Too young. Too soft. Probably not even twenty-five.
I don’t need a birth certificate to know it. It’s in the shape of her face, the way she tries to make herself smaller, the way her gaze keeps searching for exits like she’s counting the steps it would take to run.
Like somebody taught her that existing is something she has to apologize for.
My jaw tightens.
The comms crackle in my ear. Gray checks in.
“I’ve got her,” I answer under my breath.
Her neighbor is bold in that way older women get when they’ve survived enough to stop being polite. She watches me like she’s weighing whether I’m the kind of man who protects or the kind who takes.
Good.
I prefer people who aren’t afraid to bite.
Sierra’s eyes track me when I step closer. Not just my face. My arm, the ink, the scars she can see. The way I move.
For a split second I can tell she’s clocking what I am.
Not law enforcement.
Not some college boyfriend with soft hands and excuses.
Something built for the ugly parts.
I keep my expression neutral. I’ve trained myself to do it. Learned how to look calm while everything inside me goes razor-edged.
Because if I look shocked by her, if I look hungry, if I look like anything other than control, she’ll bolt or break.
And I can’t afford either.
Her eyes meet mine, and there’s fear there, yes, but there’s also fight. A stubborn spark she’s trying to hide under grief and exhaustion.
That spark hits me harder than it should.
I want to do something stupid, like touch her cheek, like tell her she’s safe now.
Instead I do the only thing I’m here to do.
I get her moving.
“Grab what you need,” I say. “We’re moving.”
She swallows hard. “I already have it.”
Her bag strap is white-knuckled in her fist.
That tells me everything.
I don’t have her full story yet. Gray didn’t waste time feeding me details, just the essentials: location, identity, possible intrusion.
Asset: Sierra Hayes Quinn.
He didn’t need to say more.
He sent me because he knows what the name attached to hers means to me. Because six years ago, overseas, on a job that went sideways fast, Marcus Quinn pulled me out of a kill zone with rounds snapping the dirt around us. He hauled me behind cover, slapped a tourniquet on my leg with hands that didn’t shake, and kept talking to me like I was going to live until my body believed him.
