“Ethan?” I whispered.

“I have to go,” he said, and the line went dead.

I stared at the dead screen of my phone, my thumb hovering over the call-back button.

The line was completely silent now, save for the hum of the refrigerator in Aaron’s small kitchen.

“He hung up,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

Aaron didn’t look up from his coffee mug.

His scarred hands were wrapped tightly around the cracked ceramic, his knuckles white against the dark skin.

“Did she catch him?” Aaron asked, his voice low and gravelly.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I heard a door click. He said he had to go.”

I stood up from the vinyl chair, the metal legs scraping against the linoleum floor.

The safehouse was a cramped, third-floor apartment in Arlington, smelling of old radiator steam and damp wool.

Outside, the rain was starting to streak the windowpane, blurring the yellow streetlights of the alley below.

“If the Colonel finds out Ethan is digging,” Aaron said, “he won’t just call off the wedding.”