He raised a brow, curious where she was going.
“Morris has an event next week,” she said. “A gala to kick off her presidential election bid.”
He’d heard about the gala. Every high-level Syndicate member they’d identified was going to be there.
“Hale expects me to attend,” she continued.
He didnotcare what Hale expected. Hale didn’t get to decide where she went, who she went with, or how close she got to Senator Morris.
He didn’t care if Morris herself had written the invitation in blood. The only thing that mattered was that Norah walking into a Syndicate-adjacent gala was a tactical nightmare—and the thought of her doing it with Hale made something territorial and unwelcome burn through his ribs.
His fingers tightened subtly at her waist.
Another—more twisted—part of him was already calculating how he could get inside that gala. How could Black Tower slip someone past the metal detectors, the donor lists, the fund-raising handlers. An event that big? They could make entry work. They could run surveillance. They could use it to get close to Morris’s inner circle. Perhaps identify other key members of the Syndicate. Even clone a few cell phones. Hale’s cell phone would be a good place to start.
But not with Norah in the blast radius.
“And he just told you to show up?” he asked. His voice sounded steady to anyone else. Inside, he was a live wire.
She hesitated, fingers curling in the fabric at his shoulder. “It wasn’t...really a request.”
He swore silently. Of course it wasn’t. Hale had been grooming her for years, trusting her judgment, bringing her into rooms she had no business being in. Marshall used to think Hale was just overly reliant on her brilliance. Now he wondered if it was strategic.
Another beat of music throbbed between them—slow, aching, too intimate by half. He shifted closer without meaning to.
A gala that size meant choke points, cameras, security teams, crowded entrances. A hundred ways to get someone alone. A thousand ways for things to go wrong. He didn’t want her anywhere near that room. Not as an analyst. Not as collateral. Not as the woman Hale expected to have at his side like she was some expendable accessory.
“He expects my boyfriend to come with me.”
Marshall stopped moving.
Her breathing brushed his collarbone, shallow and uncertain. The music kept going. The crowd kept laughing. But Marshall’s focus tunneled to a single word still ringing in his head. Boyfriend.
He needed air. Space. Distance from the hundred watching eyes and the suffocating warmth of her body pressed to his.
“Come with me,” he murmured.
It wasn’t a question.
He released her waist only long enough to guide her off the dance floor by the hand, weaving them through swaying couples and clustered family members with practiced ease. No one stopped them. No one noticed anything was wrong. He didn’t breathe until they slipped out the side door of the barn and into the cool night.
String lights stretched across the lawn like low-hanging stars. The music thumped faintly behind them. Crickets hummed inthe tall grass beyond the fence. Out here, it felt like another world.
Marshall released her hand, paced a few steps, then turned back to her.
“What did you just say?” His voice was low. Calm in the way only a man barely holding the line could sound.
Norah wrapped her arms around herself. “I said Hale expects my boyfriend to attend with me.” Her words left small clouds of steam in the night air.
Marshall stared at her, every trained instinct parsing the implications. Without his eyes leaving hers, he pulled off his coat.
“Your what?” he said softly.
She gave a helpless, small laugh. “I panicked. At the meeting last week. I told one of Morris’s aides I had a boyfriend to keep him from flirting. Hale heard. Now he wants this imaginary man to show up.”
He stepped closer, hanging his sport coat around her shoulders. November in West Virginia was no place for a silk dress with far too much skin exposed. His jaw worked once—slow and lethal—as he processed her words.
Of course Hale had heard. Of course he’d latched onto it. And of course he’d decided her “boyfriend” should come along to the one event in DC Marshall least wanted her within fifty miles of.
