Page 11 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

Zoe's condition is serious but stable. She's warming properly. The ankle is immobilized. She's taking fluids and broth. Vitals are trending the right direction.

The honest answer is that she doesn't need a hospital right now. She needs warmth, food, rest, and time. All of which I can provide. And the honest answer underneath that is that even if a helicopter could fly, some part of me doesn't want her to go.

I close my eyes. I let that thought exist without acting on it. Yes, it's there. No, it doesn't get to drive.

I go back inside.

Zoe’s still sleeping. The quilts have shifted and one arm is out, her hand resting palm-up on the mattress. I don't look at her longer than it takes to confirm she's breathing and the splint hasn't shifted. I walk to the kitchen, pour myself coffee from the pot I made at five, and sit at the table with my field journal.

The journal is leather-bound and scarred. I've kept one since my second deployment. In the field it was operational notes. Stateside it became a maintenance log for my own head. Short entries. Observations.

I open to a fresh page and start documenting. Time, date, conditions. Subject found at approximately 15:40 the previous day. Location: rock hollow six miles east-northeast of the mine site. Condition on discovery: conscious but non-responsive, severe hypothermia stage two, right ankle sprain grade two, malnutrition consistent with eight days without food, multiple contusions on upper arms consistent with restraint, abrasions on both wrists consistent with binding. Subject identified herself as Zoe Parker, age 23, employed as a waitress at the Timber Creek Café. Subject stated familiarity with an individual known as Tyler, believed connected to the Dale Weathers trafficking operation. Formal debrief pending subject's recovery.

I write it in the flat language of an incident report. Evidence. Documentation. The clean record Mason asked for.

I fill three pages. Then I close the journal, wrap the elastic band around it, and set it on the table with the pen beside it.

The coffee is cold. The fire needs another log. Outside, the storm keeps burying the world one inch at a time.

I pull my knife from its sheath and the whetstone from the drawer. Arkansas novaculite, fine grit. The knife is a Benchmade Bushcrafter, fixed blade, four-inch drop point. I pour a thin line of honing oil across the stone and work the blade in long, slow passes. Heel to tip. Seventeen-degree angle by feel.

The sound is quiet. Soft, rhythmic whisper of steel on stone. I've sharpened this blade thousands of times. The motion is automatic now. Something for my hands to do while my mind works through what it needs to.

A woman named Zoe who survived eight days through stubbornness and berry rationing. A call with Mason that went exactly how I expected and still landed harder than I was ready for. The word compromised. Fourteen women whose cases depend on me staying clean. The one woman in my bed whose face, relaxed in sleep, looks like something I didn't know I was missing until I saw it.

The blade gets sharper. The discipline holds. Not because it makes the wanting go away, but because it builds a structure around it that keeps it from becoming action. I've lived inside that structure for years. I can live inside it a while longer.

From the bed, a small sound. Zoe shifting under the quilts, turning toward the fire. She mumbles something soft and shapeless. Then she settles. Her breathing evens out. The crease between her brows smooths just slightly.

I test the blade against my thumb. A thin red line appears. Clean. Precise.

I sheathe the knife. I drink the cold coffee. And I wait for the storm to decide what happens next.

6

Zoe

The panic attack starts with my hands.

Not with a thought or a memory or the wind changing direction. It starts in my fingers. A tingling that begins at the tips and crawls upward through my palms and into my wrists. I'm sitting on the bed, propped against the headboard with a cup of tea between my hands. Real tea. Chamomile, from a box in the pantry that Ryker said has been there since his mother sent it two Christmases ago. One second I'm fine. Or whatever passes for fine on day three of living in a stranger's cabin. The next second my hands are buzzing and the cup feels like it isn't real. I set it down on the side table carefully because I know what comes next.

It comes fast. The tingling shoots up both arms and blooms across my chest like a hand pressing flat against my sternum. My throat tightens. Not gradually. Like something that was already closed and I'm only now noticing. I can't swallow. I try and the muscles just clench and hold. The failure to swallow sends a signal to my brain that I'm choking and suddenly I can't breathe either. I'm not choking. I know I'm not. There's nothing in my throat and air is moving in and out of my lungs in short, rapid bursts that I can hear but can't feel. But my body doesn't care what my brain knows. Right now the equation says danger, you're dying, everything you see is a lie.

The room changes. Not literally. The walls don't move and the fire doesn't shift. But the quality of it changes. The edges of things soften. The colors flatten. The distance between me and the fireplace stretches and compresses in a way that makes my stomach lurch. My peripheral vision darkens and narrows until I'm seeing the world through a tunnel. Just the quilt. Just my hands on the quilt. Just the patch of blue fabric between my fingers going in and out of focus with each shallow, useless breath.

I know what this is. I've had them before. In the shipping container. In the locked cabin. Once in the diner bathroom before any of this happened, crouched on the tile floor because a customer raised his voice and something inside me tripped a wire I didn't know was there. Panic attacks. From the inside they feel like dying with your eyes open. Your body becomes a stranger that has decided to kill you system by system. First sensation, then vision, then air, then the final trick where your sense of reality detaches and you're watching yourself fall apart from a distance.

That's where I am now. Watching myself from somewhere slightly above and to the left. The woman on the bed with the trembling hands and the shallow breathing and the eyes that have gone too wide. That's me, but also not me.

"Zoe."

The voice reaches me through layers. Far away. Muffled. But I know the frequency. Low. Steady. The voice for injured things.

"You're having a panic attack. Your body is doing what bodies do when the nervous system gets overwhelmed. It's flooding you with adrenaline and cortisol and sending false alarm signals. Nothing is actually wrong. Nothing is happening to you right now. The feeling is real but the danger isn't. Can you look at me?"

I try. My eyes are jerking around the room, scanning for exits and threats, and I have to fight to make them land on him. He's across the room by the kitchen counter. Same deliberate stillness. His hands are flat on the counter, fingers spread, like he's showing me they're empty and not going to reach for me.

"Good. Keep your eyes on me. I want you to breathe with me. In through the nose for four counts. Ready? One. Two. Three. Four."