“You holding up?”
“I didn’t know what to do with…” I held up my clothes.
They were worse than I remembered. Soot-stained, singed, ruined beyond denial. My hands started to shake before I managed to stop them, the reality of loss crystallizing in that small, tangible pile.
Rios took them from me gently. “I’ll take care of it.”
He set them aside and pulled me into his arms before the tremor turned into something bigger.
The solid pressure of him anchored me, kept my feet on the floor when everything inside me wanted to float off into panic or numbness or both.
“Someone tried to kill me.” The words came out flat, like a statement of fact I hadn’t yet processed.
“Yeah. But they didn’t succeed.”
His hands moved slowly up and down my spine in a steady, grounding rhythm.
“Only because you were there. You were there, Rios. Risking your life for me.”
“It’s what partners do.” He said it simply. As if this arrangement we’d fallen into had always been. As if I had any idea what it was like to count on someone like that.
I clung tighter to him. “Jesus, if you hadn’t come—” I stopped myself before the image finished forming. Before my mind could supply the version of the night where I didn’t make it out.
“But I did come. I wish to God I’d come sooner. Maybe I could’ve caught the bastard. But your text said it wasn’t an emergency.”
“Text?” The memory flickered back into place, absurd in the context of everything else. “Oh, my God. With everything else, I forgot. I—someone wants to meet with me.”
He went still. “Who?”
“I don’t know. Someone on one of the forums I posted on. We hadn’t set any details yet. I wanted to get your take before I agreed to anything. But whoever it was said they might have some information.”
“About Priya? About someone else missing?”
“I don’t know. It was pretty vague. I messaged them back to get more details.”
He paused, gears visibly turning. “Was this a public forum?”
“I mean, behind a login, but public in the sense anyone can sign up, yes.” Even as I said it, the pieces started to align in a way I didn’t like. “You don’t think that had something to do with the fire?”
“If it does, that says someone’s watching what you’re doing a hell of a lot closer than we suspected. Somehow, somewhere, you’ve managed to step on someone’s toes enough that they thought they’d scare you off.”
I didn’t miss how he was trying to downplay it now. For himself? For me? I didn’t need that.
“Let’s call a spade a spade. It was a murder attempt.”
Rios shuddered.
My hands flexed against his chest. “I haven’t come this far to be scared away now.”
When his eyes met mine, I braced myself for an argument.
Instead, he cupped my cheek. “I know. And that’s what scares me.”
The idea of this man being scared of anything, least of all on my behalf left me feeling unmoored, clinging by my fingertips to some kind of emotional roller coaster that had no safety bar.
After a long humming beat, he nudged me toward the bed. “You need rest.”
I crawled beneath the covers, the mattress welcoming and unfamiliar. The moment I lay down, I missed his arms.
