Impatience, probably. The need to confirm his partner's status, or the belief that one target hiding behind rocks isn'tthat dangerous. He breaks cover to move to a better angle, committed before he realizes the geometry is wrong.
I take the shot.
He goes down.
The cordite smell hangs in the cold air, mixing with pine and damp earth. My ears ring from the gunfire, but underneath it, nothing. No more movement, no more threats.
I give it thirty seconds. Then sixty. Scan the treeline twice more before I'm satisfied.
"Clear." I lower my weapon and make my way back to Evie.
She's exactly where I left her—pressed against the rock, pale but composed. But her eyes track me as I approach, and there's nothing clinical about the way she looks at me. It's hungry. Relieved. Like she was terrified I wasn't coming back.
Something twists in my chest.
"You're bleeding," she says.
I touch my cheek. The splinters from the bark. "It's nothing."
"It's your face." She steps closer. Her hand rises—hesitates—then lands on my jaw, turning my head so she can see the damage. Her fingers are cold against my skin. The touch is gentle. Careful. Utterly devastating.
"It's nothing," I say again, but my voice has dropped. Gone rough.
She's close enough that I can count her eyelashes. Close enough that I can see the pulse fluttering in her throat. Close enough that if I leaned forward—just a few inches?—
"We should keep moving." Her voice is barely a whisper. But she doesn't step back.
"Yeah." I don't step back either. "We should."
Her hand is still on my face. My hand has somehow found her hip. I don't remember putting it there.
“Riot—“
The sound of my name in her mouth does something I don't have time to examine. I step back. Force myself to breathe. Stepping back is the hardest thing I've done today, and I dropped two men this morning.
"I know."
Unguarded. She's not performing worry because it's expected. She actually cares whether some stranger she met an hour ago is hurt.
Dangerous, I think. This woman is dangerous.
Not because she threw a rock. Because she cares. Because underneath all that careful control, all that quiet watchfulness, there's a heart that hasn't learned to stop hoping for people.
The cartel will kill her for what she knows. But that heart—that open, stubborn heart—is what's going to get me killed.
I can already feel it happening. The shift, the slide, the moment when a mission stops being a mission and starts being personal. It's the thing CJ warns against, the thing the training beats out of you, the thing that gets operators killed.
I should stop it.
I should put the wall back up, pack the charm into the same box with everything else, treat her like cargo and nothing more.
I look at her—dirt on her cheek, hair coming loose, eyes bright with fear and adrenaline and something that looks almost like wonder—and I know I'm not going to do any of those things.
You're in trouble, Jones.
Last time something became personal, I'd spent six weeks convincing myself I knew someone I'd never met. Cost me more than I want to think about.
I holster my weapon and offer her my hand.
