Andy knew now.
He knew she was alive. He knew she was in danger. And she had just told him—out loud, with her own voice—to do whatever these men demanded.
The guilt was a physical thing, heavy and crushing in her chest.
Andy, what did you do?
She didn’t need to hear anything else to understand. She was leverage. A deadline. A threat delivered in human form.
She flexed her fingers slowly behind her back, fighting the numbness, fighting the fear that wanted to pull her apart piece by piece.
She couldn’t warn him.
She couldn’t help him.
All she could do now was survive long enough for him—or someone—to make the right move.
Even if every word she spoke earned her nothing but pain and the echo of shut the fuck up in the dark.
It’d been a hell of a day, starting with an Amber Alert for a little girl that hijacked their morning. The arrest of the nanny’s boyfriend and the flood of follow-up interviews and paperwork that came after had already started to blur. Even the press briefing—once the girl was safely back in her parents’ arms—had faded into background noise.
Now that the chaos was over, he could focus on what would easily be the best part of his day.
Dinner. With Tess.
Thoughts of her kept drifting in whenever his attention wavered. Images of Tess relaxing on the beach house’s back porch, the ocean stretching out before her, and the quiet promise of an evening that didn’t ask anything of him except to show up.
He wrapped things up around five thirty, stood, and tossed afile with his finished paperwork onto Rafe’s desk. “My shit’s all done. Catch you tomorrow.”
Rafe checked his watch and then glanced up, his eyes narrowing. “You heading out already?”
“Yeah.”
His partner leaned back in his chair, a slow grin spreading across his face. “Huh. Look at that. Guess the eternal bachelor finally has somewhere better to be. Good for you.”
Brian didn’t bother answering. He flipped Rafe off on his way out, earning a laugh and an obscene gesture in return.
Outside, he rolled the windows halfway down, letting the fresh air scrub away the stale coffee and office smell that clung to him. A duffel bag sat in the back seat with a clean shirt, jeans, and sneakers, so he wouldn’t have to waste time swinging by his condo.
Time with Tess always felt short. Lately, there never seemed to be enough hours in the day to spend with her—and he wanted every one of them.
Daylight still ruled the sky as he drove. Traffic thinned as Elizabeth City fell behind him, the road stretching out in long, familiar lines.
At a red light, he grabbed his phone, pulled up his ongoing text chat with Tess, and tapped the keyboard.
On my way. Need anything besides pizza?
When the light turned green again, he still hadn’t received a reply.
He wasn’t worried. She was probably home already—tossing a load of laundry in or jumping into the shower, her phone left wherever she’d dropped it when she walked through the door. Tess wasn’t glued to it the way some people were, especially when she was trying to decompress after a shift.
He still had to stop at Basil’s in Whisper to grab the pizza he’d already called in anyway. He wouldn’t pull up to the beach house until around six thirty, so she had plenty of time to text him back if she needed him to pick up anything else.
By the time he hit the highway that led onto the Outer Banks, the knot that had lived at the base of his neck for most of the day had loosened a little. He could already picture Tess’s smile when she opened the door—like it’d been forever since she’d last seen him.
It was a stupid thought—too big for that early in their relationship—but it landed solid anyway.
A little while later, after picking up the pizza, he pulled into the driveway and parked beside Tess’s empty spot. That was odd. She knew he was coming over—if she’d needed to run out for some reason, she would’ve called or texted. Wouldn’t she?
