His expression barely changes, but his voice drops a fraction. “Keeping you alive.”
The corridor feels smaller. Something inside me tightens again. A traitorous awareness of him. Of the fact that he said it without flourish or flirtation. Without the oily undertone I’ve learned to expect from men who claim to protect.
Keeping you alive.
I’ve heard versions of that phrase in other languages. Russian. French. English spoken with a Moscow polish.
Always followed by a price.
Hawk reaches up again toward his collar. His wrist shifts as his fingers brush his sleeve, and I catch the glimpse of something beneath his cuff. It’s a plain black band. So that’s how they do it.
Heartland … Heartline. Whatever name he gave me in the ballroom, it was a label meant to reassure. A brand meant to make me feel safe. I don’t feel safe because someone says I should. I feel safe when I can see the knife coming.
A memory rises uninvited … my instructor’s voice in a room that smelled of chalk and cold tea.
Smile. Listen. Make him believe he chose the words.
I push it away before it can become more. I don’t let myself drift into the past. The past is a trap. The past is how men still own pieces of you even when you’ve escaped their hands.
Hawk takes two steps forward, scanning the next turn. His movements are economical without wasted energy. No nervousness. He’s the kind of man who could stand in a burning room and decide which flame matters.
I wonder, briefly, what it would take to make him lose control.
Not because I want to.
Because I’ve been trained to find pressure points.
My gaze slides down the line of his throat, the collar of his suit jacket, the way his hands hang loose at his sides even though I know there’s strength there. There’s a quiet violence in him. But it appears contained and harnessed. He is not a man who enjoys hurting people. He is a man who will do it anyway.
He glances back and catches my eyes on him. For a fraction of a second, the air between us tightens. I follow, notbecause I like being told what to do, but because my instincts are whispering something ugly.
I anticipated it was happening before he approached me in the ballroom. When I walked in, I noticed it. There are always eyes. I can handle eyes.
What I can’t handle is being recognized for what I am — part of an operation.
My mind flickers back to the ballroom for one involuntary second. To the mirrors and the glittering chandeliers and the men who look at women like they are acquisitions.
And to one face.
A man near the auction display, laughing too easily, holding a glass of champagne like it belongs in his hand. He wasn’t loud. He wasn’t flashy. He was exactly the sort of man who gets invited because he is harmless.
He is not harmless.
His hair is darker than I remember. His suit is Western-cut, American. But the shape of his smile is the same. The way he watched me is the same. Like I am a story he has already read.
I kept my expression neutral, making sure I did not look away too fast. I have survived by following rules like that. But my body recognized him anyway. A cold, precise knowing that tightened around my spine. He shouldn’t be here.
If he is here, someone has guessed what I’m doing.
If someone has guessed, then the last piece of this operation — the final handoff — is no longer mine to control.
Hawk pauses at the next junction. His head angles as if he’s listening to his comms again, and I catch a faint tightening at the corner of his mouth. Not fear. Not even tension. He’s focused.
He turns back to me. “We’re changing route.”
“Because?” I ask.
“Because of movement,” he says.
