Sloane hasn't stopped shaking. Teeth chatter over the engine noise, arms locked around her knees, fingers hovering like she's bracing for something to rip her out of the car.
My sternum pulls tight now that I have her real name. My grip on the wheel locks down around it.
Her eyes flick to my hands on the wheel just once, then away. As though she's remembering what she shouldn't. I force my breathing to even out, but the tightness in my chest doesn't ease.
I should be running threat assessments, calculating exit routes, and sorting the tactical mess I just walked us into. My mind does what it always does after a breach: collects data, sorts patterns, calculates threat level.
Two men in tailored coats. Expensive shoes. Systematic scanning pattern.
Private security. High-end contractors, the kind used by men who buy influence instead of asking for it. Her father's money. Her father's reach. A man who can put a team in a parking lot within minutes without blinking. They wouldn't be combing a Chicago lot like she was a runaway dog unless the machinery of her world had already cracked beyond repair.
Sloane shifts, pulling her knees tighter. Her sweater sleeves slip down her forearms, fabric stretched where she's been twisting it. A nervous habit.
A car changes lanes too close, headlights sweeping the cabin, and she flinches hard enough I lose breath. Her shoulders drop a fraction, but she won't look at me.
The highway unfurls ahead. Chicago shrinks behind us. Skyscrapers turn into strip malls, then into nothing but black fields and the occasional gas station haloed in buzzing neon.
She can't go back. Hiding alone isn't an option. A man with private contractors and unlimited money will always find her. As long as she's tied to her father's name, legally, financially, on paper, she's traceable. Any system she touches will light up like a flare. I've watched names disappear before. Not theoretically.
People panic about systems because they don't understand how slow they are. Or how many blind spots they have when you know where to press. Unless her legal identity breaks. Unless she becomes someone else entirely.
Sloane shifts in the seat, and I catch the tremor in her hands before she tucks them under her arms.
The other options run through my head. They're methodical, cold, and only looking for the angle that keeps her alive.
Safe houses buy days. False IDs buy weeks if the paper trail holds. Handing her off buys distance but no loyalty. No control. Every path still leads to her father eventually. Except one.Marriage is the cleanest sever. New name, new trail, new legal tether that cuts the old one at the root. Filed in the right county, sealed through the right clerk, it becomes a wall instead of a window.
And binds her to me.
Paperwork scares people who've never had to break it. Databases lie all the time. You just have to teach them which story to believe.
Mississippi isn't Chicago. It's a place her father can't reach fast enough to matter. Keeping her safe means keeping her close. Keeping her close means no one else gets to touch what's mine.
Willowridge wasn't built for his kind. Closed territory. Things don't move unless Malachi allows it. The Outsiders don't dig without someone noticing. When they do, they don't stay quiet for long.
I can protect her there. With infrastructure, with people, with numbers; adrenaline and instinct won't be enough. My name on her paperwork. My claim stamped into every system that tries to find her. It's tactical. It's necessary.
The hem of her sweater rides up just enough to show a line of skin. My eyes track it before I can stop myself.
My brain reruns flashes of last night like a reel I can't shut off. Her thighs trembling around my hips. The scrape of her nails dragging down my back when she begged—begged—for my cock. Her voice breaking when she came, breath catching as though something in her had never been allowed to let go.
And the way she looked afterward. As if she'd done something wrong.
I want to pull over. Drag her into my lap. Make her understand that what happened between us wasn't something to survive. It was the most honest thing either of us has done in years.
But she's curled against that door trying to disappear, and touching her now would wreck whatever trust she just handedme. So I breathe through it. Force my grip to loosen. My knuckles crack. The wanting doesn't go anywhere, but my hands stop reaching.
"No one's behind us," I say quietly, scanning the rearview for the twentieth time.
"I know," she whispers, though she clearly doesn't believe it.
Miles unspool beneath the tires, the road stretching empty and dark. A semi merges into our lane without signaling. Too close. Too fast. An air horn blares; it's sharp, massive, and punches through the cabin like a fist. My hands lock on the wheel. Vision tunnels. The highway disappears.
Dust and smoke. The taste of copper and burning diesel. Harris slumped against the Humvee door, half his chest gone, eyes still open. Rodriguez screaming for a medic that won't come fast enough. The interpreter—what was his name, fuck, what was his name—lying in the road with his daughter, both of them staring at nothing.
The intel was good. Source was solid. The coordinates were wrong. All wrong. It was my call. My coordinates. My—
"Knox?" A hand on my thigh jerks me present. I blink. Highway. Heading south. No mortars. No burning Humvee. Sloane's palm rests on my leg, warm and steady. Her stare is wide, searching. "You okay?" she asks softly.
