Chapter 7 Echoes in the Ash

The wind had shifted.

Rourke noticed it just before dawn-cooler, sharper. Carrying the scent of pine, rust, and something else.

Something wrong.

He'd spent years off-grid, but old instincts didn't dull. He moved like a man with traps in his blood. The moment Caroline was gone, he began wiping down surfaces, burning papers, scattering his traces into the wind like he hadn't ever existed.

He didn't expect to live through the week.

But he'd be damned if someone else told his story.

The house was quiet.

Too quiet.

He stepped out onto the porch, eyes scanning the tree line. Still mist-thick. Still empty.

But the quiet had weight now.

The kind that came before a bullet.

The first sign came an hour later.

A crushed cigarette still burning near the shed.

Not his brand.

Not hers.

Rourke picked it up with a rag, sniffed once. Turkish blend. Screaming Skull-merc-grade. Smokers like that didn't sneak into towns.

They eliminated them.

He went for the cache buried beneath the floorboards: Glock 17. Spare mag. Two burner phones. One already buzzing.

Unknown Number.

He hesitated. Answered.

A voice, synthetic, masked. But the cadence? Military.

"Daniel Rourke."

He didn't speak.

"You've been sloppy."

Silence.

"We know the girl came to you. We know what you gave her."

Still, he said nothing.

"You think you're the last link, but you're wrong. You were never a loose end. You were the bait."

The line went dead.

Then the explosion hit.

The front shed went up like a funeral pyre-blueprints, maps, his research-all vaporized in a roar of heat and wood splinters. Rourke was already diving behind the porch when the second charge hit the gravel driveway, blowing the side wall inward.

Smoke poured in like a living thing.

He rolled, fired blind into the haze, movement flickering near the trees-shadows in black combat gear, no insignia.

Not Ash Circle.

Worse.

The people who cleaned up after Ash Circle.

He retreated through the crawlspace tunnel he'd dug years ago, surfacing half a mile east in a hollow between two ridgelines. Blood trickled down his temple. Didn't matter.

He had one safe place left.

Not a bunker. Not a bank.

A name.

Greta Voss.

Former Ash Circle intelligence tech. Last seen in Atlantic City running a black-market identity forge under a laundromat.

She'd vanished three years ago.

But Rourke had kept tabs-because Greta never erased debts.

And he was the only one who saved her when Montclair went dark.

If anyone could scrub him out of the kill-list and give him a ghost's second chance, it was her.

He staggered down the ravine. Every tree could hide a scope. Every rustle might be a footstep.

But he kept moving.

Because somewhere between Caroline's eyes and the blast behind him, Rourke finally understood:

This wasn't about the past anymore.

It was active.

Someone wanted the whole Montclair mess buried again.

And they'd start with the man who knew Monarch wasn't a myth.

Far behind him, in the burning ruin of the house, a figure stepped through the smoke-helmeted, silent, efficient.

They picked up a half-burned photo of Caroline's father.

Scanned it.

Pocketed it.

Then keyed their mic.

"Primary missed. Initiate protocol Omega."

A pause. Then: "Track the girl. Secure Monarch. Burn the rest."