FOURTEEN
Rivers needed coffee. But what he wanted was Caryssa’s skin under his hands instead of a warm mug in them.
He found her alone at the kitchen table, both hands curled around her own coffee, and the sight stopped him.
It was so damn ordinary.
Caryssa. Morning coffee. A quiet kitchen.
“Morning,” he said, pouring his own.
“Morning.” Her soft voice made his chest squeeze.
He took the seat across from her instead of walking away.
For a moment they just sipped in silence, and he let himself drink her in—not her wearing his Navy T-shirt with sleep-mussed hair from those mornings in Philly, but this version of her.
Glossy waves over her shoulders and a blouse that made his fingers itch to undo every button one at a time.
He wanted to tell her this exact moment—the quiet, the ease, the way she still took her coffee black—was exactly what he used to lie awake thinking about.
He wanted to remind her what they’d been and what they could still be.
“Ryss.” Her name came out rougher than he meant it to. “I need to say something.”
She looked up, cup midway to her mouth, an expression that was both careful and hopeful all at once crossing her face.
“I know we haven’t talked about what happens when—”
Boots thundered down the concrete hall, cutting him off.
Rome’s head appeared in the doorway before Rivers could finish the sentence. “War room. Now.”
Rivers closed his mouth around whatever he’d been about to say, the words dying behind his teeth. Caryssa’s expression shuttered just as fast, and she slid her professional mask back into place.
“Right behind you,” Rivers said, and stepped aside to let her go first.
They walked to the war room together, coffees in hand, arms brushing with every other step, and he hated—genuinely hated—that the biggest thing he’d almost said to her in six years had just gotten swallowed by a hallway full of boots.
The team was already circling the table by the time they filed in. Chairs scraped back and the big screen flickered to life, split with Doyle on one side and Blackout Command on the other.
Rivers took his seat, jaw tight, part of his attention snagged on the unfinished sentence sitting in his chest.
They spent the first twenty minutes cataloguing what they had: more intel on the shell companies, Bill’s off-book trips, the origin of the bomb that nearly took out Rivers and Caryssa, and a lookalike matching a sailor with an airtight alibi.
“We’ve got a method and most of the supply chain mapped. What we don’t have is a name for who’s running this,” Command said.
Cannon turned to Rorke, his face closed. “What about that Pentagon satellite footage you promised?”
Without even acknowledging that Cannon had spoken, Rorke gave his report in a flat tone.
Bill’s truck had been picked up approaching the area around Echo, but the satellite trail ended before it reached the base.
Blackout installations were deliberately excluded from surveillance, exactly as they were supposed to be.
Which left them with a truck headed toward Echo and no way to prove it ever arrived.
Rivers listened, turning over the exchange between Cannon and Rorke with the same unease he’d been carrying for weeks.
He caught Rome’s eye across the table and saw the same wariness there. Everyone was waiting for whatever was about to blow.
“It doesn’t mean Bill was involved,” Caryssa said, cutting through his thoughts. “We have no way of knowing whether Echo was actually his destination.”
“As usual”—Doyle raked his fingers through his thinning hair—“this would be a hell of a lot easier if he were alive to question.”
Caryssa nodded, lips pulled tight in sympathy for her boss’s frustration, which they all shared. But if things in the world were easy, Blackout wouldn’t exist.
In a perfect, peaceful world, he and Caryssa never would have been torn apart.
Then again, they never would have found their way back to each other either.
Cannon turned his attention back to their guests on screen. “What of the wife?”
Doyle answered. “She was questioned, along with several members of Bill’s family. We’re confident no one knew anything about his side business, but we’re keeping an eye out for any odd moves from her. Money transfers, property being sold off. That kind of thing.”
Cannon spread his hands on the table. “There’s got to be a warehouse on the West Coast too. You don’t run an operation moving that much stolen inventory without storage. O, any other properties tied to Bill’s company name?”
O was already hunched over his laptop. “Working on it. But it’s not gonna be under his name. I’ve been running property records against every shell company. I’ll do another deep dive now.”
Cannon gave a bob of his head. “How long?”
“Depends how careful they were about the paper trail. Give me a few hours.”
“Once you find the West Coast warehouse, I want your team moving on it fast. Full extraction, full recovery.” Blackout Command paused a beat. “Lane.”
Caryssa’s spine straightened.
“Yes, sir.”
“Once we’ve got a location, your involvement on the ground ends. Blackout will secure the site. You’ll take custody of any evidence recovered and turn it over to the Bureau. After that, your work with us is done.”
Caryssa’s fingers twitched against the table, the only sign the order affected her.
The words Rivers had wanted to say in the kitchen suddenly had a deadline.
Not if she left. When.
And now the whole damn room knew it was coming.
The call wrapped a few minutes later. The team scattered, everyone finding somewhere else to be, the way they always did when the air in a room got too heavy.
Caryssa didn’t move. Coffee forgotten, her expression drawn tight, she stared at the now-dark screen as though it might still have more to tell her.
Rivers pushed back from the table. Instead of walking to the door, he crossed to stand beside her.
She didn’t look up as she spoke. “You were saying something. In the kitchen.”
His pulse kicked. “Ryss—”
“Say it now.” She finally tilted her head to meet his gaze, her eyes bright and completely unguarded. “Before the warehouse. Before whatever comes after. Say it now, while there’s still time to say it.”
* * * * *
Caryssa’s heart crowded her throat, each beat making it harder to breathe.
Seconds after urging Reid to tell her what he had been about to say, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it.
She couldn’t bear to look at him, and he hovered close, waiting for her to meet his eyes. After several heavy heartbeats, he dropped into a crouch beside her chair.
That made it nearly impossible to avoid his stare. Every part of her wanted to close the distance and fall into his arms.
He scuffed a knuckle over his upper lip, creating a rasping noise from his five o’clock shadow.
“I know we haven’t talked about what happens when this ends.
When you leave.” His voice splintered, but he kept going.
His gaze burned into the side of her face as if staring at her would provide the push to finish.
“I don’t have an answer for what’s going to happen, Ryss. I don’t know how any of this works once the case is closed. But I love you.”
Her heart gave a wild flip, clogging her throat more.
He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. He swept his thumb over her knuckles in that tender way that used to shatter her and shattered her now.
“I never stopped, Ryss. Not for one day of the six years I spent pretending I had to.”
It was all too much. Too painful, too confusing, too…everything.
“Don’t,” she said hotly, tears salty on her tongue. She pulled her hand out of his grasp and threw it up between them, trying to stop his words from flowing. More than anything, she regretted asking him to say them. “Don’t say that if you can’t tell me what happens after.”
He didn’t respond, which left a silent weight between them that couldn’t be shifted.
“I can’t do this right now,” she whispered. She shoved away from the table and shot to her feet, twisting to go. She needed to run from the impossibility of a life with the man she loved.
A wail rose in her chest, and she bottled it up as she strode to the door. She didn’t look back—she couldn’t stand to see his face fall.
She rushed down the corridor and turned the corner into another, praying no one stopped her because she didn’t want them to see her on the verge of breaking.
Her jaw trembled, and she firmed her lips. As she reached her borrowed room, she threw herself inside and slammed the door. She pressed her back against it, fist balled against her lips to trap the cries so close to bursting out. Her chest heaved several times before she got control.
She stayed there for long minutes, digging deep inside herself to find the woman who survived losing the man she thought she’d spend the rest of her life with. That woman seemed to have vanished the moment she set eyes on Reid again, but she needed to find her.
She glanced around the room, her few personal belongings scattered among the sixties retro furniture. The women had added a cozy throw and pillow to the bed, small touches that made the space feel a little less temporary.
Even that small gesture made her throat thicken all over again. Jolie and Stina had very unexpectedly…become her friends.
She tore her gaze from the bed and it landed on her board. Strings crossed between index cards and names were circled in red. A case built from a dead man’s laptops and a stolen shipment.
She pushed off the wall and crossed the room to the board, almost desperate to redirect her energy to a task that had clean, rigid edges.
A case had rules. It was solvable. Unlike whatever just happened in that war room with Reid.
Sucking in a deep breath through her nose, she picked up her marker and stared at the board until the ache in her chest faded enough to think.
Doyle was counting on her. So was Blackout Command. If the team didn’t have the full picture, their lives would be at risk.
Reid would be at risk.
She shoved that to the back of her mind and uncapped the marker. She drew a new line between two cards but had to force her focus back to the case two more times. Her mind wanted to wander again and again to his words.
I love you. I never stopped, Ryss.
After she found the location of the West Coast warehouse, her job here would be done.
The ugly truth gave new meaning to the words “performance anxiety.” She was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.
The work is all I have, she reminded herself to screw her head on straight.
After the funeral, she’d built her new identity out of being the most relentless analyst the FBI had ever seen.
She wasn’t known as Reid Rivers’s girlfriend, the one he would have proposed to her if he hadn’t died.
She was known for never letting a thread go unpulled and biting off more than anyone else could chew.
No matter how this case ended, the work would still be all she had left.
And that scared her the most. For a brief time, she had been suspended in this bubble with Reid, and though she never allowed herself to think of a future, the notion had crept up on her anyway.
Instead of her lonely apartment, she saw that damned house with a yard they’d lain in bed talking about long into the night.
She hiccupped against a sob and pressed the back of her hand to her lips. Reid was a dead man on paper, tethered to a base that didn’t exist, running ops that could kill him for real next time instead of just leaving a lethal scar.
And she had a normal life that couldn’t touch his without shattering. There was no future where both of them existed at once, and she’d known it the second she learned he was alive.
Except now she did know he existed here in this place, with these people, and dammit, she would be thinking about that every single day for the rest of her life.
Looking at that board now, she wondered if some reckless part of her had been prolonging finding the answers on purpose. She might have unconsciously worked slower so one more day stretched into one more night with Reid’s arms around her.
She pressed the marker hard enough into the board that it squeaked.
A knock sounded, soft. And she didn’t have to guess who it was.
Reid’s voice came softly through the door. “Ryss. Can I come in?”
She swung to stare at the closed door, aching for him to burst through it and grab her, slam his mouth over hers and prove their love wasn’t destined to fail.
Her eyes blurred for a moment, and she blinked rapidly to clear them. “It’s open.”
He stepped in and closed the door behind him. He stood just inside the room, giving her space she didn’t want. He drank in her face for a long heartbeat, then his gaze darted to the board.
His expression shifted. “You’ve hit a wall.”
She let out a short, humorless laugh. “How can you tell?”
“You get a look. Right around your eyes.” He tapped his own temple, a faint smile threatening at the corner of her mouth—and threatening to break her heart all over again.
Nobody had known her this deeply since Reid. Not Doyle, who only ever saw the finished product of her efforts. Not the handful of people she briefly allowed to flit in and out of her life, never coming close enough to know her the way Reid did.
Just Reid. It was always Reid.
She rubbed a fingertip between her brows. “Phillip used to say I worked too much.”
Rivers focused on her harder. “The agent? The one guarding Stina.”
“Yeah.” She placed the cap on the marker and set it down.
“How well did you know him?” His words were careful and his tone too neutral.
He wasn’t the only one who knew things. She knew Reid Rivers as well as her own soul.
“We were friends. Got drinks a few times back before all this. Nothing more than that.” She met his eyes, steady now. “I was never ready to be with anyone else. In fact, after the funeral I swore I would never be with anyone else. And I’ve sworn it every day since.”
Until I saw you again.
He didn’t say anything, just watched her, waiting.
She looked at him—really looked at him, past the new muscle and the scars she didn’t recognize and the years between who he’d been and who he was now.
And she felt the truth settle in her chest with a certainty she hadn’t let herself feel since the last time she faced him and believed in a future.
It was still him.
It was always going to be him.