CHAPTER 19
The drive took forty minutes. Forty minutes of silence broken only by the GPS directions and the hum of tires on asphalt. The driver tried to make conversation once—“Rough night?”—but Quinn’s one-word response—“Yeah”—shut that down.
When they finally pulled up to her grandmother’s house, Quinn saw Nathan immediately—leaning against his car in the driveway with his arms crossed and an expression that said he’d been briefed. Thoroughly.
Quinn climbed out of the Uber, her legs stiff from sitting. “Thanks,” she told the driver, adding a generous tip through the app. He gave her one last concerned look before pulling away, his taillights disappearing down the quiet street.
“Dax called me,” Nathan said by way of greeting.
Quinn just nodded, too wrung out to explain, to justify, to defend her decision. Her throat was raw from crying in that back seat, and she didn’t trust her voice.
Nathan studied her for a moment, then seemed to understand she wasn’t ready to talk about it. He straightened from his car but didn’t move toward her. Just waited.
Quinn’s gaze drifted to her own car, still parked in the driveway where she’d left it weeks ago. The day they’d found the bomb. The bomb squad had cleared it. Dax had told her it was safe to drive.
But she hadn’t touched it since.
Looking at it now—sitting dark and silent, a shadow in the driveway—Quinn felt a chill run down her spine. Just another reminder of how close she’d come. How close she still was.
She stood there for a long moment, staring at the car. At the physical evidence of Wheeler’s willingness to kill her.
“You okay?” Nathan’s voice was quiet. Not pressing. Just checking.
Quinn tore her gaze away from the car. “No.” The honesty surprised her. “But I’m better than I was an hour ago.”
Nathan nodded as if he understood. Maybe he did. Federal agents probably knew something about the suffocation of protective custody, about the cage that kept you safe and drove you slowly insane.
He gestured toward the house. “Let’s get you inside.”
Quinn picked up her duffel bag from where she’d set it on the ground and walked toward the porch, Nathan falling into step beside her—close enough to respond if something happened, far enough to not crowd her.
Professional. Respectful.
Everything Dax hadn’t been.
She fished the keys out of her pants pocket and opened the front door. She stepped inside and stopped. The house smelled wrong.
Quinn stood in the doorway of her grandmother’s house—her house now—and breathed in the stale air.
It had only been a week, but already the place had taken on that empty quality of spaces left too long without people.
The lavender sachets her grandmother had loved had faded to almost nothing.
The coffeemaker on the counter was cold and clean.
Even the dust motes floating in the moonlight coming through the windows seemed suspended, waiting.
Everything was exactly as she’d left it a week ago.
And yet nothing was the same.
Quinn set her duffel bag down on the hardwood floor with a soft thump. The sound echoed through the quiet house, too loud, and she flinched.
Now, Nathan moved past her and through the house with professional efficiency, checking windows and doors the same way Dax had at the cabin. But there was something different in the way Nathan did it—less possessive, more procedural. This was his job. Not his need.
“Back door lock’s still broken,” Nathan called from the kitchen. “I’ll fix it tomorrow. And that window in the spare room.”
Quinn just nodded, not trusting her voice yet.
Nathan appeared in the living room doorway. His expression softened. “You okay?”
“No.” Again, honest, because she didn’t have the energy left to pretend. “But I will be.”
He nodded, understanding. “I’ll be in the guest room,” Nathan said, not asking.
She wasn’t arguing either. It would be good to not be alone.
“You need anything, I’m here. And Quinn?
” He waited until she looked at him. “I’m not Dax.
I’m not going to tell you what to do or lock you in or treat you like evidence that needs securing.
But I am going to keep you safe. That’s not negotiable. Understood?”
Quinn felt something loosen in her chest. “Understood.”
“Good. Now get some sleep. You look like hell.”
Despite everything, Quinn almost smiled. “Thanks.”
After Nathan disappeared into the guest room, Quinn stood in the living room and just...breathed.
The house settled around her—familiar creaks and sighs she’d grown used to. The refrigerator humming in the kitchen. The old radiator ticking as it cooled. The faint rustle of wind in the trees outside.
Normal sounds. Home sounds.
Quinn picked up her bags and carried them to her childhood bedroom. The room where she’d spent some of her more formative years, where she’d done homework and dreamed of being a journalist and planned her escape to Seattle.
The room where Dax had held her after her grandmother died. Where they’d made love. Where she’d felt safe and wanted and seen.
Quinn set her bags down and sat on the edge of the bed and let herself cry again.
Not the ugly, gasping sobs from the car. Just quiet tears that tracked down her face and dripped onto her hands folded in her lap.
She’d done the right thing.
She knew she’d done the right thing.
So why did it hurt so much?
***
Quinn woke the next morning to the smell of coffee.
For one disoriented moment, she thought it was her grandmother. That she’d go into the kitchen and find Gran at the table with the crossword puzzle, reading glasses perched on her nose, muttering about “these damn cryptic clues.”
Then reality crashed back.
Gran was dead.
Dax was...gone. Not dead, but gone from her life in a way that felt almost as permanent.
And she was here, in this house, with a federal agent sleeping in the guest room and a murderer out there somewhere planning his next move.
Quinn dragged herself out of bed. Her eyes felt gritty and swollen from crying. Her head ached. Every muscle in her body was tight with tension she couldn’t seem to release.
But she got up anyway.
Downstairs, she found Nathan in the kitchen, fully dressed despite the early hour, a cup of coffee in his hand and his weapon visible in its holster.
“Morning,” he said. “Coffee’s fresh.”
Quinn poured herself a cup, wrapped her hands around the warm ceramic, and let the normalcy of it settle over her. This was okay. She could do this.
“What’s the plan today?” Nathan asked.
Quinn took a sip of coffee—hot and strong and exactly what she needed. “Work. I need to finish my book. Get it to my editor.”
“The book about your father’s investigation?”
“Yeah. The whole story. Wheeler’s crimes. The cover-up. Everything.” Quinn set down her cup. “If something happens to me—”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“But if it does,” Quinn continued firmly, “the story needs to be out there. The truth needs to be on record.”
Nathan studied her for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. But you work here, in the house. No trips to the library or coffee shops or anywhere else without me.”
“Deal.”
“And if I say we need to move, we move. No arguments.”
Quinn thought about arguing just on principle, then decided against it. Nathan was being reasonable. Professional. Treating her like an adult who could make her own decisions within the bounds of basic safety.
It was everything Dax hadn’t been.
“Deal,” she said again.
After a small breakfast, Quinn set up her workspace at the dining room table—the same table where she and Dax had sorted through her father’s evidence, where they’d found the letter and the key to the Portland safe deposit box.
She spread out her notes, opened her laptop, and for the first time in a week, felt like she could breathe.
This. This was what she needed. Not isolation and protection and controlled environments.
Work. Purpose. The ability to do something instead of just waiting.
Quinn opened her manuscript file and started to write.
The words came slowly at first, rusty from disuse. But then they started flowing. Faster. Smoother. Her fingers flying across the keyboard as she poured everything onto the page.
Her father’s investigation. Clara’s testimony. The pattern of Wheeler’s crimes stretching back decades.
The truth.
Hours passed. Quinn barely noticed. She was in that zone writers talk about—where time stops mattering and the world narrows to just the words and the story and the desperate need to get it all down before it slips away.
Nathan checked on her periodically, moving through the house with quiet efficiency. She heard him on the phone once, speaking in low tones to someone—probably Torres, coordinating Clara’s protection detail.
Around two in the afternoon, Quinn’s phone rang.
Manny. Her editor.
She almost didn’t answer. But Manny had been patient with her through all of this—through her father’s investigation consuming her time, through the delays, through everything.
It had been his idea, really—back when she'd called him in a panic after the bombing, needing someone outside the chaos to talk to.
She'd told him everything, the whole story spilling out because she couldn't hold it alone anymore.
He'd gone quiet on the other end of the line, and when he finally spoke, his voice had that particular pitch she recognized from a dozen pitch meetings.
“Quinn. This is bigger than an article. This is a book.”
She'd laughed at the time, told him she had no time to write a book while she was busy not dying. But the idea had taken root anyway.
“Quinn!” Manny’s voice was warm and concerned. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m okay.” Quinn saved her document, just in case. “Working on the manuscript. Should have it to you by end of week.”
“That’s...fast. Are you sure? I don’t want you to rush—”
“I’m sure.” Quinn looked at the pages and pages of text on her screen. “It’s ready. It needs to be out there.”