I cross my arms.
The gesture is reflexive—the posture of a woman whose default response to logical arguments she can’t dismantle is to physically brace against them.
“Then why is it safe for me to move in with you guys?” I ask. “If I’m the target, doesn’t that just make you targets too? I’m not bringing a car bomb to your front door because someone decided I was worth killing.”
Oakley pushes off the desk.
He walks toward me with the easy, athletic stride that makes him look like a man taking a casual stroll through a park rather than a deputy officer crossing a hospital room to address a tactical concern. The candied blood orange of his scent intensifies with the proximity, carrying the warm citrus notes that my Omega physiology has started to recognize as specifically his—bright, inviting, carrying an undercurrent of something steady that the playfulness sits on top of like cream on coffee.
“We’ve already set it up,” he says, stopping a few feet from me. “So it’s going to seem like you’re still staying at your place. Lights on timers. Curtain movement on a rotation. Your mail being collected at the regular interval. But you’ll already be living with us.”
Lights on timers.
Curtain movement on a rotation.
They’ve staged my apartment as a decoy.
When did they have time to?—
Right. While you were unconscious for sixteen hours. These three men divided their labor the way they divide everything: with the coordinated efficiency of a unit that has been operating together long enough to delegate without discussion.
Roman yawns.
The sound is massive. Unapologetic. The full-body yawn of a man who has been awake for approximately thirty consecutive hours and whose body is lodging a formal complaint that his pride refuses to acknowledge. He crosses his arms and further sinks into the chair, his long legs extending in front of him, the posture of a man who is too exhausted to sit properly and too stubborn to lie down.
“Where we live is government-owned,” he says, his voice carrying the gravelly edge of sleep deprivation. “Think of it like being on a military base. High-security perimeter. Surveillance grid. Controlled access points. Even if someone figured out you’re living with us, one unauthorized approach and they’re being tracked by S.W.A.T.”
I gawk.
The expression is unbecoming of a police chief and I am once again unable to prevent it.
“Do you guys secretly work with the FBI? Jeez.”
They smirk.
All three of them. Simultaneously. The synchronized expression of men who share a security clearance level they’re not going to explain and find my surprise amusing.
“No,” Alaric says, and the smirk carries the specific inflection of a man who is technically telling the truth while leaving several relevant details unmentioned.
I nod.
Slowly. Processing the tactical picture as it assembles itself: decoy apartment, secured residence, surveillance perimeter, coordinated leave of absence, strategic visibility plan. Thesethree men have constructed a protection framework around me with the speed and precision of professionals who do this for a living—which, I suppose, they do.
“Okay,” I concede, because the logic is sound and I am, despite my resistance to being managed, not actually stupid. “I get where you’re coming from. But this is just two weeks, right? Surely they won’t try anything while there’s an active federal investigation. That’s too much heat.”
All three of them give me a look.
The look.
The specific, unified,you cannot possibly believe what you just saidexpression that three men produce when they are all thinking the same thing and none of them need to say it because the look says it for them.
Alaric reaches behind him.
From the windowsill, he produces a newspaper. The Sweetwater Falls Gazette—the local publication that I’d noticed in the station’s break room and dismissed as the kind of small-town paper that leads with pie contest results and livestock auction schedules.
He holds it up.
Front page.
