Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 46223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46223 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 231(@200wpm)___ 185(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
The Suburban noses into view, black and gleaming like a shark. Nolan pops the rear door before I even look at him. I sweep the lane—no hostile tails, no crouched feet where there shouldn’t be—but someone is sprinting to our right with his phone already at shoulder height.
I pivot, stepping into his space. “Not today,” I say, and let him see it in my eyes—polite, firm, unmovable. He stutters to a stop like he’s hit a glass wall. Vanessa slides into the back seat. I go in after her, slam the door, and Nolan shoots the gap like he was born to it, merging, signaling, all of it clean and boring to anyone who might be paying attention. The kind of driving that keeps you invisible.
For a block, nobody talks. The wipers thwump. The interior smells faintly of leather and the citrus cleaner I approve for vehicles. Rain pebbles the glass. I feel her next to me, small in the oversized hoodie, the hood now off. Her hair is a little mussed. I have the stupid, caveman urge to smooth it.
“I’m okay,” she says first, a little breathless, like she’s checking with herself and then me.
“You did good,” I say. My voice is rougher than I mean it to be. “You did perfect.”
Her mouth slants. “That’s because my security guy kissed me in front of half the Pacific Northwest.”
“That was a tactic,” I say. I keep my eyes on the side mirror. “It took away the shot.”
“It did,” she agrees, and then she looks at me in that way she has, the look that makes it feel like the car is smaller than it was a second ago. “Also… it was not terrible.”
Understatement of the year. The memory of it hits me like a second delayed impact—the give of her mouth, the soft inhale right before, the way my hand wanted to span her waist and never move. My chest tightens, a pressure I don’t like because it doesn’t belong to the job.
I force a breath through my teeth. “We’ll debrief in the room,” I say, because that’s the safest sentence I own.
“About the kiss?” she asks, too innocent.
“About the route,” I counter, but I can’t quite keep my mouth from kicking up.
Her phone buzzes. Another. Then it goes from buzz-buzz to constant. She unlocks it, and her eyebrows shoot up. “Oh.”
“What?”
She turns the screen so I can see. It’s a blast furnace of notifications. Mentions. Tags. Headlines already cropping up from accounts that exist only to be first. The image on top is a blurry still from the terminal—my shoulder, the hood, the angle of my hand. A caption: VANESSA MERCADO’S NEW MYSTERY MAN? followed by three fire emojis and a heart.
“Viral,” she says, half-amused, half-not. “We’re trending.”
I close my eyes for half a second, then open them. I’m already pulling my phone, already thumbing open the encrypted app we use for internal traffic. I type fast.
SEA arrival compromised. Pap presence heavy. Used cover to extract. Photos everywhere. Need direction. Potential reassignment to reduce risk?
The reply is nearly instant. Dean doesn’t sleep, and if he does, it’s with one eye open.
CALL.
I tap the phone icon and he answers on the first ring. “Talk to me.”
I lay it out clean. He grunts once when I reach the kiss. That grunt could mean a dozen things, but with Dean it usually means something like good thinking, bad optics, we’ll deal.
“Option A, we fight the story,” I say. “We deny, we firewall, we try to reset. Option B, we lean in and use it. Option C, you put someone else on point and move me off the line.”
“You want off the line?” he asks, bluntly.
I look at Vanessa. She’s scrolling, eyes wide, cheeks pink, trying to keep up with a hurricane that decided she’s a coastline. Something in my chest makes a decision without me. “No,” I say, then clear my throat. “Negative. I’m invested.”
Dean hears everything. “Then Option B,” he says. “This cover makes you two an easier sell in public spaces. You can hold her hand without someone deciding you’re kidnapping her. Keep the narrative controlled. We’re not chasing denials for two weeks. You manage the boundaries. Copy?”
“Copy,” I say. “Any other assets in Seattle?”
“Local support standing by. I’ll have Rae coordinate with the hotel. You already booked the suite?”
“Under the alias. Corner, high floor. I’ll sweep on entry.”
“Good. And Riggs?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
The line clicks dead. I stare at the rain for a second. The thing about being told not to be an idiot is it only gets said when the terrain is prime for idiocy.
“What did your boss say?” Vanessa asks, cautious.
“That we use this,” I say. “We make it work for us. Publicly, you and I are…” I gesture between us.
She supplies, dry, “Dating.”
“Apparently,” I say. My mouth goes a little dry. “It’s cleaner. It gives me pretext to be close, to make calls on your behalf. People understand that shape better than ‘security asset.’”