I don't explain further. Don't tell her about the six lives that ended because I wasn't fast enough, good enough. But the combativeness in her expression drains away, replaced by something that looks almost like understanding.
"I'm sorry." Just above a whisper. "I don't know what happened to you. But I'm sorry you carry it."
The apology catches me off guard. I'm not used to people reading me. Definitely not used to them responding with compassion instead of judgment.
"Get settled," I say roughly. "Dinner in an hour."
I turn back to the stove and focus on the mechanical act of cooking. Behind me, I hear her gather her bags and head down the hall. The door to the second bedroom opens, then closes.
I release a breath.
Vivian Russo is going to be a problem. Not because she's difficult or stubborn, though she clearly is. But because she makes me want to crack open the walls I've spent years building.
And those walls are the only thing keeping me functional.
I survived Kandahar. Survived the guilt that nearly drove me to eat my own sidearm in the months after. I built this life out of the wreckage of the man I used to be, and I did it by refusing to let anyone get close enough to hurt me again.
Twenty minutes ago, Vivian Russo looked at me like she could see straight through to my damage.
Twenty minutes ago, my chest did something it hasn't done in years.
I chop vegetables with more force than necessary and focus on the mission. Guard the witness. Keep her alive until she can testify. Get her out of my cabin and back to her life.
That's the job.
Everything else is noise.
CHAPTER TWO
VIVIAN
The bedroom smells like cedar and him.
I drop my suitcase on the floor and sink onto the edge of the bed. The breath I've been holding since San Francisco finally releases.
Six weeks. Six weeks since I watched Dominic Castellano put two bullets into a federal judge's head from fifteen feet away. Six weeks since my entire life imploded because I stayed late to prep for a deposition and happened to look out my window at exactly the wrong moment.
Or the right moment, depending on perspective. Judge Harrison was corrupt, taking bribes from the Castellanos for years, throwing cases, suppressing evidence. His death wasn't a tragedy so much as an inevitability. But I'm the only one who saw who pulled the trigger, and that makes me the most valuable and vulnerable person in federal custody.
I pull off my glasses and rub my eyes until I see stars. The headache that's been building since this morning has settled behind my temples like a squatter refusing to leave.
Deck Cross.
Even his name sounds like a weapon.
I'd expected someone older. Softer around the edges. A retired military type gone to seed in the mountains, collecting a government pension and playing soldier on his hobby farm. What I got instead was six-four of barely contained intensity, with shoulders wide enough to block a doorway and eyes the color of old money—green, but not soft green. Hard green. Assessing green. The kind of eyes that made me feel cataloged and filed under "potential threat."
And those hands. When he shook Marshal Taylor's hand, I noticed the calluses, the scars across his knuckles, the way his fingers wrapped around Taylor's palm like he could crush it without effort. Hands that have done violence. Hands that know exactly how much pressure it takes to break bone.
A smart woman would be afraid of him.
I'm not afraid. What shot through me when our eyes met was hot and reckless, danger in a completely different way than the Castellanos.
Not that it matters. I didn't survive two murder attempts to develop an inconvenient attraction to my grumpy mountain man bodyguard. That's the plot of the trashy romance novels I stress-read on planes, not my actual life.
A knock on the door makes me jump.
"Dinner's ready." His voice through the wood is rough like gravel.
