Logan grunted softly.“She’s tough, but she doesn’t have training.Trauma rewires optimists like her.Makes ’em try even harder to be fine.”
“Yeah,” Kayne murmured.“She’s doing that.And I’m about half a second from ripping doors off hinges because I can’t be in two places at once.”
His bosses didn’t judge him.
“You shouldn’t be working this solo,” Luke announced.“We’re sending backup.”
Kayne straightened.“Who?”
“Anja Johansen,” Logan said.“I just texted her.She’s packing up.You’ll have her by morning.”
That eased the tension in his shoulders.Not much, but enough to breathe.Anja was intelligent, lethal, and calm under pressure.She was a damn good shadow who could blend into any space.Exactly who he needed.
“She’ll handle external threats,” Luke continued.“You focus on Chloe.”
Kayne swallowed.“I am.”
“Focus,” Luke said again, more pointedly.“Not implode.”
Kayne didn’t answer because he wasn’t sure which direction he was actually heading.
Logan’s tone softened.“You’ve got this.Get some rest if you can.”
Kayne hung up with a terse thank you, even though sleep was not remotely possible.His pulse was still a slow, steady hammer under his skin.
He turned off the living-room television, pacing once more to check the locks, the blinds, and the windows.Everything was secure.
He moved to her bedroom door again and rested a knuckle gently against the wood.Not knocking, just grounding himself.
He let out a slow breath.
“Sleep,cher,” he whispered.“I got you.”
He forced himself away from the door to lie down in the room across the hall and close his eyes.But every time he did, he saw Chloe standing in her ruined apartment, too brave, too quiet, while something dark and ugly snarled inside him.
He didn’t sleep for a second that night.He lay there, forcing himself to breathe in and out.
#
Anja Johansen flexedher fingers around the steering wheel for the hundredth time, testing the strength in her shoulder as if she hadn’t been doing exactly that since the crack of dawn.The joint twinged annoyingly, but it was manageable.A hell of a lot better than the white-hot agony of being shot and hitting the concrete hard enough to rattle her brain like loose change in a jar.Compared to that?This was a love tap.
Still, rolling out on her first mission back felt a lot like stepping on thin ice: exhilarating, terrifying, and almost irresponsibly stupid.
She cracked the window.Fall air sliced inside, waking her up more effectively than her travel mug of gas-station coffee.St.Louis sprawled ahead in the distance, a gray-blue smudge against the horizon.
“Back in the game,” she murmured, and told herself the way her pulse jumped was excitement, not nerves.Probably excitement.
COBRA Securities didn’t do training wheels.Luke and Logan wouldn’t have sent her if they didn’t think she was ready.Kayne certainly wouldn’t have asked for assistance if the situation wasn’t serious, though when she spoke to him earlier, he’d couched it in that gruff, zero-nonsense tone he used whenever someone he cared about was in danger.
Her cover was simple, he’d told her.You’re my fake girlfriend’s security specialist.Roll with it.And behave around Leo.
She had snorted at that.Why?Is he twelve?
No,Kayne had said.He’s a lawyer.
That had made her laugh out loud, and Kayne’s muttered, you’ll seehad only added fuel to the curiosity simmering inside her.
Her phone buzzed in the cupholder.The automated voice read the text from Kayne:
