Chapter Thirty-Seven
Asher
Raine’s staring at the door when I let myself in, a book open on her lap, legs tucked under her.
“I still had two minutes.” I arrange the bags on the counter, then lock the door behind me.
She sets the book on the coffee table, pushes to her feet, and checks herself, like she’s not quite sure the room isn’t going to tip sideways. “I know.”
Shit. Lunch—if you could even call the amount she ate a meal—was all of a single piece of toast with peanut butter and two crackers.
“I got everything on the list,” I say. “And a little more.”
Her brows lift, and her soft huff—almost a laugh—brightens the entire room. “Let me guess. You found a recipe that actually used marjoram?”
“Fuck, no. I’m not that dedicated.” I pull a container of rice pudding out of the bag, followed by pound cake and four cans of pears. “In case you happen to be a dessert person…”
She meets me at the counter and eyes the lineup, her gaze lingering on the pudding. “I like that brand. The cake…might be aspirational.” Warmth races up my arm as she rests her fingers over mine. “Thank you for not treating me like I’m some broken thing.”
I don’t respond. Anything I’d say would turn the moment into something neither of us are ready for. Instead, I wait for her to step back, then unpack the rest of the groceries.
Once the potatoes are on the stove and the tofu is diced, I go to work shredding the rotisserie chicken I grabbed at the last minute.
Raine watches me with a little furrow between her brows—the one she gets when she’s working through something complicated.
I’m mashing the potatoes with the tofu before that tiny wrinkle eases.
“The people Coherent Path…releases,” she says, her voice soft, “aren’t free. There’s a whole monitoring protocol.”
I nod. “Another phase, then. Making sure the program stuck.”
“It’s not a phase.” A small tremor runs through Raine’s left hand, and she curls her fingers into a tight fist. “It doesn’t end. They keep collecting data for as long as the person is out.”
I stop mid-mash.
“They log small changes,” she continues.
“Sleep. Responsiveness. Whether someone keeps up with what they’re told to do.
Not because any one thing is a problem.” She meets my gaze, and I can see what this is costing her.
“Because once enough of it adds up, they have a reason to pull the person back in.”
Fuck.
They’ve designed a trap that waits until the victim least suspects it.
Every instinct I have lines up behind one impulse.
Protect Raine.
Get her out of their reach. Erase every line that leads back to her. Burn any alias I’ve used in the past ten years. Then make us both disappear.
I don’t say any of that.
Instead, I watch her. Her posture. Her breathing. The way she’s holding herself together on purpose, not by force.
“You steady?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer right away. Yesterday, that would have worried me. Today, I recognize the delay for what it is. She’s working through the pattern before she commits to an answer.
“Yes,” she says, finally. “I’m holding. And I know what comes next. I just needed you to understand the shape of it.”
“I do.”
She nods, some of the tension easing from her shoulders. “I’m not ready to act on it yet. Not tonight. There’s someone I can call tomorrow. Someone I think…survived it—is surviving it. But I need to let things settle before I know what to ask her.”
“If she’s being monitored…”
“There’s no evidence monitoring includes real-time surveillance,” Raine says. “But that’s why I need to ask the right questions. In the right way. And use a burner we trash as soon as I hang up.”
“Okay. I still have three in the closet.”
That surprises her. “Only three?”
“There are five more in the storage unit in the basement,” I admit.
“That tracks.” She inhales, and a hint of a smile curves her lips. “The potatoes smell good. Can I…help with anything?”
“If you feel up to it, you can set the table. Otherwise, relax. I’m almost done.”
After the dishes are put away, we move to the couch, sitting close enough our shoulders almost touch. Close enough it wouldn’t take much.
Raine draws her legs up, curling slightly so her knee rests against my thigh. Another choice that feels like more than a tiny victory.
“I’m burning everything related to Mason Locke,” I say quietly. “He’s not tied to this safe house in any way. Neither is Asher Cole, for that matter.”
She turns her head just enough to look at me. “What about the client?” she asks. “The one who sent you—”
“He can’t expose Locke without exposing himself. And he’s too much of a coward. If he weren’t, he’d have extracted the target on his own.”
“Asher, if nothing else, they have your face. I only ever saw one camera the whole time,” she says, her voice rough. “After the first couple of hours, they never removed the hood. But I heard them.”
“They have me entering, yes. And in the hall outside the cells. They even have me escorting a detainee. But there were no cameras in that tiny room they’d put you in.”
Raine flinches once, and I kick myself for not being more careful with her. Even if she does deserve the unvarnished truth.
“I didn’t take off your hood until we were in the loading bay. There was only a single camera there, and I kept us out of range.”
She nods, processing again. “GSD has access to global facial recognition systems. They’ll tie Mason Locke to any other alias that’s ever been caught on traffic cameras, gone through an airport, gotten a passport, a driver’s license…and one of those is going to link back to Asher Cole.”
“There isn’t a single photo, fingerprint, or travel document tied to Asher in at least eighteen years. I’m very careful with my real name.”
Raine frowns. “You weren’t with me.”
“No,” I agree. “I wasn’t. And I have no regrets.”
She exhales slowly, filing that away somewhere for later.
“I texted Inara while I was at the store. She’s expanding her searches to include Mason and the shell company tied to this apartment. She’d already found Mason’s driver’s license photo and knows he’s…well…me. Anything pops, she’ll call.”
“That helps.” I can feel the truth of her words in the way her knee presses more firmly against my thigh.
She’s quiet for a moment. “They’ll tighten the net before they move,” she says.
“They have access to financial patterns. Communications metadata. Travel. Not everything at once, but enough to look for correlation.”
I nod. That fits with what I know about the Global Security Directorate.
“They don’t need certainty,” she continues. “Just justification. Once they have it, they’ll move on both of us.”
Both of us.
“If they catch me,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper, “they’ll finish what they started. They won’t bother erasing me. They’ll move straight to disposal. And if they catch you…”
Her pause tells me more than words ever could. I finish the thought for her.
“They’ll use me as leverage to get to you.”
She nods.
“That would be a mistake.” I press my thigh lightly against her knee. “Leverage only works if you understand the person you’re using.”
“Good.” Raine tugs at the sleeve of her hoodie, one of her little tells I’ve come to learn. “Then we’re aligned.” She leans forward with a slight wince and picks up the remote control. A moment later, the next episode of Law & Order starts up at a low volume.
She drifts—not asleep, not disengaged—letting the cadence of familiar voices and predictable outcomes take over the part of her mind that keeps wanting to run ahead. Her knee stays against my thigh. She doesn’t move it. Neither do I.
I pull my tablet from the side table and rest it on my leg, angling the screen away from her without hiding it. She knows what I’m doing. That matters more than whether she watches.
I start with the alias.
Mason Locke comes apart in layers. Old accounts closed and folded into unrelated activity.
Residual logins—changed so many times, a Saint Bernard couldn’t track them—killed.
A travel record that never quite existed scrubbed from the handful of places it could still surface.
Anything that once connected that name to a physical location is either buried under routine data or cut loose entirely.
All but one email address. If anyone decides to push, they’ll push there.
Then I shift my focus to my real identity.
Hard freezes on my credit. Anything that links me to a place or a date gets corrected or stripped.
By the time I’m done, there’s only one version of me in circulation, and if anyone touches him, I’ll know.
Beside me, Raine exhales and sinks deeper into the cushions. The show keeps going. The District Attorney makes his closing argument. The judge rules. Predictable outcomes in a world where everything breaks loudly and on schedule. One where the good guys win in the end.
My phone vibrates on the arm of the couch. I glance sideways. Raine hasn’t noticed. She’s watching the screen, eyes unfocused, letting the noise do its job.
The encrypted mailbox aggregates messages for all the aliases I’ve used in the past five years. This one is owed enough favors to make a difference. And the man on the other end of this text isn’t prone to exaggeration.
I’ve been asking questions about Coherent Path. Anyone with the answers isn’t talking. That doesn’t happen by accident. If I were you, I’d disappear before someone made me.
I read it once, then again, before I return to my tablet. One more account to close, and I’ll have done all I can tonight.
Raine shifts slightly. The movement brings her leg a little closer to mine, but she doesn’t look away from the TV. Not yet.
“That wasn’t nothing.”
“No. But it doesn’t need to be dealt with tonight.”
She nods, then settles a little closer. “Okay. Then you’ll tell me when it does.”
I set my tablet down, drape my arm over the back of the couch, and turn my focus to the television until the credits roll.
“I’m…tired.” She covers her mouth with her hand, stifling a yawn. “Can we…?”
“Get in bed and read?” I reach for the remote, silencing the TV with a click, and turn the volume back up on the Bluetooth speaker.
Raine disappears into the bathroom while I trade in my jeans and Henley for a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt. When she emerges in her sleep shirt, I let my gaze drift to her bare legs for half a second.
She catches it, and one corner of her mouth lifts, just slightly. She doesn’t comment on it.
By the time I’ve brushed my teeth and taken care of other pressing needs, she’s in bed with the Christie novel open in her lap. I pause, staring at the light gray comforter. At the space where the pillow was this morning. Raine lifts her hand, her fingers brushing the mattress beside her.
It’s an invitation. Brief, but intentional.
I don’t ask if she’s sure. Raine doesn’t do anything she hasn’t thought through ten times over. And for a moment, I’m struck by the sheer normalcy of sharing a bed with a woman I’m starting to truly care for.
She scoots one leg closer, and the tip of her sock brushes my calf.
She doesn’t pull away. We read in the quiet of the room for a few pages.
As if we aren’t being hunted. As if Raine hasn’t been chewed up by a system designed to leave no survivors.
Until she sets her book on the nightstand and turns on her side, facing me.
She slides her left hand under her pillow, keeping her right tucked close to her chest, protecting her shoulder.
I mirror her position.
“You haven’t turned off the lights once,” she says.
“Do you want me to?”
“No.” She studies me for a moment, and there’s a softness in her gaze that hits deep in my chest. “No one has ever seen me like you do.”
The slight hesitation in her voice tugs at my heart. “Being observant has kept me alive,” I say. “But seeing you? It’s not work.”
With slow care, she reaches for me, until her warm fingers cup the back of my neck.
I don’t move, letting her set the pace, the distance, and everything that happens next.
Her eyelids flutter closed a moment before her lips brush mine. It takes everything in me not to lean in. I want to wrap my arms around her, to take the kiss deeper. I don’t.
Maybe that’s why her tongue flicks at the corner of my mouth. It’s so brief, I wonder if I imagined it. Until she does it again.
This time, I let her in. The kiss deepens by degrees. No claiming. No taking. Just pressure and release, a quiet back-and-forth that settles my heart, but not my body.
By the time she pulls away, I’m half-hard. Her cheeks are flushed, and she doesn’t meet my gaze. “Was that…okay?” she whispers.
“More than.”
Raine rests her head against my upper arm, her breathing still a little uneven. “I’m not…I haven’t kissed anyone in a long time.”
Her hand comes to rest against my ribs. I don’t cover it with mine. I do let my fingers brush her waist once, then pull back slightly and wait until she meets my gaze.
She nods. “It’s okay. There.”
That’s enough for now. Despite how much I want more, what she’s just given me might as well be the whole world.