We gather our minimal belongings. Remy keeps me close as we move between cars, guiding me with that possessive touch at the small of my back. The contact doesn't ask permission—it directs.
The control should bother me. Instead, my body responds with certainty that bypasses logic entirely.
The sleeper compartment is barely wider than a closet. Two narrow bunks, a fold-down table, a door that locks. The window shows darkness rushing past, villages and forests blurring into night.
Remy checks the space with practiced efficiency. Tests the lock, examines the window mechanism, maps the tight confines like he's placing explosives. Then he turns to me.
"Lift your arms."
"What?"
"Arms up. I need to check you for trackers. Physical ones—things that might have been planted on you at the warehouse or the station. In your hair, on your skin, anywhere they could have made contact. I can't scan for electronic bugs, but I can find anything attached directly."
Heat floods my face. "You think they tagged me?"
"I think the Iron Choir is resourceful, and the warehouse was chaos." His expression is professional, clinical. "They could have planted something else. Arms up, Isabella."
It's not a request.
I raise my arms. Remy steps close, moving over my borrowed sweater with impersonal precision. Sides, back, checking seams and hems. He's thorough, methodical, treating this like any other tactical assessment.
Except my pulse is racing, and his proximity does things to my nervous system that have nothing to do with operational security.
"Turn around."
I turn. His palms slide down my spine, along my sides. His touch is warm even through fabric, each movement deliberate and unhurried. He crouches, checking my ankles, running his fingers through my hair.
"Clean," he says, standing. "No physical trackers."
"Good." My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
He gestures to the lower bunk. "You're taking that one."
"You're taller."
"Top bunk gives me better sightlines if someone comes through that door." He's already unpacking—ammunition, knife, phone. Everything methodical. "And you need sleep more than I do."
I sit on the lower bunk because arguing seems pointless. The space is so small our knees would touch if he sat across from me. Instead, he leans against the door, arms crossed, watching me with that sharp intelligence that feels like being studied under a microscope.
"What?" I ask.
"You didn't question the tracker check."
"Should I have?"
"Most people would have." He tilts his head slightly. "You just obeyed."
The word hangs between us. Obeyed. Not cooperated. Not agreed. Obeyed.
"You give orders like you expect them to be followed," I say carefully.
"I do."
"And you're used to people following them."
"I am." He doesn't move, but something shifts in his expression. "Does that bother you?"
Every instinct says to establish boundaries before this—whatever this is—goes somewhere I can't take back.
