She wanted to tell him he was going to be fine. That they would make it. That there would be time. But his grip tightened involuntarily around her shoulders, and she felt the tremor she couldn’t deny.
“Tell me,” she said.
“Lily wasn’t just my fiancée. She was my partner. Not officially. But we worked together. Shared cases. Covered each other.”
“Like we did.”
“Like we did. But deeper. We lived together. Built our whole lives around the work.” He stumbled, and Annie tightened herhold. “When she died, it wasn’t just losing the woman I loved. It was losing the person who made the world make sense.”
“Jack… what happened to her wasn’t your fault.”
“I know that. In my head. But knowing something and believing it aren’t the same.” He paused, breath rasping. “After she died, I chased the hardest cases I could find. The most dangerous ones. I thought if I kept everything else from getting close, nothing could take it away.”
“Including cold cases.”
“Including cold cases. And then you came along. And suddenly I had that again. A partner who saw what I saw. Who understood the work. Who made me better.”
Her eyes burned as he spoke.
“And then I realized I was falling for you. And it terrified me. Because I couldn’t survive losing another partner. I couldn’t survive watching someone else I loved die because of my job.”
“So you left first.”
“So I left first.”
They walked in silence after that, the road curving gently through the trees. Then, around a bend, Annie saw it—the distant glow of headlights. Civilization. Movement. Possibility.
“We’re close,” she said, hope threading through her exhaustion.
“Annie,” Jack said, his voice barely more than breath. “If something happens to me…”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“Promise me you’ll get Eleanor’s evidence to the authorities. Promise me you won’t stop.”
She felt the weight of him more fully now. Felt the cost of every step.
“I promise,” she said. “But we’re not finishing this apart. We’re finishing it the way we always did.”
Together.
***
Jack felt consciousness slipping away in waves, each step down the mountain road requiring more effort than the last. The bullet wound in his shoulder was a constant fire that seemed to be spreading through his entire body, and he could feel Annie supporting more and more of his weight as they made their slow progress toward the highway.
But it wasn't the physical pain that worried him most. It was the growing certainty that he might not live to see this case resolved, might not survive to help Annie bring Eleanor Blackwood's killers to justice.
Or to tell her how much these past few days have meant to me.
Working with Annie again had reminded him of Everything he'd lost when he'd walked away from her four years ago. Not just her brilliant investigative mind or her fearless pursuit of truth, but her compassion, her strength, her ability to see hope even in the darkest circumstances.
She'd risked her life to save him tonight, had charged into gunfire because she'd thought he was in danger. It was the kind of loyalty and courage he'd spent four years convincing himself he didn't deserve.
"Jack, stay with me," Annie said, her voice cutting through the fog of pain and exhaustion. "I can see the highway. We're almost there."
He forced himself to focus on her words, on the sound of distant traffic, on the promise of help and safety just ahead. But with each step, his vision seemed to narrow, and his legs felt less and less willing to support his weight.
"Tell me about the bank," he said, partly to distract himself from the pain and partly because he needed to make sure Annieunderstood what they were dealing with. "Eleanor's safe deposit box. What's our plan for accessing it?"
