The second Rachel stepped into the en-suite bathroom and closed the door behind her, the strength went out of her legs. She grabbed the edge of the sink to stay upright, her knuckles pressed white against the cold porcelain. Air rushed out of her lungs, shaky, uneven. She'd been holding her breath without realizing it.
The silence pressed against her ears after so much chaos, gunfire, shouted orders, bodies in constant motion. Now there was nothing but the faint hum of the water heater behind the walls and her own ragged breathing.
She turned on the shower. Steam rose almost immediately, curling upward and fogging the mirror until her reflection disappeared into the haze. Better. She didn't want to see herself yet.
Her hands shook as she peeled off Logan's shirt, then her jean shorts. The fabric stuck to her skin, pulling at bruises and rawpatches. Every movement cost her, ribs screaming, wrists burning, deep soreness in her back and shoulders that went all the way to the bone.
Through the misted glass of the shower door, her reflection appeared again. She stopped.
The bruises across her side had darkened to deep purple, the edges already yellowing. Red welts circled both wrists where the zip ties had cut in. Faint abrasions climbed her arms, rope burns, finger marks, the evidence of hands that had grabbed and pulled and hurt.
She stared at the marks. Forced herself to look. This wasn't weakness, this was proof. Proof she'd survived. Proof Logan had gotten to her in time.
She stepped into the shower. The water hit her skin hot and hard, almost scalding. She gasped, her breath catching in her throat, but she didn't pull back. It stung where her skin was raw, soothed where muscles ached, washing everything down the drain in slow rivulets of red and brown.
She braced both hands against the tile, forehead pressed to the cool ceramic. Water pounded against her back, her shoulders, running through her hair.
The chair.
The image slammed into her mind, sudden and visceral. The zip ties cutting into her wrists. Langley's fingers hooking into the collar of her shirt. The sound of fabric tearing, loud enough that she'd heard it over her own pulse hammering in her ears. Cold air hitting her bare skin. His voice, calm, conversational, mocking, telling her exactly what he planned to do.
Her breath hitched.
Once.
Twice.
Then the tears came.
They mixed with the shower water running down her face, hot and unstoppable. Her shoulders shook. She pressed her forehead harder against the tile, trying to anchor herself to something solid, but the memories wouldn't stop.
Mexico. Three years ago. The press bus ambushed on a desert highway outside Tijuana. Gunmen in ski masks dragging her and four other journalists into a concrete building with no windows, just a single bare bulb swinging from the ceiling. Forty-eight hours sitting on a dirt floor with her hands zip-tied behind her back. The negotiations happening somewhere she couldn't hear. The metallic taste of fear coating her tongue every time the door opened.
She'd survived that. She'd written about it afterward, a twelve-thousand-word exposé that won awards and changed nothing. She'd kept going.
But this was different.
This time, Langley had put his hands on her. Had stripped her shirt off in front of his men. Had looked at her like she was an object, a problem to solve, something disposable. This time, she'd heard Logan's voice through the comms, rough and desperate, barely controlled, and known he was close enough to see it happen. To watch Langley's fingers hook under her bra.
Logan had come for her. Had torn through that warehouse and killed for her and cut her free and held her so tightly she could barely breathe. She'd felt the tremor running through his body when he finally pulled her close, felt the blood, still warm, drying on his hands.
He would always come for her. She knew that now. Believed it completely.
But how many times could she ask him to?
Rachel's breath shuddered out, uneven and broken. The water kept falling, kept washing the blood and dirt down the drain, but it couldn't touch the questions sitting heavy in her chest.
How much more could she take? How much more could she ask Logan to endure, watching her walk into danger, waiting for the call that said she'd been taken, hurt, dead?
Was it worth it? The stories. The exposés. The truth she'd spent her entire adult life fighting to uncover.
Her throat ached.
For years, the answer had been yes. Always yes, without hesitation. The work mattered more than safety, more than comfort, more than anything else. She'd built her career on being willing to go where others wouldn't. To ask the questions no one else dared to ask. To stand in the hot zones and war zones and conflict zones and document what happened there, no matter the cost.
But for the first time in her life, there was a reason to stay home.
Logan.
