Chapter 9
GRAYSON
She falls asleep with her cheek on my chest and her hand flat over my heart like she's taking a reading.
I don't move.
Haven't moved in an hour.
The lamp is low. The blanket is half off the bed because neither of us pulled it up before we stopped caring. Her braids are a mess across my shoulder. She's warm and heavy and her breath is the steady thing that comes after a body has been wrung out properly.
I held her afterward in the shower. Washed her with the kind of attention I haven't given anything in six years. Rinsed her off. Carried her back to the bed. Dried her. Got water in her. Got her into one of my shirts because she said it was soft and I did not say no to her once.
I'm in bad shape.
I can feel it.
Not regret. The opposite. A man doesn't hold a woman the way I'm holding this one and then go back to being the kind of man who was fine alone.
Six years of alone just got a hole punched in it the size of a woman named Simone Baptiste.
I trace the edge of her shoulder blade with my thumb. Small, slow. She makes a tiny sound in her sleep and tucks closer.
I close my eyes a second.
Aisha Khoury's name doesn't come up the way it usually does. The loop that's run in my head every quiet night for six years doesn't run tonight. I check for it, almost like checking a dressing on a wound, and it's quiet.
For the first time in a long time I'm not being punished by my own brain.
I let out a long breath.
Don't trust it. Not yet. But notice it.
At some point after two I slide out from under her, kiss her forehead, tuck the blanket to her shoulder, and go downstairs. Not because I want to. Because a man with a perimeter doesn't sleep for six hours on the same night somebody's friend got arrested trying to take his woman.
His woman.
I'm already using the phrase in my head.
Forty-eight hours ago I was in this cabin alone with a mug of bad coffee.
I check the front door. Locked. Back door. Locked. Shutters. Closed. Shotgun. In place.
I walk the outside quick, flashlight off, eyes adjusted. Tree line quiet. No new sounds. The SUV Marcus left in is long gone. Gravel settled.
My sat phone is on the counter. I check it. Nothing new from Marcus. Two from my contact at the detachment confirming Tremblay's in custody and cooperating. One from a number I don't recognize that I open cautiously.
Gray. It's Aisha's brother. Saw your name on a list regarding the Hennessy story. Wanted to say thank you. She'd have liked that you're still putting yourself between someone and the thing coming for them. We think about you often. Tamer.
I sit down on the kitchen stool.
Read it again.
Her brother. Tamer Khoury. I remember his face from the funeral. I remember him gripping my shoulder while I stood in the back and would not let me disappear.
I put the phone down. Rest my hands on the counter. Let my head drop.
I don't cry. Haven't in a long time. But something in my chest shifts, the way a bone sets back into a joint. A small click. Relief and grief threaded together.
I sit there a long time.
Then I type back.
Thank you. I think about her every day. I'm glad you reached out.
Send.
Simple.
The kind of simple you only get to when you've been carrying something for six years and a woman upstairs took just enough of it off your shoulders to let you breathe around it.
When I come back upstairs she's awake.
Lamp back on low. She's sitting up against the headboard in my shirt with the blanket pulled to her waist. Hair loose around her shoulders. She took the braids out.
She looks at me.
I stop in the doorway.
She takes me in. The boxers. The tired. The whatever is showing on my face that I can't quite hide right now.
"Come here," she says.
I come.
Sit on the edge of the bed. She pats the spot next to her and I get in. She pulls the blanket over me. Then she leans into my side. Head on my shoulder.
"Couldn't sleep."
"Perimeter check."
"In your boxers."
"Fully armed boxers."
She laughs against my shoulder.
Silence a second.
"Who was Aisha," she says.
My whole body goes still.
"You said her name. When you were telling me why you stopped."
"Did I."
"You said the last person I was supposed to protect. I read between the lines. And Marcus, a long time ago when I asked why you left the service, he said a detail went wrong."
I breathe out.
"Tell me if I'm not supposed to."
I look at her a long second.
Then I tell her.
"Jordanian journalist. Aisha Khoury. Thirty four. Two kids. Husband was in Dubai for work. She was working a story about weapons trafficking and her name landed on a list. Our unit was asked by a private firm to run her and her kids out of Amman to the embassy. I was lead on the detail."
"Okay."
"We had three cars. She was in the middle one with me. The kids in the lead car with two of our guys. Four miles in, two SUVs blocked us on a dirt stretch. Ambush. Clean. They knew our route. Somebody inside had sold it."
"Gray."
"We lost the lead car first. Drivers got hit.
I got the kids out the back. Aisha, I put behind me.
Took a round in the shoulder. Another in the thigh.
One of our guys pulled up in the third vehicle and laid cover.
I got her to it. She was with me when we were pulling away, hand on mine.
Then a second round came through the window. Took her in the neck."
"Oh my God."
"I held pressure. I kept her talking. She kept asking about her kids. I kept telling her they were safe. They were. She wasn't."
Simone's hand finds mine under the blanket. Threads her fingers through.
"She died about nine minutes from the embassy. I carried her inside anyway because I didn't know what else to do."
"Gray."
"I got a medal I threw in a drawer. I got two months of medical leave. I got a settlement that I gave to her kids. And I got out. Because I decided the cost of being trusted with someone was too high."
"And then Marcus called."
"And then Marcus called."
"And you said yes."
"Yeah."
"Why."
"Because he's my brother. Because he asked. Because the part of me that decided I was done, I don't think I meant it. I think I was scared."
She squeezes my hand.
"Tonight her brother texted me."
"Her brother."
"Said he saw my name on a list regarding the story you were writing. Wanted to thank me for standing between someone and what's coming for them."
"Gray."
"It's the first time I've had the thought that maybe she'd want me to still do it. Not punish myself with being alone as the price of messing it up."
She doesn't say anything for a second.
Then she turns her face and kisses the edge of my jaw. Slow.
"She would want it."
"You don't know her."
"I know women who do what she did for a living. And I know what we want. We want the men who would die for us to keep living for someone who's still here."
My eyes sting.
I look up at the ceiling a second.
"Jesus."
"Yeah."
"You don't pull any punches, Baptiste."
"Never have."
I turn my head. Press my lips to the top of her head. Stay there.
"Thank you."
"Mm."
"For asking."
"Mm."
"For not flinching."
"I never flinch, Mercer."
"I know."
She shifts closer. Tucks her leg over mine.
I slide down the pillow. Pull her with me. Settle her against my chest the way she was before I went downstairs.
Her hand goes back to its spot over my heart.
"Gray."
"Yeah."
"Four days isn't going to be enough."
"I know."
"What are we doing."
"I don't know yet."
"Good. Me either."
"Simone."
"Yeah."
"Sleep."
She does.
I stay awake a little longer. Listening to the cabin breathe around us. Listening to her. Feeling the weight of a woman trusting me with her unconscious hours for the first time in six years.
Tamer Khoury's text is still open on my phone on the nightstand.
I reach over. Turn the screen off.
Close my eyes.
Sleep comes, eventually.
And it doesn't bring Amman with it.