“And when they believe it?”
He took a slow breath. “Then they’ll make their move and come for you. They’ll watch for a bit, I would think, before they act, try to learn your patterns and routines, see who you talk to and where you go the most. They’ll want to make sure you feel safe, not looking over your shoulder all the time.”
The word safe lodged in her chest like something foreign. “Safe isn’t something I feel right now.”
He looked at her again, this time longer, a soft smile slipping across his face. “Good.”
“Good?” she repeated with a frown.
He gave a quick nod. “You don’t get complacent when you don’t feel safe. And complacency is what gets people taken. Or killed.”
The trees along the highway thickened, shadows stretching across the road as the sun dropped lower. The car’s interior felt smaller now, more contained.
Silence fell again, but this time it wasn’t empty. It hummed between them.
“They took everything from us once,” she said after a while. “My house. My name. You.”
He shook his head. “They didn’t take me. You just weren’t allowed to keep me.”
The distinction made her chest ache. She turned in her seat slightly, studying him. “You ever wonder who you would’ve been if I hadn’t disappeared?”
“Every damn year.”
“And?”
“I wouldn’t have learned how to move through the dark the way I do now.”
She watched the road reflect in the windshield. “And maybe I wouldn’t have learned how to survive it.”
The sky ahead deepened toward evening, Savannah still a couple of hours away. And ahead of them, around the curve of the interstate, men were chasing them. She felt it in her bones.
“They’re chasing me,” she whispered. “Just like back in school.”
He squeezed her hand once more. “They think they’re chasing you. We know the truth, though.”
This time, she didn’t correct him because she wasn’t really sure anymore whether she was the hunter or the hunted. All she really knew was that this road was leading somewhere neither of them could turn back from, and she was all right with that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THEY SLIPPED INTO SAVANNAH, sticking to the back streets as they drove under the gradual thickening of the oak canopy overhead and Spanish moss drifting from branches like the ghosts of something that had never quite let go. The city held a rich history of ghosts and spooky happenings, and Elvis only hoped that’s not why Delaney and Blaze had chosen it. He didn’t need the extra headache of something jumping out at him. The King might’ve believed in ghosts, but Elvis didn’t want to find out if his belief was valid or not.
He drove with one hand loose on the wheel and his eyes darting between the road ahead and the side mirror every thirty seconds. It was a habit he had picked up when on missions. Anyone watching would merely think he was checking the roads, but he knew better, especially with what happened while helping Callen and Meaghan a few weeks back. He had no intention of being ambushed again.
Beside him, Delaney had fallen quiet an hour ago. By the way she held herself, her shoulders carrying too much tension, he knew she wasn’t asleep. No, he knew this quietness was her way of processing and preparing for what lay ahead. It was a silence he understood better than most.
As he crossed the Talmadge Memorial Bridge, the Savannah River stretching wide beneath them as the city lights gathered on the far bank, Blaze’s message came through: the house on Whitmore Avenue is ready. Keys are under the mat, and the camera’s live.
He didn’t read it out loud, not wanting to disturb her thoughts, knowing she could use another few minutes of quietness.
Right after Blaze’s text, he received one from Dane, which he read before sending his phone to sleep.
“You’re popular,” Delaney said without glancing over, shifting slightly in her seat.
He smiled at her. “Just people making sure everything’s all right.”
They came off the bridge and into the old downtown grid, streets narrowing under the shadow of ancient trees, the squares opening up like green rooms between buildings. The city smelled of salt and river and something faintly floral that he couldn’t name. It felt nothing like Mississippi or any other place he had ever visited or been forced to endure while on assignment. And that was probably the point. From what he could tell, Blaze had chosen well where to set the trap.
“Almost there,” he told her.
