Ghosts Are Living Here
At Least for Now
When the safehouse becomes a ghost town without warning, Dar finds her carefully managed solitude shattered by
a battle-scarred Major who understands that the most dangerous ghosts are the ones you carry inside.
FRIDAY
Shortly before noon, Dar opened her office door to find the house had emptied like a stage after final curtain—no boots on hardwood, no Calder barking comms checks, not even Sean’s laugh ricocheting off the espresso machine. A quick sweep revealed only an untidy lounge, no corpses upstairs, and a locked basement door. She fired off a text to Logan, then armed herself with hot tea and the last almond croissant from the fridge before returning to the new data packet Veyr had sent. This time, she left her door open.
At 1700 hours, Dar stepped from her office into a house gone dark and silent. Only Twigs greeted her, winding between her ankles with insistent meows. She cracked open a tin of cat food; the metallic pop echoed in the empty kitchen. Her phone screen remained stubbornly blank—no response from Logan. A text from Pam lit up instead: a meme of a woman face-down in cake batter with the caption “HOW IT STARTED” followed by the same woman drinking straight from a wine bottle labelled “HOW IT’S GOING.” Below it: “Catering this frigging office party. Thank God for Maggie or I’d be serving these corporate vultures my tears as appetizers.” The refrigerator offered nothing but cold air when she yanked it open. Tea would have to do. Mug in hand, she retreated to her data fortress, leaving the door ajar this time.
At 1907, Callum checked his watch. He’d run the ridge at dawn, debriefed with Calder via secure text, scrubbed his kit, and spent the rest of the day wondering how Dar was holding up. He thumb-rolled the scar on his cheek, then hit her contact. Two rings.
Heart racing, Dar snatched up her cell before the second ring finished. “Major?”
“Dar. Please, it’s Callum. Am I interrupting?” His calm tone reminded her of that first call from Veyr, which now felt like an eternity ago.
“No.” She exhaled, relaxing slightly as the worst-case scenarios that had been skipping stones across her cortex faded. “Has something happened?”
Callum caught the high pitch in her voice. She’s worried or scared. “No, nothing. Everything’s fine.” His voice was reassuring, grounding. “I thought I’d check in. House a little quieter today?”
“How’d you know?” She wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved by his awareness or violated by this new lack of privacy.
“Task force has gone dark for forty-eight. Rhys took the lads south for a live-fire package—no comms, no trace. Calder’s orders.” His brow furrowed as a flicker of annoyance crossed his mind. “Nobody told you?”
“No.” Emotions churning, Dar forced herself to continue. “Well, thanks for letting me know.”
Her voice came out sharp and thin, brittle. “Don’t thank me. Means you’ve got the place to yourself. No boots on the stairs, no Logan raiding your biscuit tin.” He sipped his tea, waiting for a response that didn’t come. “Still. Empty house can be louder than a full one. You okay?”
“Long day.” Her voice cracked.
He caught it. “Copy that. Long day.” He leaned his elbows on the counter. “Dar. You don’t need to armour up with me.” He trailed off, scar burning under his thumb. The quiet on the line felt like exposed concealment. “I know we only just met, but I’ve seen you hold court with a house full of operators—no flinch. When your voice tightens like this, it’s not logistics. It’s something deeper.” He paused. “Want to talk about it?”
The line hummed for two heartbeats while Dar stared at the kettle’s chrome belly, seeing her own warped face stare back. Her throat felt lined with sand. “Nothing heroic, Major. Just… ghosts doing room inspections.” She tried to make it sound light, but the words came out raw at the edges.
“Roger that.” His mind conjured her kitchen: a cooling kettle, a cautious cat, and clean mugs resting upside down in the drainer. “Mine usually show up at 0300—switch the lights on, start asking questions I don’t have answers for.” He moved to the window, the yellow glow from the bulb above the sink illuminating his reflection. “Dar, I’m ten minutes away. No kit, no Calder, no circus. I can sit on the step if you need space, but I’m not hanging up while you sound one breath from breaking.”
Her intake of breath was sharp—half-terror, half-something else she couldn’t name. “You don’t… you don’t have to do that.” Her voice went stoic. “I’m not some asset that needs extracting, Callum.” She used his name as a shield.
“Never said you were an asset.” He was already gathering keys, sliding into trainers, phone pinned at his ear. “You’re a friend. Part of our team. And you sound like you’re bleeding out in your kitchen. That’s enough.” He hung up and headed out at a jog.
When the knock came—three soft taps, military-polite—Dar’s hand froze on the dish towel. One breath. Two. She crossed the tiles and opened the door.
With the cold air turning his breath to mist, Callum stood on the porch in running gear and a dark hoodie. One hand dipped into his pocket; the other held a battered tin of Panamanian coffee. His eyes swept over her face, taking in the flush on her cheeks and the exhaustion in her eyes. “Permission to come aboard?” His gaze stayed steady—no push, no demand.
Dar stepped back and nodded. He crossed the threshold, and the house suddenly felt warmer, safer. She clicked the door closed behind him. “Kitchen’s still on.” She led the way, bare feet silent on the floor. The kettle steamed.
He followed, tin in hand, right thumb brushing the scar out of habit. The kitchen smelled of boiled water and yesterday’s grounds. The cat’s eyes glowed from under the dining room table. “Twigs has the right idea—never trust anyone who shows up unannounced.” He set the tin down, nudged mugs aside, then turned the kettle off before it could scream. His voice dropped, graveled like wind through sniper sights. “Tell the ghosts to stand down for five, yeah? They can debrief me later.” He leaned against the fridge and folded his arms, giving her space.
Her weight shifted. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your evening.”
He waved off her apology. “Evening was paperwork and a run. You did me a favour.” He flicked the kettle back on and watched the steam curl. He set two mugs exactly one hand-width apart—hers first, then his—like magazines before a range day. “No sugar, splash of milk?” He didn’t wait; he’d already clocked her routine. “Dar. Let’s just park the day here. I’ll stand watch till the ghosts run out of ammo.”
“Don’t know why it’s bothering me now.” She took the warm mug he offered and stared down at it, tracing its rim with a fingertip as if the answer she sought was hidden there. “I usually don’t know where they are or when they’re due back unless I ask. But I always get a text back from Lo.”
Gone for 2 days. Like a lightning strike, Dar felt something inside shatter the anger that was brewing—the sensation abrupt and violent. So they left me to…? A burst of laughter erupted from her.
More than an incoming fire, the laugh startled him—raw and unguarded, like a crack in a wall he hadn’t noticed before. His own mug paused halfway to his mouth. Callum watched her over the rim, eyes narrowing in assessment rather than judgment. The sound broke tension, released air. “Christ, Dar. If that’s what passes for humour these days, I need to update my intel briefs.” He took a slow sip, letting the bitterness settle before setting the cup down quietly. His voice softened, almost conversational. “Tell me what broke loose. Not the data. The thing underneath.” He didn’t move closer. He simply waited, like someone who valued quiet over noise.
With a gesture, Dar led him into the living room. She stopped in the doorway and swept a hand at the chaos: clothes draped over chairs, dirty glasses, food wrappers, petrified pizza boxes. “They ghost me for two days but leave me with this?” A hollow chuckle escaped her, as if she were amused by the absurdity of it all. Her chest tightened. “It started after Zoe died. They moved in to ‘help,’ at least one of them here to soothe me. Their version of therapy. Unless they’re on mission, then I barely hear from them—this though…is new.” She stared at the mess as if it were mocking her.
She picked up the stray PlayStation controllers off the coffee table and snapped them into their charging station. She chuckled and sank onto the sofa. “Sorry, don’t mean to bitch. And thanks. For listening.”
He shook his head quietly and swept the room. “Christ. Task Force Squatters. They’ve got the field craft of raccoons.” He nudged a stray sock with his toe, then let his gaze settle on her. “Ever think to straighten them out? Hide the PlayStation? Want me to run them ragged when they check in? Ten klicks, full kit, no chatter?”
Her head snapped up, panic and relief warring on her face. “Oh God, don’t… I can’t have you do that.” She pressed her palms into her thighs. “I know it sounds insane. I… they mean well. Its not usually this bad.” Her voice faltered. “Their noise keeps the silence at bay, keeps it from smothering me.” Rising, she began gathering dirty plates with trembling urgency, as if clearing the evidence of her fractured calm would somehow stitch her back together.
He caught the tremor in her hand and stepped forward, taking the dishes. “Look at me.” His voice dropped. “Next time they ghost, you ring me. Sat burst or runner, doesn’t matter. Copy?”
He followed her into the kitchen, brushed a knuckle against her wrist, and reached for the faucet. “I’ll wash; you dry. Then we’re raiding your freezer for something that isn’t pizza.”
The touch was tethering. I needed this. She nodded. “Copy.” Callum started washing, handing off to Dar.
“There’s some tiramisu in the freezer. Pam’s emergency stash. She’ll be pissed, but I can replace it before she comes over.”
With a grin, he began mapping the freezer. “Tiramisu ranks higher than Pam’s wrath. We’ll blame Sean.” He rinsed two spoons under the tap. “Emergency desserts, emergency exfil. Fair trade.”
After carrying their spoils back to the living room, Dar turned off the overhead lights, leaving only the corner lamp illuminated. Twigs eyed them from the armchair. Dar curled her legs beneath her on the sofa. “Couch or chair, Major. But cat’s jurisdiction is absolute.”
He positioned himself on the ottoman; the armchair supporting his spine, his attention fixed on the hallway. The lamp’s amber light pooled at their feet. They ate in comfortable silence, savouring their stolen dessert.
“Silence is better now that you’re here.” She set her dish down.
Callum had barely set down his empty dish before Twigs leaped onto his lap, where she kneaded his thigh. He never took his eyes off Dar while gently petting the purring tabby. “Speaking of silence—what about after? Ever draft a blueprint for life beyond this?”
She swallowed, her gaze dropping. “I never got farther than learning to live without Zoe, then this place turned into Animal House. Only thing I managed was my Master’s. Ink hadn’t even dried when Veyr called. So, no. Nothing.”
Callum watched the name hit her like a ricochet—Zoe—saw her shoulders brace the way a soldier does when rounds start flying. His own chest tightened like an old plate carrier squeezing his ribs. He set the mug down slowly, ceramic whispering against wood. Didn’t speak right away. Let the silence do its work, the way he’d learned to let the desert speak at night: wind over sand, distant dogs, the hush that says you’re still breathing.
Finally, he leaned forward, elbows on knees, voice pitched low enough that the fridge hum nearly swallowed it. “Master’s is no small op. You held a line while the world was chewing through you. That’s not nothing, Dar. That’s grit.”
He rubbed the scar once, thumb tracing the ridge like he was checking zero on a scope.
“Veyr didn’t drag you into this because you were broken. She pulled you in because you see patterns the rest of us miss. You read the room before the first shots are fired. That’s currency where I come from.”
He let that settle. “Sometimes the mission isn’t about taking unfamiliar territory. Sometimes it’s about holding what’s left, one bloody brick at a time. You kept the lights on in here, Dar. That counts.” He leaned back, giving her the space her body language begged for.
She looked up at him. “What about you? What about your after?”
He traced his scar again. “After’s a luxury I stopped budgeting for around Mosul. Mission cycle eats the horizon—next brief, next grid, next exfil.” He studied her face. “But yeah…sometimes I catch myself visualizing it. Stone cottage north of Hereford. No comms shack, no armoury. Just silence that doesn’t want to kill me.” He huffed. “Never gets further than a mental model. A place like that needs someone who can sit still without listening for footsteps. Not sure that’s me anymore.”
As the evening wore on, the fortress walls they had each built—his of military service and reinforced with tactical precision, hers layered with academic detachment over motherly grief—crumbled like ancient mortar giving way to time. First, just loose stones at the corners, then entire sections giving way, revealing glimpses of the raw, tender landscapes they both kept hidden from the world. The living room became a neutral zone where pain could be acknowledged without judgment, where scars could be displayed without explanation.
Callum told Dar about growing up in Herefordshire—his dad a career paratrooper, his mum a trauma nurse. Dar shared how Logan had become her stepbrother and Pam her best friend. Dar learned about Callum’s older sister Alice, who had died shortly after his first deployment. Callum heard the details of Dar’s daughter Zoe’s death, though Dar wouldn’t go into much detail about her marriage to Barry. The conversation ebbed like a tide, leaving certain depths unexplored. Their eyes occasionally met over unspoken territories—mutual recognition of boundaries neither was ready to cross.
Eventually, the quiet moments stretched like taffy between them, each silence longer than the last, and Callum noticed Dar’s eyelids fluttering, losing their battle with gravity. He shoved off the ottoman with military precision, his feet finding clear patches of floor amid the debris with the practiced care of someone who’d navigated actual minefields. He collected their empty dishes and mugs, nested them in one calloused hand, fingers splayed like a cage around the vessels. “Still, doctrine says reclaim ground gradually. One sector at a time.” He paused at the doorway, shoulder resting against the jamb, and angled a look back, his scar catching the amber lamplight. “You going to be okay?”
She nodded, her head already nestled against the sofa cushions, cheek pressed into the plaid throw that still carried the faint scent of Sean’s aftershave. Her eyelids felt weighted with sand, each blink slower than the last, but she forced them open to meet his gaze. “I am.” The corner of her mouth twitched upward before gravity reclaimed her eyelids with a settlement of surrender.
“Tomorrow, 0800, I’m running the river path. You want company, you’ve got it. No rank, no chatter unless you want it. Just four or five k of cold air and the chance to decide what stays in the house and what gets left on the trail.” His voice carried the quiet confidence of a man accustomed to being obeyed, but his eyes—deep blue with flecks of amber in the low light—held something softer. He tapped the doorframe twice—soft, decisive knocks that resonated through the weathered oak—then disappeared toward the kitchen, the clink of glassware marking his movement like chalk on a range card. He set the glasses in the sink, the twist of the tap sending a thin stream into the first.
The window over the basin reflected him back—a ghost image superimposed on the dark garden, his scar a pale slash across the glass. Seven years since he’d washed blood from his own hands in a cracked Syrian basin, counting heartbeats until the medevac rotors. He shook the memory off, letting water rinse it down the drain.
His footsteps returned to the front hall. He paused, shoulder against the archway to the living room, arms loosely crossed. “One more thing,” he said, voice so low the cat didn’t bother opening an eye, but he waited until Dar did.
“Lock the door after me.” She nodded. He pushed off the wall with a last glance at her—checking angles, exits, the set of her shoulders the same as he would a teammate before stepping onto the X. “You leave the porch light on tonight, yeah? And if the ghosts start talking too loudly, call me. Anytime.”
He pulled the front door shut behind him and waited for the sound of the deadbolt. Night air bit through his kit, carrying the scent of wet leaves and distant wood-smoke. His trainers made no noise as he moved down the path, and he dissolved into the dark as though he’d never existed.
Dar sat frozen for a moment after the door clicked shut, then she unfolded herself from the sofa and padded to the door. She threw the deadbolt and stood in the darkened foyer, her shoulders sagging as the day’s tension unwound.
She watched through the sidelight as Callum disappeared into the shadows, and something tightened in her chest—not quite fear, not quite relief. She’d spent the evening acutely aware of the space he occupied, the way he moved through her house with the economy of someone trained to clear rooms and assess threats. Major. Special Forces. The man who knew a hundred ways to kill and had probably used more than a few.
It should have unsettled her, but it didn’t. She was used to it-Logan, Rhys, Malik, and occasional others that had come through her life here. But what unsettled her now was how safe she’d felt with Callum here, how the knot between her shoulder blades had loosened when he’d stood in her kitchen making tea like it was the most natural thing in the world. She’d caught herself watching his hands—scarred, capable hands that had done God knows what in places she couldn’t imagine—and thinking about how gentle they’d been with Twigs, how carefully he’d set down her mug. It made no sense even to her why she didn’t feel that way with the others.
The power dynamic was obvious, impossible to ignore. He was younger, stronger, trained for violence in ways that made her investigative work look like amateur hour. If he wanted to hurt her, she wouldn’t stand a chance. Her Glock was upstairs in the safe, and even if it weren’t, she’d seen how fast he moved, that coiled readiness that never quite left him even when he was sprawled on her sofa eating tiramisu.
But he’d asked permission. For everything. The tea, the food, even staying. And when he’d touched her shoulder, it had been a question, not a demand—his fingers light enough that she could have shrugged them off without a word.
That’s the difference, she thought. He knows exactly how much power he has, and he’s choosing not to use it simply to protect me if it isn’t necessary.
It made her feel safer. It also made her feel vulnerable in a way she hadn’t expected, because she was trusting him with that choice. Trusting a man she barely knew, whose file she’d only skimmed, whose nightmares probably made hers look like bad dreams. A man who’d stood in her kitchen and promised to watch till the ghosts ran out of ammo, like it was the easiest promise in the world to make.
She pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the sidelight, her breath fogging the pane. The porch light cast a yellow pool on the front step, and beyond it, the street was empty. He was out there somewhere, walking back to his flat, and she wondered if he was still in operator mode—scanning rooflines, checking his six, cataloging every shadow that moved wrong.
Call me. Anytime.
The offer sat in her chest like a stone, heavy and warm. She could call him. If the walls started closing in, if the case files got too loud, if she woke at three a.m. with her heart hammering and Zoe’s name on her lips—she could call him, and he would come. She believed that absolutely, and the certainty of it was almost more frightening than the alternative.
She forced herself to move. Five steps to the kitchen. Three more to the wine rack. Her fingers traced the bottles until she found the Cabernet she’d been saving—not for any special occasion, just for a night like this when her mind wouldn’t quiet.
The cork came free with a satisfying pop. Dar didn’t bother with a glass. She took a swig straight from the bottle, then grimaced at herself. “Classy, Montgomery. Real classy.”
Zoe would have teased her mercilessly. The thought came unbidden, as it always did, a knife twist of grief that had dulled but never disappeared. Five years, and still her daughter’s ghost lingered in every corner.
Dar took the bottle with her, returning to the living room and settling back into the indent her body had left. The cushion was still warm. The room seemed both familiar and strange now, as if Callum had left some invisible imprint behind. She could still hear the quiet certainty in his voice, the way he’d said “fair trade” about the tiramisu—like they’d been friends for years instead of days.
Twigs abandoned her post on the armchair, striding off toward the stairs. Dar sat quietly, thinking or not thinking; she wasn’t sure she even had a sustainable thought, and sipped her wine.
The house didn’t feel as hollow as it had before Callum arrived. Something had shifted, like the air after a storm—clearer, lighter. She took another sip and set the bottle on the coffee table. Her gaze caught on the PS5 controllers, now neatly docked in the charger. The sight made her smile rather than sigh.
The living room looked different somehow. Not physically—the clutter remained despite their tidy up. Sean’s trainers still sat by the TV stand; Logan’s jacket still draped over the armchair; Rhys’s gun oil cloth folded neatly on the coffee table. But in the soft lamplight, these weren’t just signs of invasion anymore. They were markers of a life built from the ashes of what she’d lost.
Dar curled back onto the sofa, pulling the throw blanket over her legs, listening to the radiator tick as the house cooled, that familiar metal-on-metal percussion she’d heard a thousand times. But tonight it didn’t sound like an intruder testing floorboards or the prelude to something worse. It was just a radiator. Just the house doing what houses do when the temperature drops and the day releases its grip. Even the creak of the stairs—probably Twigs off to patrol the upstairs hallway—didn’t send Dar’s pulse spiking the way it would have a few hours ago. The sounds were still there, each one distinct and unmistakable in the quiet.
But they’d lost their teeth.
Her phone buzzed. Logan.
‘Sorry, sis. Calder pulled us for a thing. Back in 48. Don’t worry.‘
Relief flooded through her, sharp and immediate. He’s okay. They’re all okay.
The tightness in her chest loosened, that anxious knot she hadn’t fully acknowledged until now unraveling. She read the text again, parsing Logan’s casual tone for subtext the way she’d learned to do—don’t worry meant nothing had gone sideways, no one was bleeding, the op was routine enough that he could spare five seconds to thumb out a message.
She typed back: ‘Copy. Stay safe.‘ Then deleted it and wrote instead: ‘Bring me back something good. Not gas station jerky.‘
It was their rhythm, their language. The kind of sibling shorthand that said I love you without the weight of the actual words.
But this time, something was different. The panic that had clawed at her earlier—the silence, the empty house, the certainty that something terrible had happened—had been met and answered. Not by Logan’s text, but by Callum showing up on her doorstep with coffee and an easy patience, like her fear was reasonable rather than pathological.
She’d needed to know Logan was safe. But what had actually steadied her was the fact that someone had cared enough to notice she was spiralling.
Dar set the phone face-down on her thigh and stared at the ceiling. The wine bottle caught lamplight, half-empty now. Twigs had come from upstairs and now purred against her stomach, a small warm engine of contentment.
I wasn’t alone this time.
The realization settled over her like a blanket—soft, a little too warm, impossible to ignore. For five years, she’d white-knuckled her way through countless silences, the unexplained absences, every late-night spiral into worst-case scenarios. She’d done it alone many times because that’s what you did when everyone else was dead or gone. You held the line. You didn’t ask for help.
But Callum had offered it before she’d even known to ask. And she’d let him.
That was the part that scared her.
No responses yet