“She’s not property,” I say. “Not Jinn’s. Not anyone’s.”
“No one said she is,” JC replies. “But you know how the patch reads to outsiders. You know what message it sends when the president claims a woman and his enforcer starts looking at her like that.”
I set my palms on the cold steel counter and breathe through it. “I’m not taking her from anyone. I’m keeping her breathing and off the road. He can be mad at me for that.”
JC and I are still jawing in the kitchen when a noise cuts through the hum of the fridge. A loud slam, the sound of a door closing.
All three of us look up. Nico is already moving. We push through the swinging kitchen door and cross the short hall to the side room.
The door is open. The couch is empty. The water glass sits on the file cabinet with a wet ring underneath it. The dent in the cushion where her head was is already rising.
“I shouldn’t have left her alone,” I say. The words taste like rust.
“Well, she wasn’t exactly walking when we left her,” JC answers. He scans the floor, then lifts his head. “Let’s go look for her.”
We hit the back door at once. Cool night air slides over my skin. The yard behind the clubhouse is a rectangle of patchy grass and dirt that gives way to a tree line. Beyond that, the county forgot to mow, then forgot to care. We jog across the gravel, past the burn barrel and the stack of busted pallets, and into the dark.
The forest takes us in fast. Pines crowd close, their trunks black in the half-moon light. Oak limbs knit overhead, leaves whispering. The ground is a mess of needles, deadfall, and sand. It smells like sap and damp soil and old smoke from a hundred bonfires. Crickets grind away in the brush. Somewhere far off a dog barks twice and goes quiet.
“Carrie,” Nico calls, voice low but carrying. “Carrie, answer me.”
Nothing.
JC swings his phone light on and sweeps the beam along the ground. It catches the scuff of a boot in the sandy strip that serves as a path. Another print a few feet on, toes turned slightly in. She’s moving, not fast, not straight.
“Here,” I say, pointing. “She cut left.”
We cross the shallow dip where rainwater runs after storms. Tonight it’s a ribbon of mud and reflected moon.
The creek curves and widens, then the trees fall back all at once. We step out onto a crescent of sand and crushed shell that edges a small lake. The water lies dark and calm, the surface broken by rings where fish kiss the top. Moonlight spills across it like poured milk. Cattails lean at the far bank. An old dock sags near our side, two planks missing and a tire tied off as a makeshift bumper.
The trees break and the lake spreads out in front of us, black glass under a white coin of moon. JC’s light skims the shoreline. Jeans, a shirt, one boot on its side, the other half buried in wet sand.
“Carrie,” I call. “Answer me.”
“Here,” she calls back, voice thin across the water. “By the dock.”
We reach the sagging boards and I see her, shoulders and face pale in the glow, fingers curled around a chain that hangs from the last post. Cold breath fogs the air above her mouth. Her hair slicks to her cheeks. The water kisses her collarbone and keeps rising when she slips.
I don’t think. I’m moving before my mind catches up. Nico yanks off his boots and is in the lake beside me. JC curses about shoes, then wades in anyway.
“Why do I always end up in the parts of the night that ruin my laundry,” he mutters. “Next time I’m bringing floaties.”
The cold hits like teeth and steals my breath for a beat. Then I dive and come up at her side. “I have you,” I say, and her gaze snaps to mine. Trust lands in my chest like an anchor.
Her fingers are numb on the chain, so I peel them loose, one by one. She surges toward me with a little gasp, arms locking around my neck. Her body slides into mine, soft curves and cold skin, and the shock of contact shoots heat through the freezing water. My hand finds her back, then her waist. The lake has her, slick and weightless, and when she shivers, her chest presses to me. I try to shift my grip and my palm skims the side of her breast. She inhales and I feel that breath with my mouth close to her temple.
“Easy,” I murmur, voice rougher than I want. “You’re all right.”
Nico arrives on her other side and cups her jaw. “Look at me, honey. Breathe slow. Levi has you.”
JC treads a yard away, keeping the light off her face. “Borders and boundaries, gentlemen. Get her warm first, fall in love later.”
“Later,” I say, meaning more than one thing.
Carrie’s fingers tighten at my nape. “You came,” she whispers, lips close to my ear.
“Always,” I answer before I can stop myself.
