“I’ve never hiked in my life,” I said. “I’m not certain I know what it is.”
“You’ll figure it out.”
Near the checkout, a shelving unit held a row of at-home hair dye kits. Rafe paused in front of it, studied my hair for approximately two seconds with the same expression he’d applied to every other logistical problem today, and pulled a box of Clairol Medium Brunette off the shelf.
I took it out of his hands.
“My colorist,” I said, “spent three hours on this. He toned my highlights individually, refreshed my base, and blow-dried each section with the precision of someone who has strong feelings about product distribution and charges accordingly for them. You cannot possibly be suggesting that I cover all of that with a box of—” I turned it over. “Medium Brunette. This is a war crime. I want to be clear about that.”
“It washes out,” he said.
“That is not the point.” I held the box. “Why do I need to be brunette? Why does my hair matter?”
He held my gaze for a beat — long enough that I could tell he was deciding what to hand over. “Because London Grant is recognizable. And for the next few days, she needs not to be.”
I stood there with a box of drugstore hair dye under fluorescent lighting and let all of that land. The jeans. The sweatshirt and the hiking boots, above five thousand feet, and a face he’d just told me was recognizable to exactly the wrong people.
I put the box in the basket.
Then I picked up the jeans, the sweatshirt, and the boots. “Where are the fitting rooms?”
The woman at the register pointed without glancing up.
The dressing room was barely wider than my shoulders and had clearly hosted worse emergencies than mine. I pulled on the jeans — stiff, exactly as I’d said they would be — and the sweatshirt and the boots, and when I came out Rafe was at the register, studying the card reader with the concentration of a man actively choosing not to have a reaction. He paid, picked up the bag, and held the door without a word.
I decided to interpret this as a compliment.
Sebastian’s spirit wept somewhere in the distance.
Back in the truck, I did what I always did with silence: filled it.
“I want you to know this is a massive overreaction,” I said. “My father has a very limited framework for how media ecosystems work. What reads to him as a PR crisis is engagement. People are interested. That’s the job. His track record on this is not strong, and I could give you examples, but I am currently operating without my usual resources.”
He kept his eyes on the road.
I watched his hands on the wheel — large, steady, completely certain of what they were doing — and told myself this was useful information about nothing.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“North.”
“North is a direction.”
“It’s also a destination.”
“That’s not how geography works.” I shifted in the seat. “I’m fairly certain there are laws about removing a person from their residence and driving north without providing further information.”
“You’re welcome to confirm that with your lawyer.”
“You have my phone.”
“I’m aware.”
The cab was more crowded than the outside had suggested. He took up a significant portion of it — the breadth of his shoulders, one hand on the wheel — and my hand went to my collarbone with no particular plan, which was not the kind of information I needed right now.
He glanced over — brief, a fraction of a second — and something moved at the corner of his mouth that didn’t quite become anything. Then his eyes were back on the road.
Every approach I’d tried had produced absolutely nothing, which should have been embarrassing for both of us and was apparently only embarrassing for one of us — which was, separately, annoying — and sometime between the bribery and the failed phone call I’d made the tactical error of actually looking at the angle of his jaw, which was not actionable intelligence.
