Chapter 8
TINA
Three days.
Three days of silence from Marcel Hale, and I've written eleven poems, taught four classes on autopilot, eaten exactly one proper meal, and cried twice. Once in the shower where nobody could see. Once at my desk after the students left, when I found the chess piece.
The maple queen. The one he carved to look like a woman who watches and waits and writes the strategy that everyone else executes.
He left it on my desk sometime during the night.
No note. Just the queen, standing in the exact center of the blotter, positioned as if she was guarding the territory around her.
I picked it up and held it against my chest and cried until my mascara ruined the stack of freshman essays underneath my elbows.
It's Saturday morning. I'm at Maggie's Diner because my cottage feels like a crime scene of memories.
Marcel's coffee mug is still in my sink.
His belt mark is still pressed into my couch cushion from where he sat that first night.
The sheets smell like sandalwood and gun oil and I can't bring myself to wash them.
"You look terrible," Maggie says, setting cherry pie in front of me without being asked.
"Thank you, Maggie. That's exactly what I needed to hear."
"What you need to hear is that Marcel Hale has been at Logan Creed's cabin every day this week, and whatever he's doing over there involves Sawyer McKenna and Dan Whitmore and enough tactical equipment to outfit a small army.
" She leans her hip against the counter.
"Hilda saw Dan's truck heading up the ridge road at six a.m. yesterday with a crate in the bed that looked military. "
I push the pie around the plate. "He told me there was a threat. Connected to his past. He said being near me put me in danger."
Maggie is quiet for a moment. "And you said?"
"I closed the door in his face."
"Good."
"Good?"
"A man who pushes a woman away for her own good needs to learn that the woman has her own good handled.
" Maggie refills my coffee. "He also needs to learn that protection and abandonment look identical from the outside, and if he can't figure out the difference, he doesn't deserve the woman who closes the door. "
The bell above the entrance chimes. Erica Creed walks in.
Logan's wife is the kind of woman who changes the energy of a room without trying.
Dark hair, sharp green eyes behind reading glasses she pushes onto her head when she's not using them.
She's wearing jeans and a flannel that's almost certainly Logan's, and she slides into the booth across from me with the directness of a woman who built legal cases against billionaires.
"Maggie called me," she says.
I look at Maggie. Maggie shrugs.
"Tina, I'm going to tell you something that Logan would kill me for sharing, but you need to hear it." Erica folds her hands on the table. "Marcel came to Logan three days ago and asked for help. Not with the threat. With you."
"With me?"
"He told Logan he was afraid. Those were his exact words. A man with a hundred and fourteen confirmed kills, a man who spent fifteen years in environments where fear meant death, told my husband that he was afraid of losing you more than he was afraid of anything Volkov could do."
My fork stops halfway to my mouth.
"Volkov?" I say.
Erica's mouth tightens. She's said more than she intended.
"The threat has a name. It's connected to a mission Marcel carried out years ago.
Logan and Sawyer and Dan and Miguel are handling it.
There are federal resources involved. Marcel isn't alone in this, even though he's been acting like he is. "
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because Logan pushed me away when Marco Felix was hunting me.
He tried to make me leave Grizzly Ridge for my own safety.
I refused. And the only reason I'm sitting here today, married to that stubborn, impossible man with two children and a third on the way, is because I refused to let him protect me out of his own life.
" She reaches across the table and puts her hand over mine.
"Marcel is doing the same thing. He's wrong.
He knows he's wrong. And he's currently at Logan's cabin trying to figure out how to come back to you without putting you in the crosshairs. "
"The crosshairs." The word tastes metallic. "Literal crosshairs."
"Literal crosshairs. But Tina." Erica squeezes my hand.
"This town stopped a human trafficking operation.
We've faced down stalkers, corrupt federal agents, and a billionaire with half the Seattle PD in his pocket.
One grieving brother from Vienna with two operatives is not going to break what we've built here. "
She lets go of my hand. Stands. Pushes her glasses back down onto her nose.
"He's at his cabin right now. Alone. Logan's team completed the security upgrades yesterday.
The threat assessment is being handled. The only thing left unresolved is you.
" She pauses at the door. "Don't make him come to you.
Go to him. Make him look you in the eye and tell you the truth about why he's really running. "
She leaves.
Maggie sets a fresh cup of coffee in front of me.
"Well?" she says.
I eat the pie. All of it. I drink the coffee. I leave cash on the counter.
Then I drive to Marcel's cabin.
The access road is different from the last time I was here. New cameras mounted on posts at the entrance. A sensor that blinks green as I pass. The upgrades are subtle but unmistakable, the work of men who understand that safety is built in layers.
His truck is in the clearing. The cabin sits exactly as I remember it. Low. Solid. Built by a man who needed to see everything coming.
He didn't see me coming.
I park. Get out. Walk to the porch.
The front door opens before I reach the steps.
Marcel fills the doorway. Black thermal. Jeans. Bare feet. Three days of growth on his jaw that's heavier than I've seen it. Dark circles under his eyes that tell me he hasn't been sleeping. His hands are at his sides and they're steady, of course they're steady, but his eyes are not.
His eyes are wrecked.
"Tina."
"I read eleven poems to you over the past three days and you didn't respond to a single one. But you left a chess piece on my desk." I climb the steps. Stand in front of him. Close enough to touch but not touching. "The queen. The one who writes the strategy."
"Yes."
"Was that your way of telling me you're still here?"
His jaw works. The scar flexes. "It was my way of telling you that even when I'm not beside you, you're the most important piece on the board."
"Then stop playing the game alone." I put my hand on his chest. Over his heart.
The same gesture from the first morning, my palm flat against the beat.
"You told me the distance wasn't uncrossable.
You told me you'd rather take a bullet than make me feel the way David Mercer made me feel. And then you did exactly that."
"I know."
"You know. Good. Then here's what happens next.
" I step closer. My hand fists in his thermal.
"You let me in. All the way in. Not just the cabin and the tower and the workshop.
The threat. The fear. The operational details that you're sharing with Logan and Sawyer and every other veteran in this town but keeping from the woman you slept with.
You let me in, Marcel, or I walk back to my car and I write the last poem I'll ever write about you, and it will be the saddest thing I've ever put on a page. "
His hands come up. Slowly. Like he's reaching for something fragile. They find my waist and grip, hard, pulling me against him, and his forehead drops to mine and his breathing breaks.
"Alexei Volkov," he says. "Belgrade. 2019.
Eleven hundred and forty yards. Through the left eye.
" His voice is raw. Stripped of the control he wears like armor.
"His brother Dmitri has been looking for me for four years.
A leak gave him my name. Two operatives are in the country.
Logan and Sawyer are coordinating with federal contacts to intercept them before they reach Montana. "
"And?"
"And there was a child. In the building.
She wasn't supposed to be there. The glass from the window caught her face.
" His hands tighten on my waist. "She survived.
But I see her every night at three a.m. and I hear her screaming and I cannot get to her fast enough no matter how many times I dream it. "
I wrap my arms around his neck. Pull him down. Hold him.
He breaks.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. Marcel Hale breaks the way a controlled demolition brings down a building.
Precisely, completely, and with full awareness of every structural failure happening in sequence.
His face buries in my neck and his arms lock around me so tight I can barely breathe and his body shakes with the kind of silent, devastating grief that a man carries when he's been told his whole life that carrying it is the only option.
I hold him on his front porch while the September wind moves through the pines and the cameras blink their green lights and the observation tower stands empty above us because the man who watches everything is finally letting someone watch over him.
When he lifts his head, his eyes are red. His jaw is set. He looks at me with an expression I've never seen before. Not desire, though that's there. Not gratitude, though that's there too.
Surrender.
Total, absolute, irreversible surrender.
"I love you," he says.
No preamble. No qualification. No poetic framing or strategic delivery. Three words, spoken with the precision of a man who means every syllable and has calculated the weight of each one.