The lie came easily, polished by years of use. Now rest. You’ve lost blood, and you need sleep. But as she moved to the window to check the road again, Martha caught Jake’s reflection in the glass. He was studying her with the calculating gaze of a man who’d learned to read people for survival, and she could see he wasn’t buying her story for a second.
Outside, dust clouds on the horizon suggested vehicles approaching fast. Martha counted four distinct trails moving in formation rather than random traffic. She stepped back from the window and felt the familiar cold settling into her chest. The emotional shutdown that had kept her alive through 15 years of sanctioned violence.
The wolves were coming back and they were bringing friends. Martha checked her watch and did the math. The satellite intelligence wouldn’t arrive for hours, but the enemy would be here in minutes. She’d have to rely on older skills, the ones that didn’t require technological support, the ones that had never failed her yet.
The first rule of survival Martha had learned 40 years ago was simple. Never leave witnesses who could identify you. But as she stood over the three unconscious men zip tied in her barn, that rule felt like it belonged to someone else’s life. The Martha who had earned her reputation in Prague and Beirut would have already made her decision.
The Martha who baked cookies for the church fundraiser hesitated. She checked their pulses again, all steady. The youngest one, barely out of his teens by the look of him, had a spiderweb tattoo crawling up his neck. Prison ink, crude but deliberate. The oldest bore scars that spoke of violence as a way of life, including what looked like an old bullet wound in his shoulder.
