That was a problem.
He hadn’t realized how tightly he’d been holding the line—waiting for her to continue pushing back, refusing, making this harder than it already was.
He shouldn’t care this much.
Caring creates blind spots.
Caring gets people killed.
Emma crossed her arms. “Kate was… persuasive. And Lena nicely pointed out that I’m being an idiot.”
“Smart friends.”
“They have their moments.” A ghost of a smile flashed over her face, then vanished. “So, what’s the plan?”
Zach had already wargamed this scenario a dozen different ways, run through threat matrices, entry points, security protocols. The moment Emma became a target, he started planning.
“Security escort whenever you leave the resort proper.” He kept his voice level, clinical. Stripped of anything that could be interpreted as personal.
It wasn’t.
“Restricted movement—no unauthorized trips, no deviations from scheduled routes. Check-ins every four hours. And you don’t go anywhere alone. Ever.”
Emma’s eyebrows rose. “You’re basically putting me under house arrest.”
“Protective custody.”
“Zach—”
“My job is to keep you alive.” The words came out harder than he intended.
Images flashed.
Somalia. The heat. The blood. The way the air had smelled—metal and dust and something burned into memory.
Zach locked it down. Pushed it back into the dark place where all the other nightmares lived.
Emma watched him with those warm brown eyes that saw too much. She looked at him as if he were a person, not a weapon. Like there was something in him worth understanding. It was unsettling.
“Okay,” she said quietly. “What else?”
He outlined the rest. Communication protocols. Emergency procedures. The restricted zones she needed to avoid unless he was with her.
With each point, Emma’s expression grew more blank.
“Anything else?” she asked when he finished.
“Those are the baseline requirements.”
“Baseline.” She nodded slowly. “How long does this last?”
“Until the threat is neutralized.”
“Which may be weeks.”
“Yes.”
She didn’t respond, just gazed out at the ocean, where the sun was sinking below the horizon in streaks of orange and gold. Zach studied her profile, the set of her jaw. She was processing. Thinking.
