Her chin lifts. "Then come with me."
The words land clean and logical and I want to say yes so badly my teeth ache. I want to grab my go bag and my sidearm and ride shotgun on every step she takes from Reno to San Francisco to that boardroom and back. I want to stand behind her chair while she faces down her board and show every person in that room that Alexandra Morrison is not unprotected. That she is covered. That if anyone so much as looks at her wrong, they'll answer to me.
But I can't. Because thirty minutes ago, Deck called me into the lodge for a conversation I knew was coming and still wasn't ready for.
"Close the door," Deck said.
I closed it. Mace was there. Of course Mace was there. The commander and the second-in-command, the same configuration as the day I got this assignment, but the energy in the room was different. Heavier.
"You're sleeping with the client," Deck said. Not a question.
There was no point in denying it. Deck reads people the way Wolfe reads tracks. He's known for days, probably. Mace too.
"Yes."
Deck's jaw tightened. "How long?"
"Three days."
"Three days." Deck leaned forward on his knuckles. The scar on his forearm shifted. "Three days that you've been running a protective detail on a woman you're emotionally and physically involved with. Three days where your judgment has been compromised."
"My judgment isn't compromised."
"Your judgment is the definition of compromised, Hayes. You can't objectively assess risk for someone you're in love with. You can't make tactical decisions when the principal is the same person you're waking up next to. It's not a character flaw. It's biology. Adrenaline and attachment use the same neural pathways. You know this."
I did know this. It's in every protective detail manual ever written. It's the first rule of close protection: emotional distance enables objective assessment. Get close, and the math changes. Every threat calculation runs through a filter of personal terror, and personal terror makes operators sloppy.
"I handled the perimeter breach at oh-three-hundred," I said. "I secured her position, coordinated with you and Mace, and maintained tactical discipline throughout the contact. My performance has not degraded."
"Your performance during one incident doesn't prove sustained objectivity. It proves you got lucky once." Deck straightened. "I'm reassigning the detail. Mace will take lead on Morrison's protection effective immediately."
The floor dropped out from under me. "Deck."
"This isn't a punishment. This is a correction. You're a good operator, Hayes. But you're compromised, and keeping you on this detail puts her at greater risk, not less."
"She trusts me."
"She trusts the man she's sleeping with. Those aren't the same thing, and you know it."
Mace said nothing. He sat in his chair with his coffee and watched me with those steady hazel eyes, and the sympathy in them was worse than Deck's directness. Sympathy meant he agreed.
"Three days," I said. My voice came out steady, which took everything I had. "The FBI is moving on Kane. The immediate threat is being neutralized. Let me finish the detail."
"Mace takes lead. You can assist if you keep your head straight. That's the deal."
I stood in the briefing room for a long time after they left. Staring at the table where I'd sat ten days ago and looked at Lex's photo for the first time and felt something shift in my chest. The table where she'd sat yesterday and strategized like a general and looked at me across the room with eyes that said she saw me. Not the kid. Not the youngest operator. Me.
And Deck pulled me off her detail because I proved him right. Because the kid couldn't keep his hands off the client.
I haven't told her any of this. I'm standing in her doorway watching her pack, and the words are lodged somewhere behind my sternum, and I can't get them out because saying them means admitting that every insecurity I've carried for twelve years just became real.
"I can't come with you," I say.
She pauses. Reads my face. Those surgeon's eyes miss nothing. "Why not?"
"Deck reassigned me. Mace is taking lead on your protection."
The silence stretches. I watch her process it. Watch the implications cascade through her mind the way they cascaded through mine. Hayes was removed from the detail. Hayes was removed because he's sleeping with the client. Hayeswas removed because his commanding officer determined he couldn't be objective.
