Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
DelRey just lost assets.
And SAPG now knows that Tessa isn’t a soft target.
CHAPTER 14
Tessa
The interstate south of Seattle opens up past the industrial corridor, cranes and container yards give way to stretches of Douglas fir. Cole drives the way he does everything—contained, deliberate, but only one hand perched casually on the wheel.
We have Marissa Hale’s address pulled up on the navigation and Cole isn’t happy with me that we’re taking this trip.
We’ve been on the freeway for twenty minutes and the silence between us speaks volumes. He’d made his position clear before we left the building.
Arms crossed over his chest in his apartment this morning, working very hard to keep his voice level, he told me in no uncertain terms that driving to Tacoma only two days after a four-man breach team came through my living room window was not an idea he was willing to entertain.
I told him I was going with or without him and I thought his head might explode. He’d stared at me for a long moment, jaw tight, war raging in his eyes. I stared him down and then he grabbed his keys.
So here we are.
“She may not even open the door,” he says finally, eyes on the road.
“She’ll open it,” I say.
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” I allow. “But she will.”
He exhales through his nose, a sound I’ve catalogued over the years as the specific moment the man knows he’s not going to win an argument and hasn’t fully accepted it yet.
“Tessa.” My name on his tongue—low and careful—means he’s about to verbalize a thought he’s been sitting on. “Two nights ago, someone cut through your living room window.”
“I know. I was there.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” I turn to look at him fully. “Cole. I watched a man get run down in a parking garage. I hid behind a car while his killer walked toward me. I woke up to a perimeter alert and spent several long minutes not knowing if we were going to make it out of my house.” My voice stays steady because I need it to. “I am aware of the danger. I am not pretending it doesn’t exist.”
Both hands move to the wheel, his knuckles turning white. “Then act like it.”
“I am,” I retort with frustration. “But I have a job to do and that means going to Tacoma.”
His eyes stay fixed on the freeway. “I don’t like it,” he says.
“I know you don’t.”
“I want it on record that I strongly object.”
“Noted,” I say. “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re with me.”
He doesn’t answer right away, but when he finally does, his voice has lost some of its edge. “You sure she’ll talk?”
“No,” I say honestly. “But she has information and she’s carrying it alone. People don’t carry things alone forever.”
He glances at me briefly. “That’s a theory.”
“It’s an observation,” I correct.
He doesn’t argue, which means he’s filing it away rather than dismissing it.
The miles unspool quietly, and eventually the early-morning clouds break just enough to let a thin blade of sun shine through.
“Do you regret giving up smoke jumping?” I ask, wanting to fill the void with a topic other than shop talk.
It isn’t what I planned to say but the car feels like a confessional, and I’ve been curious about what this man has been doing with his life for the last five years. I think the fact we’re sleeping together again gives me the right to be curious.
“I don’t regret it at all. I’m where I’m supposed to be.” He turns to look at me pointedly.
“Did you go straight to Jameson after you left?”
He shakes his head. “I worked a private security contract in Dubai for eight months.”
“Dubai,” I repeat. “Was it nice?”
He lifts a shoulder, checks his mirrors again, making sure we’re not being followed. Three days ago, I would have thought that was paranoia, but not now.
“It paid well,” he says flatly. “And it wasn’t here. I needed a change of scenery.”
“And then Jameson,” I say. “Tell me about the work you’ve done since you joined them.”
Cole launches into a recap of the last few months, mostly security details and nothing too dangerous sounding. He certainly did not have the opportunity to shoot anyone the way he did in my house two nights ago.
The drive to Tacoma doesn’t take long and before I know it, we’ve arrived.
Marissa Hale’s house sits at the end of a cul-de-sac in a subdivision built sometime in the nineties, the kind of neighborhood where every third house has the same roofline but different shutters. Hers is a pale-yellow split-level with white trim, a minivan in the driveway, and a child’s bicycle tipped on its side near the front steps.
Cole pulls to the curb and cuts the engine. He surveys the street in both directions—a sweep of the visible sightlines, a note of the neighboring houses, the parked cars.