Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 58377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58377 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 292(@200wpm)___ 234(@250wpm)___ 195(@300wpm)
Focus, Maddox.
I run drills in my head:
08:30—Riggs checks alley, establishes command post by van.
09:00—Cam sets up paint. Kids arrive; parents sign waivers.
09:05—perimeter walk every seven minutes; call signs, comm checks.
Bullet points march into place; order blooms. Underneath, desire thrums—unruly, insurgent. The contrast almost tears me in two.
At 04:45 the sky over the bay bruises lilac. I power down, squeeze the bridge of my nose. Another day starts in ninety minutes, and if I’m lucky I’ll snag a twenty-minute combat nap before Cam finds me.
I should be exhausted. Instead I feel blazing, alive, nerve endings humming like live wires. Because I get to guard her again. Not because I’m the only one who can—but because I’m the one who will.
And nobody—no stalker, no sniper, no other BRAVO operative—is taking that from me.
6
Camille
Morning smells like espresso, turpentine, and impending trouble.
I’m up before my alarm, jittery with the kind of energy that feels half excitement, half storm warning. Today’s the community mural—twenty kids, six teachers, three pallets of paint, and a ridiculously competent security specialist. I tug on ripped jeans I don’t mind destroying and a Kingsley Foundation tee, then knot my hair high. I’m swiping an indigo streak across my eyelid (makes hazel eyes pop in photos; sue me) when my phone buzzes.
Sawyer: Wheels roll in 10. You need protein.
Me: Are you my bodyguard or my nutrition coach?
Sawyer: Both. Downstairs.
I grin despite myself.
He’s waiting in the kitchen with a travel mug (rocket-fuel latte, vanilla, oat—nailed it again) and a foil-wrapped breakfast burrito I’d normally forget to eat until noon. He doesn’t comment when I inhale half of it standing by the island, just hands me a napkin and a tactical vest-shaped fanny pack loaded with hand wipes, mini sunscreen, and a collapsible water bottle.
“You realize this is overkill,” I say, wiping salsa from my thumb.
“You say overkill, I say normal.” He shoulders a duffel. “Riggs is en route. We’ll link up on-site.”
“That’s the friend you called last night?” I ask, because yes, I heard him in the hall at some inhuman hour, low voice edged in gravel as he spoke to Dean. The walls of this house are thick, but my curiosity is thicker.
“BRAVO teammate,” he corrects. “Former Force Recon. Good eyes. Better jokes. Don’t let him talk you into parkour.”
“Noted.”
We take the Foundation van today. Sawyer insisted on swapping out license plates and adding a portable dash cam that feeds straight to his tablet. He drives. I sketch in the air, explaining what the kids will design on the mural today: a river of color pouring out of cracked asphalt, turning into a school of fish that morph into paper airplanes that become ideas that become—“—the city skyline,” I finish, air-brushing invisible strokes. “Hope, motion, continuity.”
“Symbol heavy,” he says, but the corner of his mouth tips. Translation: he likes it.
Traffic crawls through Dansforth Hill, then spits us into Blue-Sand Beach where the old municipal parking wall waits—gray, pitted, a thousand square feet of urban meh begging to be transformed. A nonprofit rec center across the alley is lending us restrooms and storage; the principal already signed waivers, bless her.
An unmarked matte-gray pickup idles across the street. The driver jumps out the second we roll up: tall, rangy, beard like he lost a bet with a lumberjack, mirrored shades. He wears BRAVO cargo pants, a faded baseball cap, and a grin that says I specialize in trouble, and I’m glad you brought some.
“Morning, Sunshine,” he calls to Sawyer.
“Riggs.” Sawyer clasps forearms with him—battle-brother style—then angles toward me. “Cam, meet Andy Riggs, we call him Riggs. He’ll be second watch.”
Riggs pops the shades up onto his hat and whistles low. “You didn’t mention your client was the Cam Kingsley. Thought you were dragging me out here for graffiti control.” He sticks out his hand, and I like him instantly. “Ma’am.”
“Cam,” I correct. “Or I’ll start calling you Sergeant Beard.”
He barks a laugh. “Heard you were mouthy. This is going to be fun.”
Sawyer gives him the look—the one that could cauterize a wound at twenty paces. “Focus. Perimeter first.”
They fall into a rhythm so practiced it’s almost choreographed. Riggs sweeps the rooflines, counting windows. Sawyer maps ingress/egress, chalking colored X’s on the ground like he’s laying mines. Whatever all of that means. They set up collapsible stanchions to create a kid-safe zone, position the van as a barrier on one end and Riggs’ truck on the other, and plug a portable camera into a lamppost. It feels… excessive. Also reassuring, in the way wearing a helmet is annoying until the fall.
“You two guarding paint or the Crown Jewels?” I call.
“Paint is the crown,” Riggs replies. “Ask Banksy.” Then, in a quiet voice to Sawyer, “She’s gonna be a handful.”
“I heard that,” I sing back. “And I'm impressed you know who Banksy is.”
Sawyer and Riggs exchange a glare, and I laugh. If I didn’t know any better I’d say Sawyer’s jealous, and that does something wicked to my body.