Her eyes flick everywhere, searching for an exit. She swallows, the small human sound of someone who knows she’s poked a sleeping thing. “No, Sheriff. I just— I thought?—”
“Listen to me,” Jacob says, each word a tightened wire against my ribs. “And listen very fucking carefully—Summer does not leave my side until that son of a bitch is in cuffs, or under the ground. Got it?” His hand presses against my hip, a possession and a promise in the same motion. “But mark my words: if I find him first….” He lets the sentence hang, slow and black.
Navarro goes still. Maddox’s jaw works but he doesn’t say a word.
The hospital lights buzz above us and for a second everything feels thin—like paper stretched over a bone. My breath comes shallow and fast. I don’t know whether to be comforted or terrified that the man who says he loves me is also the one threatening to burn a county to save me.
The silence presses in, deep enough that my breath comes shallow, like my lungs are refusing to expand. My throat burns. My full body shaking— a tremor I can’t stop.
“Jacob….” My voice is a whisper, barely there. “Jacob… I’m scared.”
His head snaps toward me like he’d forgotten I was standing here. His eyes burn into mine, dark and fierce. And for the first time, I see something behind the fury.
Fear.
Real, bone-deep fear.
Chapter 24
Eternity, if I Have To
Jacob
She doesn’t see it, but my whole fucking body fractures when she says my name like that. Weak. Shaking. Terrified.
I want to tear their throats out just for putting that look in her eyes. But it’s not their fault. They’re two of my best detectives and—if anything—I’m grateful it’s them managing the case.
Summer is trembling with fear. I want to crush my mouth against hers just to stop the sound of it. To give her an escape, to give her some of my strength.
Navarro clears her throat, glancing at me. “Sheriff, do you want us to move forward with the hospital interview once the patient’s stable?”
“No. Hold off until I say otherwise. Priority is getting Benny to talk and that will only happen if Summer goes in.” I turn my face away from her, hiding the inner turmoil it causes me when I think of her and him in the same room, especially now I know he could be linked to Moore. “I want eyes on him every hour of the day. Anyone comes to visit; I want their plates logged.”
“Yes, Sheriff,” Navarro says, already thumbing notes into her phone.
Maddox nods. “We’ll rotate shifts with Harper and Rio. We’ll make sure he’s never out of sight.”
My hand twitches toward them. “Good. And if he so much as blinks, I want to know about it. Understood?”
“Understood,” Maddox answers without a hint of a smile this time.
Summer grips my arm, nails biting through fabric. She doesn’t realize she’s doing it.
I tilt my head down, catch her wide, wet eyes.She’s breaking. Just the name Jackson Moorehas her in a frenzy.
I swear to God, if Benny… if whoever-the-fuck-he-is… had anything to do with this—if he knew Moore’s escape was coming—then I’ll finish what I started in my driveway. ICU bed or not.
The detectives finally peel off, their polished shoes clicking across linoleum until the doors swallow them whole.
The silence left behind is suffocating. Summer’s nails are still hooked in my arm, pointed little crescents through the fabric. I catch her wrist before she can speak, my fingers closing around it—not harsh, just enough to steer her.
A doctor knocks on the door, needing to use the room for his clinic.
I don’t want her back in the waiting room. I don’t want the world to see her like this.
“This way,” I mutter, pulling her down a narrow side corridor away from the hospital room and the eyes waiting there.
She stumbles once, catching herself, her bare shoulders grazing the sterile walls as we move. Her hair comes loose from her ponytail—dry now, curling in loose, untamed waves. The scent of her shampoo clings faintly to the air, something soft and familiar in a place that smells like bleach and steel.
