Men like Sam Jarrow didn't walk away. They circled. They waited. They found the moment when you thought you were safe, and then they struck.
I'd seen it before. I'd hunted men like him in a dozen countries, through jungles and cities and mountain passes. I knew the pattern. Knew the tells.
The rage that swept through me then was clean and cold and absolute. The kind of fury that didn't shake or shout. The kind that calculated trajectories and chose weapons and planned three moves ahead.
I'd been dulled by happiness. By peace. By the fantasy that I could have this—could have her—without consequence.
But consequence had found me, anyway.
And now I had a choice to make.
I could call Elias back. Could ask for extraction, for reinforcements, for someone else to handle this so I could get Hazel somewhere safe and far from here.
Or I could stay. Could dig in. Could use every skill I'd learned in a dozen dark places to protect her from whatever was coming.
It wasn't really a choice.
I'd told Hazel I was here. That I showed up. That I didn't hide.
I'd meant it.
I looked down at my phone one more time, at the messages still coming through from Elias, at the growing file of information about a murderer who should still be in prison.
Then I turned and walked back inside, where Hazel needed me more than my rage did.
For now.
But Sam Jarrow had made a mistake coming here. He'd shown his face. Made himself visible.
And when the time came—and it would come—I'd be ready.
18
HAZEL
The first thing I registered was the towel—cool against my forehead, the faint smell of laundry soap and Maude’s hand lotion. The second was Gideon’s palm, heavy and anchored in mine, the bone-scaffold of his knuckles under my fingers like a set of coordinates I could memorize and come back to.
Shock is a strange room to be locked inside. Everything looks familiar but nothing carries weight. I could see the ceiling, the hurricane glass over the sconces, the casserole bubbling on the sideboard. But all of it hovered a few inches off its life, like the world had been traced and I was staring at the transparent copy.
“Stay with me, sweetheart,” Maude murmured. The towel slid, dab-dab at my temple. “That’s it. Breathe like he taught you.”
I dragged air in, a scraping thing, and Gideon matched my rhythm without comment—inhale, exhale, a metronome set by a steady hand. I blinked and sound returned first: the oven’s soft whoof, a frog outside in the marsh, the hush of a man who could level buildings choosing not to.
When the room clicked back onto its rails, I realized I was on the floor. And that I’d been there long enough for the boards to print their story into my skin.
“I’m here,” Gideon said, low. His thumb stroked once inside my wrist.
“I know.” My voice surprised me by existing. I swallowed and it caught, but it went down.
“Can you sit up?” Maude asked.
I nodded and Gideon’s arm slid behind my shoulders like a beam under a sinking column—no hurry, all certainty. He didn’t lift, exactly. He invited the rest of me into gravity again and the rest of me obeyed. I ended up leaning against his chest with my knees drawn up, the way you do on hard days when you forget there are softer ways to be.
“He’s gone,” Maude said, and it wasn’t a question. “He won’t be back.”
“He will,” I said, because some truths don’t wait for optimism. “Men like him … they boomerang.”
“I won’t let him get close to you,” Gideon said, the words simple and terrifying and exactly what I needed to hear.
