“Lucia. She got Nikita.” He sets the phone down. “She’s at their place next door. Apparently she’s already claimed Darius’s favorite chair.”
I snort. “Of course she has.”
The storm keeps throwing itself at the windows, and I keep not caring.
Wyatt’s phone chirps again—a different tone than the text. He silences it and starts to stand.
“I got it.” I push back from the island. “You did the last one.”
“You sure?”
“Two-hour intervals don’t care about my feelings.” I grab my jacket from the back of the chair. The rain’s going to be miserable, but the routine matters. Discipline matters.
The sweep takes eight minutes. Everything’s locked down, sensors green, no movement except the storm trying to rip the landscaping apart. I pause at the back of the house, rain streaming down my face, and look up at the clerestory windows running along the rear roofline. They’re the one design feature that’s been nagging at me since we arrived—high enough that you can’t see in from ground level, but from the roof they’d offer a clear sight line down into the main living area. I flag it mentally, then dismiss it. The pitch of that roof in this weather would be suicide. No one’s climbing up there tonight.
I come back dripping and slightly less wound-up than when I left.
52
Chris
We migrate to the living room after the late lunch. The fireplace is still going—a wide strip of flame rising out of a bed of black glass pebbles, no pretense of logs or anything rustic. I settle onto the floor beside it, a pile of cushions at my back. Nina stretches out on the rug with her head in my lap, her eyes fixed on the flames.
Wyatt sits near Nina’s feet, forearms resting on his bent knees, staring out the window at the rain. The light from the fire catches the angles of his face, the strong jaw, the stubble coming in darker than usual because neither of us have had time to think about shaving.
The room settles into quiet. Only the faint whoosh of the gas flames and the steady rainfall fill the silence.
Wyatt picks up his phone and starts scrolling, the screen casting blue light across his face. “Shit.”
“What?” Nina lifts her head slightly.
“Mudslides on Malibu Canyon Road. Multiple road closures.” He looks up. “Isn’t that where the other safe house is? The one where they moved Vicente and Arturo?”
I nod. “If the roads are out, they’re stuck there for a while.”
“Or they’ll have to relocate,” Wyatt says, frowning at his screen before setting it down on the end table a few feet away. “Lucia will figure it out. Not our problem tonight.”
He’s right. But my brain files it anyway—another variable, another thing that could shift the board.
Nina’s breathing goes slow and even against my thigh.
I should be thinking about Rafael, about the murdered guards at the Flores compound, about the threat that’s still out there hunting Vicente and Arturo and everyone connected to them. I should be running tactical assessments, mapping contingencies, doing something useful with my brain.
Instead, I’m watching them.
Nina’s face is soft in the firelight, her features relaxed for the first time all day. She’s not asleep—I can tell from the way her breathing hasn’t quite evened out—but she’s close. Trusting. Safe.
Wyatt’s profile is sharper, more guarded. But he’s here even though he has every reason to avoid me.
I have this. Both of them. Right now, in this moment, I have everything I’ve spent years convincing myself I didn’t deserve.
What happens when I fuck it up again?
The thought rises unbidden, and I shove it down. Not helpful. Not now.
My hands start moving without my permission. Fingers finding the hem of Nina’s sweater, slipping underneath to trace the warm skin of her stomach. She sighs, arches into the touch like a cat seeking warmth.
No bra. The observation lands somewhere in my hindbrain and refuses to leave.
