“But people need you.”
“Youneed me.”
“I’m not going to die if you leave.” I manage a shaky smile. “Those people will if you don’t.”
He stares at me for a long moment, his expression warring between duty and want. Then, he exhales heavily and presses his forehead against mine.
“This isn’t over,” he says roughly. “Not even close. You understand me?”
“I understand.”
“I’m going to come back for you, and when I do, I’m going to finish what we started.” His hand finds my chin, tilting my face up. “Every. Last. Inch.”
I shiver.
He kisses me once more—hard, wet, a promise of things to come—and then he’s pulling away, buttoning up his shirt andpulling his special gloves from his back pocket and putting them on. Even though he’s not in his V suit, he’s already changed, Vanguard again before my eyes. The transformation is jarring. One moment, he’s the man who just had his face between my thighs; the next he’s America’s superhero, off to literally rescue people from a burning building.
“Danny will bring the car,” he says, already moving toward the edge of the rooftop. “Stay here. Don’t move.”
“What if I get cold?”
He pauses long enough to grab his jacket from the ground and drape it around my shoulders. It smells like him—cedar and whiskey and sex.
“I’ll warm you up when I get back,” he says, and then he’s gone, launching himself into the sky, a dark shape against the glittering city.
I stand alone on the rooftop, his jacket wrapped around me, the wind whipping my hair, the taste of him still on my lips.
What the hell just happened?
I kissed someone, and they didn’t die.
The wind cuts through his jacket, but I don’t feel it. I’m standing very still, the way you do when something lands on you that might be a butterfly or might be a bomb, and you don’t know which one it is.
I came three times from another person’s touch. I was about to lose my virginity to my surveillance target on a rooftop in Manhattan.
And now, I’m standing here in a ruined dress, my mission completely and utterly compromised.
This is fine, I tell myself.It’s just physical. I’m allowed to have fun and get off. I’m just using him to get closer. It doesn’t mean anything.
But even as I think it, I know it’s becoming a lie.
Somewhere out there, Vanguard is saving lives. Being a hero. Doing the job I’m supposed to be investigating him for.
I pull his jacket tighter around my shoulders and wait.
CHAPTER 16
VANGUARD
The fire is a beast,a residential building in the Bronx, twelve stories high. The blaze started on the sixth floor and ripped upward through ancient ventilation shafts that should have been replaced decades ago. By the time I arrive, the top four floors are fully engulfed, and people are hanging out of windows, crying for help.
I pull a family of four from the eleventh floor—mother, father, two kids under ten, and a golden retriever who licks my face the whole way down. The father keeps thanking me, over and over, tears cutting tracks through the soot on his face, and the little girl clutches my arm like I’m the only solid thing in a world that’s turned to smoke and ash.
“It’s okay,” I tell her as I set them down on the street, far from the flames. “You’re safe now. You’re all safe.”
The dog licks my face again.
I did my job.
