Chapter 19
Everything slowed.
Webb’s fingers were tangled in Elena’s hair, yanking her head back at an angle that sent white-hot pain shooting down her neck. His breath was hot against her cheek, carrying the sharp scent of whiskey and desperation.
Her hand swept beneath her dress in one fluid motion, fingers closing around the grip of her weapon with the familiarity of an old friend. In the space of a heartbeat, she had the barrel pressed firmly against the soft flesh beneath Webb’s chin, the cold metal dimpling his skin.
“Let. Me. Go.”
Her voice didn’t sound like her own. It was ice and steel, the voice of a woman who had nothing left to lose.
Webb’s grip on her hair loosened slightly, and Elena could feel the surprise rippling through him. She risked a glance at his face and saw something she hadn’t expected—amusement. The man was actually smiling.
“Well, well,” Webb said, his voice carrying that infuriating calm that had always made her want to scream. “There she is. There’s the Elena I remember. The one who had fire in her belly before she let sentiment make her soft.”
“I said let me go.”
Webb’s fingers uncurled from her hair, his hands rising slowly to shoulder height in a mock gesture of surrender. But he didn’t step back. Didn’t create the distance that every instinct in Elena’s body screamed for.
Instead, he laughed.
The sound was low and genuine. It echoed off the restaurant’s exposed brick walls, drawing the attention of the few patrons who hadn’t already fled toward the exits.
“You won’t do it,” Webb said, his pale eyes meeting hers with absolute certainty. “You’ve had five years to kill me, Elena. Five years of running and hiding and watching me from the shadows. If you were capable of pulling that trigger, you would have done it long ago.”
Elena’s finger tightened against the trigger. Her hand was steady—years of training had seen to that—but her heart hammered so hard she could feel her pulse in her throat.
He’s right, a small voice whispered in the back of her mind. You’ve never killed anyone. Not directly. Not like this.
She thought about her mother, dying alone in a hospital room because her daughter had been too afraid to come home. She thought about all the people WATCHDOG had helped destroy—the journalists silenced, the activists disappeared, the innocent lives ruined by technology she had created.
She thought about Reed.
“You took everything from me,” Elena said, her voice barely above a whisper. “My career. My identity. My mother. Five years of my life. You turned my work into a weapon against the very people it was supposed to protect.”
“And yet here we are,” Webb replied, still smiling.
“With your gun against my chin and your finger on the trigger. But we both know how this ends. You’re not a killer, Elena.
Even with all of your DARPA training, with your field training, you’re a scientist. A creator.
” His smile widened. “You don’t have the stomach for this type of thing. ”
Elena’s resolve wavered.
She wanted to pull the trigger. She wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything. This man had destroyed her life, had forced her to abandon everyone she loved, had spent five years hunting her like an animal. He deserved to die. He deserved worse than death.
But her finger wouldn’t move.
“I can’t,” she said finally.
Webb leaned back, laughing.
“But I can.”
The shot rang out like thunder.
Elena flinched, her ears ringing, her finger still frozen on the trigger of her own weapon.
Webb’s knees buckled, then he collapsed against the table, sending glasses and silverware crashing to the floor before sliding to the ground in a heap of expensive fabric and pooling blood.
Reed’s voice cut through the chaos. “Elena!”
Elena spun to find him right there as the restaurant erupted into controlled pandemonium.
“FBI! Everyone down!”
“Hands where we can see them!”
“On the ground! Now!”
Reed gently took the Glock from her fingers, his blue eyes searching her face with an intensity that made her chest ache. He said something, but the words didn’t register over the ringing in her ears.
“Elena.” His voice finally broke through, sharp with concern. “Elena, look at me. Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, though she wasn’t entirely sure it was true. Her scalp throbbed where Webb had grabbed her. But none of that seemed to matter. None of it seemed real. “I am trained to handle this and I failed.”
“Let’s get her out of here,” Reed said to someone over his shoulder—Walker, maybe, or one of the FBI agents. Elena couldn’t tell. Everything was blurring together. “She’s in shock.”
Reed’s strong arms wrapped around her, lifting her off her feet.
Elena instinctively clutched at Reed’s shoulders, burying her face against his neck as he carried her through the restaurant.
She caught glimpses of the scene as they passed—agents photographing evidence, medics working frantically over Webb’s prone form, civilians being escorted out through emergency exits.
The night air hit her like a wave, cool and clean after the closed-in chaos of the restaurant.
Reed didn’t stop, didn’t slow down. He carried her across the street to where the surveillance van was parked, its side door already sliding open.
Terrel’s face appeared in the opening, his expression tight with worry. “Is she okay? Is she hurt?”
“She’s not hurt,” Reed said, his voice strained. “But we need to get her somewhere safe. Somewhere quiet.”
Reed settled her onto the bench seat inside the van, then slid in beside her and pulled her against his chest. The door slammed shut, cutting off the sounds of sirens and shouting, and then they were moving.
Elena didn’t know how long they drove. Time had become elastic, stretching and contracting in ways that made no sense. At some point, she became aware that they had stopped, that Reed was carrying her again—up stairs this time, through a door, into a room that smelled like coffee and gun oil.
The safe house.
Reed set her down on a couch, and the loss of his warmth was like a physical ache.
Elena reached for him blindly, her fingers finding his shirt and clutching at the fabric. “Don’t go,” she whispered. “Please don’t go.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Reed sat beside her, pulling her back into his arms. “I’m right here. I’ve got you.”
And then, finally, the tears came.
They poured out of her in great, wracking sobs that shook her entire body. Five years of fear and loneliness and desperate survival. Five years carrying the weight of what she’d created and what it had become. All of it came flooding out in a torrent she couldn’t have stopped if she’d tried.
“I wanted to do it,” she gasped between sobs, her face pressed against Reed’s chest. “I had the gun against his chin, and I wanted to pull the trigger. I wanted him dead. I wanted to be the one who ended him.”
Reed’s hand stroked her hair, his touch gentle and steady. “I know.”
“But I couldn’t.” The words came out as a wail, torn from somewhere deep in her soul. “I hesitated. After everything he did, after all the people he hurt, I still couldn’t do it. I’m weak. I’m so weak—”
“No.” Reed’s voice was firm, cutting through her self-recrimination. “Elena, no. You’re not weak. You’re human.”
She pulled back just enough to look at his face, her vision blurred by tears. “But if you hadn’t been there—if you hadn’t taken the shot—”
“But I was there,” Reed said softly. “And I did take the shot. That’s what partners do. That’s what we do.”
Partners. The word wrapped around her heart like a bandage.
“You saved me,” Elena whispered, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. “Reed, you saved me. Again.”
He pressed a kiss to her forehead, his lips warm against her clammy skin. “I told you I wasn’t going to lose you.”
She clung to him tighter, her fingers digging into his back through his shirt, anchoring her to his solid presence. The sobs were fading now, leaving her feeling hollow and exhausted and strangely clean, like a storm that had finally passed.
“Is it over?” she asked, her voice small and hopeful and terrified all at once. “Is it really over?”
“It’s over.” Reed’s arms tightened around her. “Webb’s dead. His network is being dismantled as we speak. WATCHDOG is destroyed. You’re safe now, Elena. Finally, truly safe.”
Safe. The word felt foreign, like a language she’d forgotten how to speak.
“I don’t...” She swallowed hard, trying to find the right words. “I don’t know how to be safe anymore. I’ve been running for so long, I don’t remember what it feels like to stop.”
Reed pulled back slightly, his hands coming up to cup her face.
His thumbs brushed away the tears still tracking down her cheeks, his blue eyes filled with a tenderness that made her heart ache.
“We’ll figure it out together, one day at a time.
One step at a time. You’re not alone anymore, Elena.
You don’t have to figure anything out by yourself. ”
She stared at him, at this man who had mourned her, who had never stopped loving her, who had walked into a firefight without hesitation to save her life.
This man who had seen her at her worst—terrified and broken and covered in someone else’s blood—and still looked at her like she was the most precious thing in the world.
“I love you,” she whispered. “I love you so much it terrifies me.”
Reed smiled, and it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. “Good. Because I love you too, and I’m never letting you go again.”
He kissed her then—soft and sweet and full of promise—and Elena felt something shift in her chest. Something that had been wound tight for five years finally began to uncoil.
She was safe.
She was loved.
She was home.
And for the first time in longer than she could remember, Elena Vasquez allowed herself to believe that everything would be okay.