I could tell her no. I could tell her work is work. I could tell her I chose this life and I’m good at it. All true. None of it the truth.
“Yes,” I say. “That doesn’t mean I know what to do when I’m not needed,” I add.
“Maybe you don’t have to know all at once.”
I laugh once, low and humorless. “That sounds like something a therapist would say.”
A smile slips through before I can stop it. She sees it and smiles back, and for a second the air between us eases. Then my phone buzzes in the dry box near the console. I pull it out and check the screen. It’s Sloane.
Patrol saw unfamiliar rental car near Sandpiper road. Plate pending. May be nothing. Stay alert.
I read it twice, then lock the screen.
Kara watches me. “Bad?”
“Not sure yet.”
“That answer is getting old.”
“I know.”
She straightens. “Do we need to go back?”
“Yes.”
She does not argue. She reaches for her cover-up and slips it on, the ease from a moment ago folding itself away. I hate watching that happen. I hate that fear can reclaim her so quickly.
I start the engines. On the way back, I keep the speed controlled, but there is no avoiding the wind. Kara stands near the console with one hand braced on the rail, eyes on the shoreline as we cut across the water toward the marina. Evenquiet and worried, she is beautiful in a way that gets under my skin.
I have protected people because it was my job. I have years of training and enough hard-earned experience to know danger’s language better than most. I know how to move toward it, how to become a wall, how to survive what comes next.
But Kara Stone makes me want something I have no training for — not just to keep her alive, but to stay around longer. For me, that is a warning to keep myself in check.
By the time Bluefin Marina comes into view, she is no longer smiling. Her gaze is fixed on the distant line of cottages beyond the dunes.
For one clean stretch of water and sun, she was not a target. Out on the water, Kara was just a woman breathing easier. And I am enough of a fool to want to give that back to her.
I guide the boat toward the slip, already scanning the docks, the parking lot, the faces turned our way. The peace she just found will have to wait, because the rest of her reality is already coming back into view.
Chapter 14
Kara
The closer we get to The Sandpiper, the quieter Cole becomes. Not that he was chatty before. Cole is not a man who fills silence because it exists. He seems perfectly comfortable letting air sit between words until a person either speaks the truth or gives up trying to decorate it. But this is different. This silence has weight.
The boat ride had given me something I did not realize I had lost. Space inside my head that signals a true release from the anxious gremlins that gnaw on me. Sun on my skin. Wind in my hair. A little piece of myself that was not checking shadows, screens, windows, locks.
Now the shoreline slides past us, cottages bright against the dunes, and I feel that space narrowing again.
Cole guides the boat into Bluefin Marina with easy control, one hand steady on the wheel, eyes moving everywhere. Docks.Parking lot. Charter boat. Woman in a wide-brimmed hat. Teenager with a fishing pole. Man carrying a cooler toward a truck.
He sees all of it. I see him seeing it. By the time he ties off at the slip, my stomach has started that slow, ugly twist again.
He helps me onto the dock, his hand firm around mine. He releases me as soon as I’m steady, but this time the quickness doesn’t feel like distance. It feels like discipline.
We walk to his SUV without talking. The marina sounds too cheerful around us. Engines rumble. Ice rattles into coolers. Someone laughs loudly from a nearby boat, and I want to turn toward the sound because laughter feels impossible and almost rude right now.
Cole opens my door, waits until I’m inside, then looks across the lot again before closing me in. The drive back takes less than ten minutes. It feels longer.
