“How much farther?” she asks.
Good question. The industrial area sits another mile and a half to the southeast. It’s a manageable distance under normal circumstances. But circumstances stopped being normal the moment nine Phoenix operatives decided to turn our safe house into a shooting gallery.
“Close.”
“Cooper.” Her voice drops, becomes gentle in a way that cuts through my tactical focus like a blade. “I can see you’re hurt. Really hurt. We need to deal with that before we go anywhere else.”
“Later.”
“Not later. Now.”
“Eliza—”
“No.” She steps closer, close enough that her scent cuts through the copper smell of blood, vanilla, and something distinctly feminine that makes my brain short-circuitdespite everything else happening. “You’re bleeding through your shirt, you can barely stand straight, and you keep touching that shoulder like it’s on fire. We’re stopping. Right here.”
“Phoenix—”
“Will find us a lot faster if you collapse from blood loss in the middle of the street.”
She’s right. I hate that she’s right, but tactical reality doesn’t care about pride or masculine bullshit about admitting weakness. I’m compromised. Getting worse by the minute. And a compromised operator is a liability to the mission and the principal.
Eliza is the principal. The woman carrying Phoenix’s financial records in her bra, the brilliant linguist who cracked their entire funding network. Keeping her alive trumps everything else.
Including my ego.
“There.” I point toward a maintenance building at the edge of the park. “Utility shed. Out of sight.”
She nods, slides her arm around my uninjured side. The contact sends electricity through my system, warmth and strength that has nothing to do with tactical support and everything to do with the way she feels against me.
We cross the open ground quickly, staying low, using trees and playground equipment for concealment. The maintenance building is exactly what I hoped—concrete block construction, heavy door, no windows. Built for keeping equipment secure, which means it’ll keep us secure too.
The lock takes thirty seconds to bypass. Inside, the space is cramped but defensible—electrical panels, pipe fittings, the kind of industrial storage that nobody checks regularly. A single bare bulb provides dim light.
It’s perfect.
I lean against the concrete wall, finally allowing myself to assess the damage properly. The shoulder wound is worse than I thought—entry and exit holes about two inches apart, muscletorn, bleeding steady. The ribs are manageable, just a graze that looks dramatic but isn’t life-threatening.
But the blood loss is real. My shirt is soaked, dark stains spreading across the tactical vest’s fabric. When I pull my hand away from the shoulder, my palm comes back slick and red.
FIFTEEN
Cooper
TRUST
Eliza sees the blood—toomuch blood. Her face goes pale, but she doesn’t panic. Doesn’t start babbling about hospitals or antibiotics or any of the civilian responses that would get us killed.
Instead, she moves with purpose.
“Sit,” she says, voice steady and commanding in a way I’ve never heard from her before. “On the floor, back against the wall.”
“I’m fine?—”
“Cooper.” The tone stops me cold. Authority I recognize, the kind that cuts through bullshit and demands obedience. “Sit. Down. Now.”
And I do.
Not because she ordered me to. Because the blood loss is making my legs shake, and the wall looks more appealing than trying to stay upright through pure stubbornness.
