape. Heavy metal — fast, chaotic, brutal — and oddly grounding.
He crested the small hill, gun lowered but still drawn.
And there she was.
Banu Abbasi.
Alive, focused, utterly at ease.
She moved in slow arcs, arms slicing the air with precision, balance, grace — every motion in deliberate contrast to the savage blast of music pulsing from her phone perched on a nearby rock. The heavy metal raged while her body flowed through tai chi forms like water curling around stone.
Silas stood there, caught in the contradiction.
He watched her shift weight from one leg to the other, hands tracing patterns that had no sharp edges — her breath visible in the cool morning, steady as prayer. Even in combat boots and a wrinkled T-shirt, she looked like a dancer in a world that didn’t deserve poetry.
He slid the gun back into its holster.
She didn’t look over, but she knew he was there. She always knew.
“You’re up,” she said between movements.
“You left without a word,” he said, walking closer.
“You needed sleep,” she said simply, then added with a smirk, “Didn’t figure you’d wake up ready to storm a hill.”
“You play Slayer this loud every morning?”
“Only on days I need to remember I’m alive,” she said. “Which is most of them.”
Silas rolled his neck, cracking the stiffness from sleep, then stepped beside her. He mirrored her next move — a slow rotation of the arms, a shift of stance, a quiet breath. His movements were clunky at first. Too stiff. Too reactive. But his body remembered.
He closed his eyes.
Breathe in. Step. Breathe out. Turn.
The chaos of the music faded into the periphery, just a texture now — something feral underneath something calm.
His limbs loosened. The tension in his jaw eased. Each motion was slow, circular, unhurried — not fighting, not chasing, just being.
He’d forgotten this. How the stillness could move. How movement could carry weight away from the bones.
“I used to practice this with Mama K,” he said quietly, not breaking rhythm. “Before the badge. Before everything.”
“She taught you well,” Baz replied, glancing over. “You move like someone who’s been still too long.”
Their silhouettes danced in unison against the rising sun — two ghosts remembering the shape of their bodies.
And for that moment — that fragile, breathing moment — the war inside them paused.
Mac stood at the window, nursing the last inch of black coffee in a chipped mug that read World’s Okayest Detective. The sky outside was turning the color of regret — pale, smoky, unsure. The kind of morning that held its breath before the trouble arrived.
Files littered his table like leaves after a storm. Ink-streaked notes filled every margin, some scrawled half-legibly on napkins and receipts. His knuckles ached. Not from age — from use. Too many hours gripping pens, scratching thoughts into paper like it might save somebody.
It hadn’t yet.
He took the last bitter sip and grimaced.
“Still tastes like ash and ambition,” he muttered.
He set the mug down and dropped to the floor.
Push-up position.
One.
Two.
Three.
By twelve, his arms trembled. By twenty, they burned. He stopped at twenty-seven — not from failure, but from the clarity of remembered pain. There was a time this was easy. A time he could do fifty without breaking rhythm. But that was before the bourbon mornings. Before the short nights and shorter tempers. Before the case that broke him — the one this was starting to look a lot like.
He pushed off the floor and sat back, breathing heavy, sweat already cooling on his neck.
Silas and Baz…
They’d gone through hell. Made it back. Mostly. But he saw it in their eyes — the way they moved around each other like familiar ghosts. He admired them. Envied them, even. But they weren’t ready for what was coming.
So Mac had to be.
For them.
For himself.
This time… this time had to mean something.
He stood and stepped into the back room — once a study, now more like a forgotten armory.
The old gun case groaned when he opened it. Dust rose like a held breath finally exhaled.
Inside: a .357 revolver, a worn Colt .45, a long knife he hadn’t touched since ’03. A faded photo taped to the lid — four people who didn’t make it home. He touched the edge of the frame, just once.
He checked the weapons methodically — cleaned the barrel, ran his fingers down the grip, tested the weight. Each click and snap was a ritual, a memory, a confession.
Not for show. Not for bravado.
Just readiness.
Clarity costs something, he thought. And it’s time I started paying.
He walked into the kitchen, set the revolver down, and opened a cabinet above the fridge. Pulled out a bottle of Wild Turkey. Opened the drawer beneath the sink — flask of rye. Moved aside the cookie tin on top of the freezer — third stash.
He didn’t hesitate.
One by one, each bottle met the sink. Glug. Pause. Glug. The smell was sharp — a memory clinging to the air like a last protest.
He let it fill the room, then turned on the tap. Watched it swirl and vanish.
“Clear head. Steady hands,” he said aloud, voice low. “Let’s see what kind of man I’ve still got left in me.”
He wiped his hands on a towel and returned to the table.
Time to work.
The diner sat at the edge of nowhere — a squat, sun-bleached building crouched beside the highway like it was waiting to be forgotten. The neon sign buzzed half-heartedly, the “E” in COFFEE flickering like a bad conscience.
Inside, the air was thick with the smell of burnt bacon, old grease, and the kind of coffee that made your stomach remember what you drank last night.
Mac sat in the far corner booth, the one with crooked blinds and a view of nothing but flat land and a horizon that never came closer. He nursed his second cup — black, bitter, and functional. No cream. No sugar. Just like the morning.
The door jingled, and they walked in.
Silas and Baz.
No badge. No uniform. No pretense.
They were dressed for business, but not the kind that came with clipboards or official protocols. Just clean lines, heavy boots, and eyes that scanned every inch of the room without looking like they were trying. Warriors heading into battle. No declarations, no speeches — just the quiet edge of people who knew what needed doing.
Baz led, as always. Her movements were precise, but loose. Like a coiled spring that hadn’t decided if it needed to snap. Silas walked behind her, hands in the pockets of a worn field jacket, jaw tight, face unreadable.
Mac gave a slight nod as they slid into the booth across from him.
He didn’t offer greetings.
Didn’t need to.
The waitress appeared, set down two mugs without being asked, and topped off Mac’s. She didn’t say a word. She’d worked there long enough to know when to stay invisible.
They drank in silence for a moment. Baz stirred her cup even though it was black. Silas stared into his like it might offer answers.
Finally, Mac broke it.
“You get my message?”
Baz nodded. “We got it.”
“And?”
“Choir director’s hiding something,” Silas said. “Said there was no rehearsal that night, but her eyes said otherwise.”
“She’s protecting someone,” Baz added. “Or scared of something.”
Mac leaned back, watching them both.
“You bring anything else?”
Baz reached into her coat and slid the envelope across the table. The second note. The photograph.
Mac didn’t open it. He didn’t need to.
“I poured out the whiskey this morning,” he said, eyes on the window. “All of it.”
Silas raised an eyebrow. “Thought you’d never part with that rotgut.”
“I want to be clear for this,” Mac replied. “Clearer than I’ve ever been.”
Baz said nothing. But her face softened — just a flicker.
“You think this is the one?” Silas asked.
“I don’t know,” Mac said. “But I know it’s not one we can afford to screw up. And I know what happens if you two slip back into who you used to be. This thing — whatever it is — it wants that. Wants the worst version of us.”
“We’re not the same,” Baz said. Quiet. Cold.
Mac looked at her, and for a second, he saw it — the shadow under the strength, the ache under the armor.
“Maybe not. But if we lose ourselves in this, there’s no coming back. Not this time.”
The waitress returned, dropped a plate of toast on the table, and vanished again.
Mac picked up a slice, tore it in half, and said, “We pay now. Or we pay later. I’d rather settle the debt while we still know our own names.”
Silas finished his coffee. Stood. Baz followed.
“We ready?” she asked.
Mac looked at them both. Then nodded.
“As we’ll ever be.”
They left a few bills on the table, stepped back into the sunlight, and headed toward the only place that still held the echoes of a missing girl and a question no one wanted answered.
The church was waiting.
Mac adjusted his coat against the rising heat. The air smelled like dust and something older than time.
The kind of morning where even ghosts cast shadows.
He watched Silas and Baz move ahead, two figures walking into whatever came next like they’d already made peace with it.
This time, he thought, we finish what we start.
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