“I love you too.”I let out a shaky breath.“Which is very inconvenient right now.”
He huffed a faint laugh, then kissed my forehead.“Go to sleep.We need your brain tomorrow.Spade’s going to want you on maps again.Casey’s going to run drills.I want you upright and yelling at me when I do something dumb.”
“So… always.”
“Pretty much.”
His arm settled back around my waist.I tucked myself into his side and focused on the steady rise and fall of his breathing, tried to let it count me down the way I’d learned to do when my mind refused to stop spinning.
One.Two.Three.
Eventually, exhaustion dragged me under.
* * *
Morning arrived disguised as a countdown, bacon grease heavy in the air.
The clubhouse remained active while dawn barely cleared the trees.Plates clinked.Coffee poured.Men strode with undisguised purpose.Children sensed the tension and stayed near their mothers, hovering close to knees instead of racing around the pool table.
Spade materialized in the kitchen doorway -- a ghost running on caffeine and spite.Wild hair.Wrinkled T-shirt.Tablet clutched in one hand, empty mug dangling from his fingers.
“Coffee,” he announced, then thrust the tablet toward Kane and me as though presenting evidence of a crime.“Then office.”
I blinked at him from my stool at the table.“Good morning to you too.”
“Morning starts when the sun hits the horizon,” he shot back.“We’re already behind.”
Kane slid a mug in front of me and held another out to Spade without looking away from him.“Drink first,” Kane warned, voice calm but edged.“Then kidnap my girl.”
“Bossy.”Spade took a long swallow anyway.
I forced down two strips of bacon and a chunk of toast, having learned through miserable experience how an empty stomach amplified fear.Across from me, Spade twitched and fidgeted, eyeing each slow bite as though my chewing rhythm violated some unspoken code of urgency.
“All right,” I relented.“Let’s go before you start vibrating through the floor.”
Kane pressed a kiss to my temple as I stood, the touch brief but steady.“Yell if he forgets you’re not a robot.”
“I upgraded her to cyborg,” Spade muttered as we walked.“At least half human.”
“Only half?”I shot him a look.
“The half who keeps telling me my coffee intake is concerning.”He pushed open the office door with his shoulder.
The space reminded me of a surveillance hub crammed into a closet rather than a room in our clubhouse.“You’re building a spaceship.”
“Tracking net,” he corrected, already tapping the screen.“Roth-level problem requires Roth-level obsession.”
Spade tapped a key, bringing up a grainy traffic camera feed.I watched a sleek dark car roll through an intersection.The camera caught the driver through the windshield -- enough to make out the shape of his face.He hunched forward in his seat, shoulders curved inward as though his spine bore the weight of every lie he’d ever told.
My stomach tightened.“That’s him.”
“Yeah.”Spade’s eyes stayed hard.“He’s made three trips toward the hideaway house in the last two days.Short ones.Drop off, pick up, check something, then back out.Never stays.”
I leaned closer to the screen, not because I wanted to see him, but because part of me needed to prove he was real -- needed the monster to have a face.Roth looked… tired.Smaller than I remembered, like the confidence had been scraped away by fear and pressure.
“He looks exhausted,” I murmured before I could stop myself.
Spade’s mouth curled.“Fear burns you down faster than drugs.Diaz keeps his tools sharp by scaring them into obedience.”
