Page 45 of Duty Preserved

“I’ll add it to the next run,” Alyson said.

I filed it away and went back to counting.

We worked in comfortable silence for a few minutes. Daniel had given up on the topical kits entirely and was back on his crate near the door, scrolling through his phone. If he noticed the irony of criticizing Alyson for hers, he didn’t show it.

“Can I say something?” I said to Alyson, keeping my voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry past the shelf between us and Daniel.

“Always.”

“The other day. At the snare site.” I lined up three vials of ketamine and marked the count. “When Donovan realized Zayn and Jomo had gone off on their own to look at the evidence, he didn’t call them back. Cole and Andrew were running a training exercise for the whole group, real skills from three experienced operators, and he didn’t tell the two of them off for wandering away from it. He actually wanted to understand what they’d seen. He left the whole demonstration and went over to listen.”

Alyson looked at me over her shoulder. “And?”

“They were right. They’d caught something the rest of us missed.” I set the vial down. “And when it turned out to matter, Donovan brought them back to the group and had Zayn present it himself. Not as his own findings. He made sure the credit went to Zayn and Jomo.”

I’d been carrying that moment for two days without knowing what to do with it. Something about a man being so humble had lodged in me and refused to leave.

“The Citadel guys seem to genuinely care about what’s going on here,” Alyson said. “It was really nice of him to lift the rangers up like that.”

From his crate, Daniel made a sound in his throat. “Can we stop talking about this guy like he walked on water? He did his job. That’s what they’re here for.”

I looked at him. He was still on his phone, thumb moving, but his jaw had tightened.

“He did more than his job,” I said.

“He listened to the rangers. Great. Revolutionary.” Daniel pocketed his phone and stood up. “Maybe next time, he can also figure out why two of us are on the floor counting vials while the security guys get treated like they hung the moon. I’m going to check the recovery pens.”

He left. The crate sat empty by the door, and the afternoon light stretched across the floor where he’d been.

That was Daniel code for going to take a nap in his cabin.

Alyson watched the space where he’d been for a long moment.

“He’s becoming someone I don’t really want to be around,” she said quietly. She turned back to the shelf and pulled the next box toward her. “More and more, every week.”

I didn’t argue. I’d have liked to, for her sake, but I didn’t have the material.

We worked through the rest of the shelf in silence. When the last box was counted and the numbers matched, minus the expired meloxicam and the xylazine shortage, Alyson leaned back against the wall.

“So.”

“So, what?”

“So, you just spent four minutes describing in loving detail how Donovan Hughes handled a bunch of rangers at a poaching site, and your voice did a thing it doesn’t normally do. Are we just supposed to pretend you don’t have a thing for Mr. Hughes?”

“My voice didn’t do a thing.”

“Your voice absolutely did a thing. It went soft. Like you were describing a sunset and not a man standing in a field.”

“I was describing leadership.”

“You were describing a crush.”

A crush.

Such a small word suddenly had the ability to fill the entire room. I felt the heat climb my neck and settle across my cheeks.

“It’s not a crush.”