Page 29 of Her Mountain Man Protector

Marin flicks a third file open. "Your father's name hit a private clinic ledger in Halo City nine days ago. Cash. No insurance. The intake note says laceration and exhaustion. The signature is messy enough to be his and messy enough to be a plant. Banks is on the original scan. If it's real, Billy Hawthorne is hurt and moving. If it's fake, somebody wants you pointed at Halo while they work Woodbridge."

I keep my eyes on the glass because if I look at Oakley while Marin says his name I'm going to put my hand on the back of her neck in front of two people who don’t need to know that I’m feeling something I shouldn’t be.

“You stay here tonight," Alden says. "Not the safe house. Too many people now know that driveway. Watchline cot in the back office. Range is locked. Nobody in or out without my code."

Oakley's fingers find the hem of my flannel under the table, a secret little hook, and the heat of that single touch blows through the professional I walked in here wearing.

"Two cots," I say.

Marin's mouth ticks. "One office. Two cots. Try to remember there are cameras in the hall."

"I remember."

"Do you?" Oakley murmurs, so only I hear it.

I do. I remember her mouth. I remember the sound she made when careful failed. I remember that I'm supposed to keep my head clear while Helix uses a nineteen-year-old and a shell company to close a circle around my father and the woman who photographed their dock. Remembering it and doing it are different jobs.

Alden walks us through the night plan. Banks will have the clinic scan by morning. Sin will sit on the landing from a distance. Crewe is already in motion north of the falls. Nash wants a call at first light. None of that is the part of my brain that's tracking the place where Oakley's knee has settled against mine under the table.

"Questions," Marin says, looking at Oakley.

"Can I see the clinic note?"

Marin turns the tablet. Oakley leans in. The light paints her face severe and lovely and I have to lock my jaw to keep from watching her mouth form the words as she reads. She studies the signature the way she studies a frame.

"The B is the same," she says. "I've seen it on a work order in the background of one of the dock shots. Small. On a clipboard. I didn't flag it because I was shooting crates."

The table goes quiet.

"You have my father's handwriting on a Helix dock," I say.

"I might. I'll pull the frame."

Alden nods once. "Do it in the office. Then you both sleep. If Eli so much as texts Rowe after midnight, I’ll know. If the SUV moves off the landing, I want to know. If your father blinks on a cam again, I want you behind a wall when you hear it."

We take the back office. It's small. One desk. A narrow window over the river. Two cots that Marin wasn’t kidding about, set so close the frames almost touch. Oakley sits on the edge of one and pulls the drive from her bag, laptop already waking, that fierce concentration sliding over the kiss-flushed version of her I brought in here.

I shut the door. I don't lock it. Locking it would be a decision I'm not allowed to make yet.

"You can sit," she says without looking up. "I can feel you standing there. It's loud."

"I'm fine."

"Liar." She says it soft. "Come look at this. Then you can go back to pretending the wall is more interesting than my mouth."

I sit beside her. The screen fills with a raw file, loading dock at night, sodium light, crates, a clipboard hanging off a pallet jack. She pinches in. There. A B and an H in a slashed, impatient hand I used to find on lunch notes when I was seven.

My throat goes tight. I don't give that to the room.

"That's him," I say.

"That's him on their dock before he vanished. Which means he wasn't only running from Helix. He was in it long enough to sign their paper."

"Or he was inside long enough to steal it."

She turns her face toward me. We're too close for an office with a hall camera on the other side of a thin door. Her knee presses mine. The air between us goes tight and blistering, and I let myself look at her mouth for one stupid second.

"Colt."