"Checked the alley."
"The alley's thirty feet long." She took her time with a sip of whiskey. "Try again."
I braced on the bar. "Someone was watching the bar from across the street. Went after him. Lost him in the crowd."
The glass paused for one second. Then she set it down, careful, controlled.
"Description?"
"Gray hoodie, cap, medium build. Moved like he knew what he was doing."
"So. The car this afternoon, and now this."
"Yeah. And I want you to close through Thursday. Four days. Testify, let Hebert—"
"No."
"Jenna."
"I didn't stutter." She leaned both hands on the rail, mirroring me, close enough that the whiskey on her breath mixed with citrus and warm skin. "I closed once. For a hurricane. I served drinks by flashlight the second the roads cleared. I don't close for men."
"This isn't a rainstorm."
"And I'm not closing. What does it solve? He knows my car, my apartment, my schedule. Closing the bar just means I sit in that apartment staring at the walls while you pace the hallway."
"At least you'd be in a controlled environment."
"A controlled environment." She said it flat, tasting the words. "That's what you want. Everything locked down, everything in your little grid. Close the bar, pull the blinds, wait for Thursday. And then what? I come back to a bar nobody remembers is open, a staff that found other shifts, and a reputation for being the girl who got scared and hid?"
"That's not what I'm—"
"It is exactly what you're asking." She straightened up. The softness was gone. "You don't get to make me small to make your job easier, Dane. I've been running this bar for four years. I've dealt with drunk tourists, bad weather, a busted pipe that flooded the stockroom on a Saturday night, and a bartender who stole nine hundred dollars from the register. I handled all of it. I will handle this."
I opened my mouth and closed it. Because she wasn't wrong, and the part of me that wasn't wired on adrenaline and fear could see exactly how insulting the suggestion sounded coming from a man who'd been in her life for seventy-two hours.
"I'm not trying to shrink your life," I said. "I'm saying you're so goddamn determined to prove you don't need anyone that you can't see when someone's standing in front of you trying to keep you alive because he actually gives a damn."
The words came out louder than I meant, rawer than I'd intended. I heard them hit the air and knew I'd said too much.
"I need you to be safe," I said, quieter.
"I am safe." Her eyes held mine. Steady, fierce. "You're here."
That hit me in a place that wasn't on any tactical map I'd ever drawn. I was standing at her bar with my blood still running hotand she was three feet away looking at me with total certainty that I was the thing between her and whatever was out there.
"You're shaking," she said.
I looked down. She was right. Fine tremor in my wrists, my forearms. Twenty minutes of adrenaline catching up all at once.
"It'll pass."
"Dane."
"Give me a—"
She came around the end of the bar. Same walk she used to run the room. Unhurried, hips moving, zero apology. She stopped in front of me and put her hand flat on my chest, fingers spread, right over the hammering.
"Your heart's going about a hundred and sixty," she said.
