A near miss.
Her stomach turned. She would’ve been dead if she’d opened that compartment a second slower.
Footsteps thundered into the salon. “Viv!”
“I’m here!” she called out in a hoarse voice.
Vivian pressed a hand against the wall to steady herself. Her legs still shaky, her skin prickling from the residual heat.
Blake burst through the door, crossed the space in two steps, and dropped to one knee beside her. The sharpness in his expression faltered when he saw her face. “Viv—talk to me. You hurt?”
His voice cracked on her name. He hid it quickly, but not quickly enough. The fear in his eyes wasn’t something she’d ever seen directed at her—and it rattled her more than the blast had.
She blinked, caught off guard. His hand hovered near her arm, close enough that she felt the warmth of him, steady and infuriatingly grounding. For a heartbeat, she almost reached for him first. Almost. But he held himself still, gaze sweeping over her in a slow, searching pass—as if he needed proof she was still breathing.
Her heart tripped. “I’m fine,” she said, too quickly. “It just startled me. Your jacket didn’t fare so well, though.”
His eyes stayed on hers for a beat—too intent, too knowing—before flicking to the scorched wall. “You sure?”
“Pretty sure you don’t want to wear your jacket again.” She tried to tease, but it came out rough, so she forced her voice steady. “Flare trap. Wired to the small compartment behind the bed. I triggered it.”
Blake’s jaw worked as he turned toward the damage, crouching low. The movement drew his shoulder close enoughthat she caught the faint scent of rain on his coat. His hand brushed the charred latch, careful, deliberate.
“Not amateur work,” he murmured, frown deepening. “Whoever did this knew exactly what they were building.”
She swallowed hard, trying to focus on the scorch marks instead of the residual thrum beneath her skin. It shouldn’t matter that he’d looked at her that way—that, for one split second, she’d believed he cared about more than the mission.
But it did.
And that made her angry.
Vivian crossed her arms, retreating a half step, needing space from both the smoke and whatever emotion had just clawed its way to the surface. “Well, whoever built it almost had me.”
He looked up at her then, eyes dark and steady. “Almost doesn’t count, Viv.”
She exhaled through her nose, hard. “Tell that to the burn on my hand.”
He took her wrist gently. The tenderness stole her breath—not the pain. His touch unraveled something small and stubborn inside her, a thread she didn’t dare follow. Affection was dangerous; it made people careless. It had destroyed her family once. She wouldn’t let it destroy her.
His thumb skimmed the reddened skin, the touch light but grounding. “We should clean that before it blisters.”
The quiet stretched.
“I’ll manage,” she said, pulling back before the warmth of his touch could unravel her resolve. Depending on him, even for a moment, felt more terrifying than the explosion.
Something flickered in his expression—frustration, maybe disappointment—before he stood, the moment gone.
“Yeah,” he said finally, voice back to steel. “You always do.”
Blake leaned closer to the compartment, the beam of his flashlight cutting through the faint haze. Smoke curled from theblackened edges, the air still sharp with the metallic tang of spent flare powder. He used a rag to shift a warped panel aside, the wood creaking under his touch.
“Careful,” Vivian warned, her voice too raspy. Her pulse hadn’t settled, and her hand still trembled at her side.
“Relax,” he murmured, too calm, too sure. “It’s not wired to blow twice.”
She bit back the retort forming on her tongue. He always had that tone — the one that made her feel too cautious for worrying, even when the odds of dying were high enough to make most agents sweat.
He reached deeper inside the compartment, then stopped. “Got something.”
