Gabriel moves.
One motion. Fluid, exact, no wasted energy. He has the man's wrist and turns it with a pressure that speaks of years of training, not months, not a self-defence class at the Y — years of someone teaching him exactly where the joint fails and how littleforce it actually takes. Boston drops to one knee with a sound that's mostly surprise.
His partner reaches inside his jacket. Not pulling. Showing.
Gabriel doesn't flinch. Doesn't raise his voice. Looks at the second man with eyes that belong to someone I haven't met yet. Someone who's hurt people before and would do it again without losing sleep.
"Your friend is fine. He'll stay fine if you both leave. Now."
The second man calculates. The parking lot. The priest who shouldn't know how to do this. The mission parameters that probably don't include assaulting clergy. He makes a decision.
"Wrong address," he tells Boston. "Let's go."
Gabriel releases the wrist. They retreat. Doors slam. The sedan pulls away hard and disappears.
Forty-five seconds. The whole thing was maybe forty-five seconds.
My body is vibrating. Every nerve ending lit up, skin too tight, pulse slamming in my throat and between my legs. I just watched Father Gabriel dismantle a professional with a wrist lock I last saw Julian's security team use, and my first thought isn't thank God I'm safe. My first thought is: there it is. There's the thing underneath the collar.
And my second thought, which arrives on the heels of the first with the inevitability of gravity: I am wet. Standing in a church parking lot, watching a priest flex his hand where he just torqued a man's joint, and I am physically, undeniably aroused.
I am exactly who I was afraid I was.
Gabriel turns to me. The shift back to Father Gabriel is visible — a conscious reassembly, mask going back on piece by piece. But it's not seamless. His hands flex twice. His breathing is slightly elevated. And his eyes — his eyes take an extra second to go gentle.
"Are you all right?"
"Fine." Steadier than I feel. "Thank you."
He doesn't ask who they were. Doesn't suggest calling the police. Doesn't do any of the things a normal priest would do. He just stands there reading the parking lot like a man who's done threat assessment his whole life.
"I'll follow you home. Make sure you get there."
I should say no. "Okay."
He follows me to the cottage. Parks. Gets out. And then — this is the part where everything I've told myself about him this week collapses — he does a security sweep of my property. Checks the sight lines from the road. Tests the locks. Scans the windows, the back entrance. Systematic. Professional.
"Your locks are inadequate," he says.
"They came with the cottage."
"Change them. Tomorrow. The back door needs a deadbolt. Motion lights for the yard."
This is not pastoral guidance. This is a man who knows how to secure a perimeter.
"If you see them again," he says, meeting my eyes in the porch light, "call."
“Who? The police?”
A beat. His jaw tightens. "Call me."
He's telling me something without saying it. That he knows what world I'm in. That the police can't help with the kind of men who just showed up in his parking lot. That whatever's underneath his collar is better equipped for this than anything in a uniform.
"Gabriel," I say, and his first name comes out like something I've been holding behind my teeth all week.
He freezes. In the porch light, I watch him fight himself — the visible war between stepping closer and stepping away. His hands clench. His breathing changes. For one perfect, terrible moment, I think he's going to close the distance.
He steps back.
