PART 1: The Dead Don’t Bleed

 

Six months is a long time to be dead.

According to the Pentagon, Captain Elena Vulov died on February 15th. My dog tags are currently sitting in a drawer in Washington. My name is carved into the granite of the Fort Carson memorial wall. My teammates—the men currently driving three armored vehicles down Highway E58 into a kill zone—stood at attention while a chaplain spoke about my “ultimate sacrifice” and buried an empty casket with full military honors.

They think I’m a memory. They have no idea that the ghost they mourned is currently lying prone on a rocky outcrop three hundred meters above them, freezing to death in a ghillie suit that smells like pine needles and six months of unwashed fear.

The Carpathian Mountains don’t care about your rank or your service record. Tonight, the wind is howling through the Pruut River Valley, carrying the temperature down to ten degrees below zero. My fingers are stiff, wrapped around the trigger of a stolen Russian SVD dragunov. It’s not my preferred weapon—the optics are scratched, and the balance is off—but beggars can’t be choosers when they’re officially deceased.

Through the green glow of my night vision scope, I watched the convoy roll through the darkness. Three vehicles. Eight operators. I knew every single one of them.

In the lead vehicle, I could see Master Sergeant Darius Cole studying a tablet. He was looking at thermal imaging, trusting technology to show him the road ahead. Trust your gut, Cole, I whispered into the freezing wind. The screen lies.

Next to him was Lieutenant Marcus Webb. He looked older than the last time I saw him. Tired. He was checking his rifle for the third time in a minute—a nervous tic he developed after Operation Granite Shield. The same operation that “killed” me. The same operation where we lost Rodriguez, Chen, and Jackson. Webb was wound tight, expecting the worst.

He was right to.

I shifted my weight, ignoring the sharp protest of the shrapnel scar on my side. It hadn’t healed right—field surgery in an abandoned monastery by a Ukrainian resistance fighter tends to leave jagged edges—but the pain was a good reminder. It reminded me that I was still here. That Colonel Richard Ashford, the man who sold my team out for a retirement payout from a defense contractor, hadn’t finished the job.

“Come on, boys,” I breathed, tracking the lead vehicle. “Don’t stop. Just keep moving.”

They were driving straight into Victor Petrov’s kill zone.

I had been tracking Petrov for three days. The mercenary commander was a professional, I’ll give him that. He had set a textbook L-shaped ambush. Thirty men concealed in the treeline, RPGs at the ready, heavy machine guns interlocking their fields of fire. They were cold, disciplined, and waiting for the Americans to enter the fatal funnel.

I had a choice. A moral calculus that kept me awake during the long, freezing nights in the monastery ruins.

I could stay hidden. I could let them drive into the ambush. They would die, just like my team died. The secret of my survival would remain safe. I could continue my solitary war, gathering evidence, waiting for the perfect moment to strike at Ashford. Or, I could pull this trigger.

If I fired, I saved their lives. But I also revealed myself. I risked capture. I risked court-martial for the unauthorized killing of foreign nationals. I risked facing the very men who had left me behind—even if they didn’t know they were doing it.

The lead vehicle crossed the invisible line. A mercenary in a pine tree, four hundred meters downrange, adjusted his grip on an RPG launcher.

Decision made.

I exhaled, feeling the familiar stillness settle over me. The world narrowed down to the crosshairs. Windage, elevation, the rotation of the earth, the beat of my own heart.

Crack.

The sound of the SVD is distinctive, sharper than American rifles. The mercenary with the RPG didn’t hear it. The 7.62mm round took him through the head before the sound even reached him. He dropped silently from the tree, crashing into the brush below.

I worked the bolt. Smooth. Automatic.

Crack.

Second target. A machine gunner on the opposite ridge. He slumped over his weapon.

The convoy didn’t stop. The suppressed shots were swallowed by the engine noise and the wind. They didn’t know their guardian angel was painting the snow red for them.

“Wake up, Cole,” I hissed through gritted teeth.

I shifted my position, sliding along the ridge. A sniper who stays still is a dead sniper. I moved with the fluid grace of an animal, a skill forced upon me by months of hunting and being hunted.

Third target. This one was closer to the road, preparing to detonate a command-wire IED. I compensated for the wind rushing up the valley floor.

Crack.

He collapsed, his hand falling inches from the detonator.

Now they noticed.

The mercenary radio network lit up. I was monitoring their frequency with a captured earpiece. Petrov’s voice barked through the static, furious and confused. “Kto strelyayet?! Who is firing?!”

He didn’t know. He couldn’t see me. I was just a part of the mountain.

Down on the road, the brake lights of the convoy flared red, illuminating the swirling snow. The vehicles skidded to a halt. Doors flew open. Operators poured out, moving with that aggressive, precise speed that defines Delta Force.

“Contact left! Contact right!” Webb’s voice didn’t carry this far, but I could read his body language. He was shouting, pointing at the muzzle flashes that were now erupting from the treeline.

Petrov had lost the element of surprise, but he still had the numbers. Realizing his ambush was blown, he ordered a full assault.

“Kill them all!” Petrov screamed over the radio. “Suppress the ridge! Find the shooter!”

Bullets began to chew up the rocks ten feet below my position. They were guessing, spraying fire blindly into the dark. I ignored it. My war was specific.

I saw a mercenary pop up with a grenade, arm pulled back to throw. He was close to the convoy—too close.

Crack.

The bullet hit the grenade in his hand. It wasn’t a movie shot; it was luck and physics colliding. The grenade detonated prematurely, turning the mercenary and the two men beside him into pink mist.

Down below, Corporal Ryan Foster—the youngest of the team, a kid I’d trained myself—looked up at the explosion with wide, terrified eyes. He had no idea how he was still alive.

“You’re welcome, kid,” I muttered.

The firefight was intense now. The Delta team had formed a defensive perimeter around their vehicles, their weapons flashing rhythmically. They were good. God, they were good. They moved like a single organism, covering angles, suppressing threats. But there were too many of them.

Petrov’s men were flanking, moving through the deep woods to encircle the Americans. I reloaded, my hands moving with muscle memory that bypassed the numbness of the cold.

I started prioritizing targets. Anyone with a heavy weapon. Anyone trying to flank. Anyone giving orders.

One. Two. Three.

I was dropping them as fast as I could cycle the bolt. I was the angry hand of god reaching down from the heavens.

Then, I saw the fuel truck Petrov had parked near the treeline as a blockade.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a single magazine loaded with tracer rounds. I’d been saving these. Tracers work both ways—they show the enemy exactly where you are—but I needed to end this.

I loaded the mag. Adjusted my aim.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Pause.

I fired. The bright red streak of the tracer round tore through the night, a laser beam pointing straight back to my position. It slammed into the fuel tank.

The explosion was a miniature sun. A fireball rolled upward, illuminating the entire valley. The shockwave shook snow from the trees. Suddenly, the mercenaries were silhouetted against the flames, perfect black targets against a wall of fire.

“Light ’em up,” I whispered.

The Delta team didn’t hesitate. Seeing the enemy exposed, they opened up with everything they had. It was a slaughter. Caught between the burning forest and the American rifles, Petrov’s men broke.

It was over in two minutes.

Silence rushed back into the valley, heavy and ringing. The only sound was the crackle of burning pines and the distant shouting of the surviving mercenaries retreating into the dark.

I watched through my scope. Cole was standing in the center of the road, scanning the ridgeline. He wasn’t looking at the burning truck. He was looking at where the tracer had come from. He was looking at me.

“Secure the perimeter!” I imagined him shouting. “Find out who the hell is up there.”

My job was done. Logic dictated I fade away. I should slip down the back side of the ridge, melt into the darkness, and live to fight another day. That was the smart play. That was the survivor’s play.

But then I saw Webb. He was kneeling next to one of the dead mercenaries, looking at the entry wound. He stood up, looking toward my ridge, shaking his head. He knew. He didn’t understand how, but he knew that kind of shooting.

I couldn’t leave them. not again. Petrov would regroup. He would call for reinforcements from Yaremche. These men—my brothers—were sitting ducks without a guide.

I stood up.

It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Harder than getting shot. Harder than digging shrapnel out of my own abdomen. I stood up on the ridgeline, silhouetted by the moonlight.

I slung my rifle over my shoulder, barrel down. A universal sign: I am not a threat.

I began to walk down the slope.

Cole saw me first. “Contact! North Ridge! Single individual!”

Seven rifles snapped up, aiming at my chest. Lasers danced across my ghillie suit. One twitch from any of them, and I was dead.

I kept walking. Slow. Deliberate. My hands held high, palms open.

I could see the confusion on their faces through the night vision. A figure in a ghillie suit, moving like a wraith, emerging from the very darkness that had tried to kill them.

I stopped twenty meters away. Close enough to be heard. Far enough to give them a second to think before they pulled the trigger.

“Hold fire!” Cole barked. “Identify yourself!”

I reached up slowly and pulled back the hood of my suit.

The moonlight hit my face. I knew what they saw. They saw a ghost. They saw a woman with a scar running down her jawline, eyes hollowed out by six months of malnutrition and sleeplessness, hair matted and chopped short with a knife.

But they also saw me.

Webb lowered his rifle first. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. He looked like he’d seen a corpse sit up in a coffin.

“That’s impossible,” he whispered. I could hear him clearly in the sudden silence. “Vulov?”

Cole stared at me, his tactical mind trying to reject the data his eyes were providing. “Captain Vulov is dead. We buried her.”

“Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated, Sergeant,” I said. My voice was raspy, unused to speaking English, unused to speaking at all. “But unless you want to join me in the grave, we need to move. Petrov is bringing forty more men, and they’re going to be a lot less sloppy than the last batch.”

I looked at Webb, locking eyes with the man who had grieved for me.

“Hello, Marcus. You look like shit.”

Eight rifles were still pointed at me. The wind howled through the valley, carrying the smell of burning diesel and blood. The impossible had just happened, and nobody knew who to trust.

PART 2: The Valley of Ghosts

 

The standoff lasted exactly forty-seven seconds, but it felt like a lifetime.

Forty-seven seconds of wind howling, of gloved fingers taking up the slack on triggers, of ghosts staring at the living. Cole was the first to break the paralysis. He didn’t lower his weapon, but his voice shifted from combat command to interrogation mode.

“Vulov,” he said, the name tasting like ash in his mouth. “If that’s really you, keep your hands visible. Walk forward slowly. If you twitch, my men will cut you in half.”

“Understood, Master Sergeant,” I said. I took a step. My knee, stiff from the cold and the old injury, buckled slightly.

Webb flinched. His rifle barrel dipped. “She’s limping. Cole, look at her. That’s the shrapnel wound from Granite Shield. The one Jackson tried to patch before…”

“Quiet, Lieutenant,” Cole snapped. “This could be a psy-op. A double. A trap.”

I stopped ten meters from them. The smell of the burning fuel truck was overpowering here, mixing with the scent of unwashed bodies and gun oil. I looked Cole dead in the eyes—or at least, into the green glow of his NVGs.

“Serial number Delta 7324,” I recited, my voice flat. “Fort Carson. Assigned to Operation Granite Shield. Officially KIA February 15th. Unofficially abandoned by Colonel Richard Ashford because my team found evidence he was taking kickbacks from Redstone Military Solutions.”

The silence that followed was heavier than the gunfire.

Webb’s rifle lowered all the way. “That’s… that’s treason. You’re accusing a bird colonel of treason.”

“I’m accusing him of murder, Marcus,” I said, looking at him. “Jackson didn’t die in combat. He bled out because Ashford ordered the extraction choppers to turn around. Chen didn’t die from an RPG. He died because our position was sold to the highest bidder.”

Cole stepped closer, invading my personal space. He ripped the NVGs off his face, staring at me with his naked eyes in the flickering firelight. He studied the scar on my jaw, the way I stood. He was looking for a lie.

“How did you survive?” he asked quietly.

“Luck. Spite. And a Ukrainian resistance fighter named Dmitri who dragged my carcass two clicks through the snow.” I gestured vaguely toward the north. “He dug seventeen pieces of metal out of me in a monastery basement. He kept me alive. And then Petrov’s men killed him three weeks ago.”

Cole held my gaze for another long moment. Then, he exhaled—a long plume of white steam in the freezing air. He lowered his weapon.

“Damn it,” he whispered. “You look like hell, Elena.”

“You should see the other guys,” I managed a weak smile.

“Sarge,” Brennan, the comms specialist, called out from the vehicle. His voice was tight. “I’m picking up chatter. Heavy traffic. Russian. They’re mobilizing everything. ETA on reinforcements is less than fifteen minutes.”

Cole snapped back into leader mode. The reunion was over; survival was back on the menu.

“We need to move,” Cole said. “Our vehicles are toast. We’re on foot.”

“If we stay on the highway, we die,” I said, stepping into the circle. It felt strange to be part of a team again, like putting on a boot that had been worn down by someone else. “I know a route. A smuggler’s trail through the Bukovel ridge. It’s steep, it’s dangerous, and it’s the only way Petrov won’t look.”

Cole looked at me, then at his men. He had a choice. Trust the ghost, or trust the protocol.

“Lead the way, Captain,” he said. “Webb, watch our six. Let’s ghost.”

---

The climb was brutal.

We moved away from Highway E58, ascending into terrain that God had clearly designed to kill humans. The snow was waist-deep in places. The wind cut through our gear like razor blades.

I took point. My legs burned, my lungs screamed, but I didn’t slow down. I couldn’t. I could feel Petrov’s hatred behind us, a physical weight pushing us upward.

Webb fell in beside me as we crested a ridge two hours later. He passed me a canteen. The water was near freezing, but it tasted like heaven.

“I have a photo of you,” he said quietly, between ragged breaths. “In my locker back home. From the memorial service.”

“Burn it,” I said, wiping my mouth. “I hate that picture.”

“Rodriguez talked about you,” he continued, ignoring my deflection. “Before the mission. He said you sensed something was wrong. That you wanted to scrub the op.”

“I should have pushed harder,” I said, the guilt flaring up in my chest, hot and familiar. “I knew the intel was too clean. I knew the extraction coordinates were bad. But I followed orders. And because of that, Rodriguez is dead.”

“We all follow orders, Elena. That’s the job.”

“Not anymore,” I stopped, turning to face him. “The job changed the minute they left us to die. We aren’t fighting for the flag right now, Marcus. We’re fighting for the truth. Do you understand that?”

He looked at me, his young face hardened by the night. “I’m starting to.”

We reached the outskirts of Kolomyia just before dawn. The city was a grey smudge against the white snow, silent and ominous. This was where Ambassador Pierce was being held. Or at least, where he was supposed to be.

“The safe house is on the north side,” I told Cole as we huddled in the treeline. “Residential block. Three stories. But Petrov knows we’re coming now. The element of surprise is gone.”

“We improvise,” Cole said. He looked at his team. They were exhausted, freezing, but their eyes were hard. “Standard breach and clear. Vulov, you guide us in.”

We moved through the sleeping city like shadows. The safe house was a nondescript apartment building. No lights. No movement.

“Too quiet,” Mendoza whispered.

“Way too quiet,” I agreed.

We breached the front door with a controlled charge. The explosion shattered the morning silence. We poured in, weapons raised, checking corners, clearing rooms.

“Clear left!” “Clear right!” “Second floor clear!”

We reached the main holding room on the third floor. Cole kicked the door in.

Empty.

Not just empty—scrubbed. The chair where Pierce had been tied was gone, but the scuff marks on the floor were fresh. There was a coffee cup on the windowsill, still lukewarm.

“They moved him,” Webb said, kicking a piece of debris. “Damn it! We missed him by minutes.”

I walked to the window, looking out at the mountains rising in the distance. I knew where they were going. There was only one place secure enough to hold a high-value asset like an Ambassador when an angry Delta team was hunting you.

“Yaremche,” I said. “The old Soviet missile installation. It’s Petrov’s fortress.”

Cole cursed. “That place is a bunker. Reinforced concrete, underground levels. We’d need a tank battalion to crack it.”

“We don’t have a tank battalion,” I said, turning back to them. “We have eight pissed-off operators and a woman who knows the sewer system.”

Cole looked at me, his eyebrow raised. “Sewer system?”

“Drainage tunnels,” I corrected. “Built during the Cold War. They run right under the installation. It’s how I’ve been tapping into their comms network.”

“Is it safe?” Brennan asked.

I laughed, a dry, humorless sound. “It floods with snowmelt, it’s full of rats, and it smells like a corpse. But it gets us inside the perimeter.”

Cole checked his watch. “We’re burning daylight. General Hayes is going to be wondering where her ghost team went. Brennan, go dark. Kill all comms. If Ashford is monitoring, I don’t want him knowing we’re still breathing until we have Pierce.”

“Going dark, Sarge.”

“Alright,” Cole racked the slide of his rifle. “Let’s go to the sewer.”

PART 3: The Fire and the Dawn

 

The tunnel was a claustrophobic nightmare.

The water was chest-deep, freezing sludge that sucked at our boots with every step. There was no light except for the narrow beams of our headlamps, cutting through the swirling mist of our breath. The ceiling was low, forcing the bigger guys like Harrison to hunch over.

“I hate this,” Foster muttered from behind me. “I hate this so much.”

“Keep moving,” I whispered. “If you stop, the hypothermia sets in. Trust me, you don’t want to fall asleep in here.”

We waded for forty minutes. Time lost all meaning in the dark. It was just the sound of splashing water and the rhythmic rasp of breathing.

Finally, I saw the rusted iron rungs of a ladder leading up into a vertical shaft.

“This is it,” I said, checking the hand-drawn map I kept in a waterproof pouch. “Emergency maintenance hatch. Comes up inside the motor pool garage.”

“You first, Captain,” Cole said. “It’s your show.”

I climbed. The rungs groaned under my weight. I reached the top, pushed gently on the manhole cover. It shifted. I peeked out.

We were inside.

The garage was cavernous, filled with trucks and APCs. Mechanics were working on a BTR-80 in the far corner, welding sparks cascading like fireworks. The noise masked our entry.

I signaled ‘All Clear’. One by one, the team climbed out of the hell-hole, dripping wet, smelling like death, and looking ready to kill something.

“Pierce will be in the lower levels,” I whispered to Cole. “Officer’s quarters. It’s the only secure lockup.”

“Two teams,” Cole directed with hand signals. “Webb, take the upper gantry. Provide overwatch. I’ll take the ground team. Vulov, you’re with me.”

We moved through the shadows of the garage. We were ghosts in the machine now.

We reached the heavy blast doors leading to the inner sanctum. They were key-card locked. Brennan stepped up, pulling a jagged-looking device from his vest. He jammed it into the reader. Numbers cycled rapidly on his wrist display.

Click. Green light.

“You’re a wizard, Brennan,” I murmured.

We pushed into the corridor. And that’s when the luck ran out.

A guard turned the corner. He was holding a coffee cup, looking at his phone. He looked up, saw eight soaking wet Americans in full combat gear, and dropped the cup.

Before we could silence him, he screamed. “Amerikantsy!”

“Go loud!” Cole roared.

The stealth portion of the evening was officially over.

The corridor erupted. Gunfire was deafening in the confined concrete space. We moved forward like a battering ram. Double-taps. Controlled bursts. Moving from cover to cover.

The facility alarm began to blare—a harsh, rhythmic klaxon that set my teeth on edge.

“Move! Move! Move!”

We fought our way down two flights of stairs. Resistance was stiffening. Petrov’s elite mercenaries were waking up and joining the fight. They knew the terrain, but we had the momentum.

We reached the Officer’s Quarters. A heavy steel door blocked the way.

“Martinez!” Cole shouted. “Open it!”

Martinez slapped a breaching charge on the hinges. “Fire in the hole!”

BOOM.

The door blew inward, twisting off its frame. We stormed the room.

Ambassador Pierce was huddled in the corner, zip-tied to a radiator. He looked terrified, bruised, but alive.

“Ambassador!” Cole shouted, cutting his bonds. “We’re leaving!”

“About damn time!” Pierce yelled back. “Do you have any idea—”

“Save the speeches!” I cut him off. “We have company!”

Petrov wasn’t going to let his prize walk out. As we exited the room, the corridor was filled with smoke and enemies. They were suppressing us with heavy machine-gun fire from the far end of the hallway. We were pinned.

“We can’t go back the way we came!” Webb shouted over the comms from his position upstairs. “They’ve blocked the stairwell!”

“The server room,” I said, pointing to a door across the hall. “It has a secondary ventilation shaft. Plus, that’s where the evidence is.”

“Evidence?” Cole looked at me amidst the flying brass.

“The proof Ashford sold us out. It’s on Petrov’s mainframe. We leave with that, or this whole nightmare was for nothing.”

Cole nodded. “Cover fire! Push across!”

We laid down a wall of lead. I moved with a manic energy, my SVD barking rhythmically. We crossed the hall, dragging the Ambassador, and barricaded ourselves in the server room.

Banks of blinking lights hummed around us. Brennan immediately jacked into the main console. “I’m downloading everything! Give me two minutes!”

“We don’t have two minutes!” Foster yelled. The door was buckling under heavy fire.

Then, the voice came over the facility speakers.

“Captain Vulov.”

It was Petrov. His voice was smooth, mocking. “I know you are in there. The dead woman who refuses to stay buried. You have caused me a great deal of trouble.”

“He’s taunting us,” Webb growled.

“Surrender the Ambassador,” Petrov continued. “And I will let the rest of you die quickly. Refuse, and I will burn you out.”

I looked at the ventilation shaft. It was too small for the Ambassador. We were trapped.

“Brennan, how’s that download?” I asked, reloading my last magazine.

“98 percent… 99… Done!” He ripped the drive out. “I got it all. Emails, bank transfers, recorded calls with Ashford. It’s a smoking gun the size of Texas.”

“Good,” I said. “Now we just need to survive to deliver it.”

The door exploded inward.

Mercenaries poured in. The room turned into a blender of noise and violence. Close quarters combat is ugly. It’s knives and elbows and muzzle flashes in your face.

I saw Petrov. He stepped through the smoke, flanked by two bodyguards, holding an assault rifle. He looked exactly like his file photos—cold eyes, cruel mouth.

He raised his weapon at Cole, who was wrestling with a mercenary on the ground.

I didn’t think. I didn’t aim. I just reacted.

I vaulted over a server rack, landing between Petrov and Cole. My SVD was empty. I drew my sidearm.

Petrov saw me. He smiled. “Ghost,” he sneered.

He fired. I felt the impact—a sledgehammer to my chest plate. It knocked the wind out of me, cracking a rib, but the ceramic held.

I fired back. One shot. Two. Three.

The first hit his shoulder. The second hit his throat. The third went right between his eyes.

Victor Petrov, the warlord of the Carpathians, the man who had hunted me for six months, crumpled to the floor like a sack of wet laundry.

The room went silent for a heartbeat. Seeing their leader drop, the remaining mercenaries faltered.

“Push them back!” Cole roared, scrambling to his feet.

We drove them out of the room with sheer ferocity. We had the momentum of pure, unadulterated rage.

“The ventilation shaft won’t work,” I gasped, clutching my chest. “We need to go out the front door.”

“Are you crazy?” Webb asked.

“No,” I pulled a detonator from Petrov’s belt. “I’m prepared. I wired the fuel depot in the garage when we came in. Just in case.”

I looked at Cole. “Ready to make an exit?”

He grinned, blood streaming down his face. “Do it.”

I pressed the button.

The floor shook. A massive explosion rocked the facility from above. The garage was gone. The confusion was absolute.

“Move! Go! Go!”

We ran. We ran through the smoke, dragging the Ambassador, shooting anything that moved. We burst out of the emergency exit into the dawn light.

The sky was bleeding purple and orange. The air was cold and sweet.

We didn’t stop running until we hit the treeline.

---

Two hours later, two Blackhawk helicopters flared over the LZ in a clearing five clicks north. The sound of their rotors was the most beautiful music I’d ever heard.

We popped smoke—yellow smoke, bright against the snow.

As the birds touched down, General Patricia Hayes stepped out. She looked formidable, even in field gear.

Cole walked up to her, saluting. He looked like a wreck—uniform torn, face bloody—but he stood tall.

“Mission accomplished, General,” he shouted over the rotor wash. “Ambassador is secure.”

“And the team?” Hayes asked, looking past him.

“We picked up a stray,” Cole stepped aside.

I walked forward. I felt lightheaded. The adrenaline was fading, leaving only the pain and the exhaustion.

Hayes looked at me. She saw the ghillie suit, the scars, the haunted eyes.

“Captain Vulov,” she said. “I was told you were dead.”

“I got better, Ma’am,” I said, handing her the hard drive Brennan had given me. “Here. This is why my team died. This is Ashford. This is Redstone. It’s all here.”

She took the drive, her grip tight. “You have my word, Captain. Justice will be served.”

I looked back at the team. Webb, Cole, Brennan, Foster, all of them. They were watching me. They weren’t looking at a ghost anymore. They were looking at a sister.

I collapsed.

Webb caught me before I hit the snow. “I got you, Elena. I got you.”

“I’m tired, Marcus,” I whispered. “I’m so tired.”

“Sleep,” he said. “We’re going home.