Chapter 29
twenty-nine
Cole
The phone glows on the nightstand. I ease it toward me without shifting my weight—Angelina is finally asleep, her hand curled against my chest, fingers loose. Three hours of restless turning before exhaustion won.
I set the phone back. Watch her face in the gray morning light. The furrow between her brows that never fully smooths, even in sleep.
Somewhere in this city, Victoria Lockwood is waking up too. Or maybe she never slept.
No way to know until she moves.
Angelina stirs. Her eyes open slowly, finding mine in the dim room.
"Anything?"
"Not yet."
She nods once. Then she is untangling herself from the sheets, feet finding the floor, reaching for the robe on the chair without looking.
The bathroom door clicks shut. Water runs.
I sit up. Check the perimeter feeds on my phone—nothing on the street cameras, nothing at the property line. A jogger passes at the edge of the frame, earbuds in, oblivious.
The shower cuts off.
I pull on yesterday's jeans and head downstairs.
Morning light slants through the kitchen window, catching dust motes in the air.
I fill the reservoir on her coffee machine, measure the grounds the way she likes them, press the button.
The machine gurgles to life, and the smell of dark roast fills the kitchen—the expensive beans she orders from a roaster in Oakland.
The comms device sits on the counter where I left it. I fit it into my ear, run the diagnostic. Green across the board.
"Channel check."
Static crackles, then voices.
"Overwatch. In position." Asher. A beat of silence, then: "Pigeon's trying to make friends."
"You gonna let him down easy?" Jax.
"Ignoring him. Like I do you."
"Cold, Frost. Cold."
I pull a mug from the cabinet—the blue one she reaches for without looking—and set it next to the machine.
"Vehicle staged on Maple." Jax, still wired. "I'm redlining on caffeine. She shows, I'm on her in three seconds."
"How many energy drinks?" Xander.
"Stopped counting at four. We're in uncharted territory."
"Mobile, three blocks out." Xander. "Say the word and I'm there. Also, Nitro, your heart's gonna explode."
"That's future me's problem."
The coffee machine beeps. I pour, steam rising.
Vanessa's channel comes alive with keyboard clatter. "All systems green. Han's running facial rec, Leia's got traffic cams, and I've had four hours of sleep, so we're all operating at peak efficiency here."
"You had five." Asher.
"The hour between two and three doesn't count when Han kept crashing."
"It counts."
"It doesn't count if I spent it swearing at—"
"Children." Kade's voice cuts through. The chatter dies. "Blade, status?"
Footsteps on the stairs.
"We're up. Standing by."
Angelina rounds the corner into the kitchen, hair wrapped in a towel, robe cinched tight. She moves to the counter, and I slide the mug into her path. Her fingers brush mine as she takes it.
"Briefing?" she asks.
"Starting now."
She carries her coffee to the living room, curls into the corner of the couch with her legs tucked beneath her. Reaches for the legal brief on the side table—props for anyone watching through the windows.
I take the armchair across from her, angled to see both her face and the street through the gap in the curtains.
"Alright." Kade's voice fills the channel. "Let's talk about last night. Asher."
Angelina's eyes flick to mine. I nod once.
"She left the hotel at 23:41." Asher, clipped. "Followed on foot to Embarcadero BART. Summer crowd. Platform packed." A pause. "Lost her."
Angelina's fingers tighten around her mug.
"She could be anywhere between here and Oakland by now." Jax.
"That's the situation." Kade, steady. "Vanessa. Digital."
The typing stops. "Okay so here's the thing, I've been trying to trace her for seventy-two hours and every single thread I pull is already cut.
Hotel registration from last month? Deleted.
Pharmacy records from Tuesday? Corrupted.
Traffic cam footage near the courthouse?
" Keys clatter. "Gone. Within the hour. Every. Time."
Outside, a delivery truck rumbles past. I track it until it turns the corner.
"Someone's scrubbing her trail." Kade.
"Someone with access. And resources." More typing. "The scrubbing started about six weeks ago. Right when she switched to the countdown pattern."
Angelina sets down her coffee. Carefully, deliberately. The tension sits in her jaw now, in the set of her shoulders.
"She has a handler." Kade. "Vanessa, play the Sasha recording."
A click. Audio, compressed and distant.
Mira's voice first: "Your sources have anything on Lockwood's location?"
Then Sasha, his accent softened by years in the West: "Nothing. And that concerns my employer."
"Your employer is concerned about a lot of things."
"My employer appreciates stable systems." A pause.
"A pharmaceutical assassin with invisible backing destabilizes systems. We looked.
Thoroughly. Whoever is protecting her has resources that rival ours.
The methodology reminds me of Kazakov's work—the patience, the layered protections.
But this is not him directly. Someone trained by him, perhaps. Or using his playbook."
The recording ends.
Angelina's hand has moved to her throat. She catches herself, forces it back to her lap.
"Two separate intelligence operations." Kade lets that settle. "Both hitting the same wall."
Angelina turns a page in her legal brief. She has not read a single word.
"We're not going to find her by looking." Kade shifts, voice dropping into mission-mode. "So we let her come to us. This only works if Victoria sees what she expects. One bodyguard. Normal routine. She has to believe she has an opening."
One bodyguard.
The words settle in my chest like a stone.
I have been carrying them for two days. Since Kade first laid out the plan. Since I agreed to it because there was no better option.
One bodyguard. One variable between Victoria and fourteen judges worth of practice.
"Cole?" Kade's voice. "You copy?"
My jaw is tight. I force myself to breathe.
"I copy."
"Stay sharp. We'll check in at noon. Kade out."
The channel drops to operational quiet—breathing, ambient noise, the low hum of a team holding position.
I stare at the window—the empty street, the morning light that makes everything look safe.
"Cole."
Angelina's voice. Soft, but watchful.
I do not look at her.
"I don't like this."
A pause. "I know."
"No." I turn. Meet her eyes. "I don't like this. You, in this house. One exit strategy. Hoping she walks into the trap instead of—"
I stop.
"Instead of what?"
The words are there. Instead of killing you before we can stop her. Instead of getting to you while I'm three feet away and still too slow. Instead of leaving Chesca without a mother because I agreed to use you as bait.
I cannot say them.
"There has to be another way." I am on my feet now, pacing the length of the living room. "We keep digging. Vanessa finds a thread that isn't cut. We trace the handler, work backward—"
"Cole."
"—or we move you somewhere secure, draw her out with a decoy—"
"Cole."
"—because I will not sit here and wait for her to—"
"Cole."
Her voice cuts through. Not loud. Just certain.
I stop in the middle of the room. Turn.
She has set down the legal brief. Her hands rest in her lap, fingers laced together—but the tremor is there, the way she is holding herself still because if she does not, something will shake loose.
She is not hiding it.
"I'm scared." She says it simply. No armor. No performance. "I have been scared since the first flower arrived. Since before that. Since the moment Kade told me there was a pattern and I was on the list."
I open my mouth.
"I had a panic attack yesterday." She keeps going, not letting me interrupt. "In my own kitchen, trying to make dinner like a normal person. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't—" She stops. Swallows. "I am not okay. I am not brave. I am barely holding it together."
"Then let me find another way."
"No."
She rises from the couch. Crosses the room to where I stand. Her hand finds my chest, presses flat over my heart, and the tremor in her fingers presses through my shirt.
"I spent four years with a man who made choices for me." Her voice is steady, but her hand is not. "Who decided what I could handle. What I could know. What I was allowed to risk." Her eyes hold mine. "You are not him. Don't start acting like him."
The words slide between my ribs like a blade.
"That's not—"
"I know." She softens, just slightly. "You're trying to protect me. He was trying to control me. I know the difference." Her fingers curl against my chest. "But the result is the same. Someone else deciding what I can survive."
I cover her hand with mine. Her heartbeat drums against my palm—too fast, too hard.
"I don't want you to get hurt."
"I know." Her mouth twitches. "I don't want me to get hurt either. But this is my choice. My risk. And I need you to let me take it."
"Angelina—"
"You don't make me brave." She says it before I can argue. "You don't. I'm not brave. I'm scared out of my mind. I have been for weeks."
"Then why—"
"Because you make me feel like I can survive being scared."
The words hang between us.
Outside, a car passes. Inside, the coffee maker drips its last drops into silence.
"When I'm alone with it, the fear is... everything." Her voice drops. "It fills up all the space. I can't think past it. Can't breathe through it. I just—freeze."
Her hand presses harder against my chest.
"But when you're here, there's room. Room to be terrified and still move. Still think. Still choose." She meets my eyes. "I'm not asking you to make me safe. I'm asking you to let me be scared and do this anyway."
I look at her. This woman who built a life out of wreckage. Who stands in courtrooms and faces down men who would see her destroyed. Who is shaking in front of me and asking me to trust her anyway.
Trust her to know her own limits.
Something in my chest loosens. Not the fear—that stays. But I am not carrying it alone anymore.
"If anything feels wrong—"
"I tell you immediately."
"If she gets within ten feet of you—"
"You do whatever you have to do."
"If I say we're done, we're done. No arguments."
A beat. Her mouth curves, just slightly.
"No arguments. Unless you're wrong."
I pull her in. Wrap my arms around her and hold on. Her face presses into my shoulder, her breath warm against my neck, and for a moment we are just two people holding each other in a house that might become a trap.
"Okay," I say into her hair. "We do this together."
Her arms tighten around me. Once.
Then she pulls back. Smooths her robe. Meets my eyes for one more moment—something passes between us that doesn't need words.
She returns to the couch and picks up her legal brief with hands that are almost steady.
The performance resumes.
A crackle in my ear. Kade's voice, low: "Blade. You good?"
I glance at Angelina. She meets my eyes. Nods once.
"We're good."
"Copy that." A beat of silence that says what words can't—the understanding between men who would burn everything for the people they love. "Holding positions. Check in at noon."
The channel settles back to quiet. We are carrying it together now.
Evening settles over the house in slow degrees—the light shifting from gold to amber to gray, shadows pooling in the corners of rooms. Her rooms. Her books stacked on the side table. Her daughter's drawings still magnetized to the fridge. Tomorrow this space becomes a kill box.
The day passed in fragments. Angelina at the kitchen table, working through briefs she will not remember.
Me cycling through feeds that showed nothing.
Lunch eaten without tasting. Conversation made without meaning.
The careful choreography of two people pretending to be normal while waiting for something to break.
Now she is curled on the couch with a novel, legs tucked beneath her. Different prop, same performance.
I take the armchair. Phone in hand, the faint static of an open channel in my ear.
The clock on the wall ticks past nine. Outside, a dog barks twice and goes quiet.
I pull up the B3 feed.
The common area fills the screen. Chesca sits cross-legged on the floor, controller in hand, tongue poking out in concentration. On the monitor in front of her, pixelated soldiers storm a pixelated fortress. Something explodes.
Alina leans over the back of the couch, pointing at something on screen, laughing at whatever Chesca just said. Mira sits at the other end—still, watchful, but present. She catches Chesca's eye and nods once at something. Approval, maybe. Or just acknowledgment.
Chesca laughs. Soundless through the feed, but I know that sound. Bright and sudden. The laugh she saves for genuine delight.
My daughter.
The thought doesn't settle—it hits. The same way it hit when I stood over Adrian's body and claimed her out loud. Mine to protect. Mine to teach. Mine to watch grow up, if I can keep her mother alive long enough.
I close the feed before something in my chest cracks open.
Angelina looks up from her book. "You okay?"
"Fine."
She does not believe me. She also does not push.
The clock ticks past ten. Past eleven. The house grows quieter, the street outside emptying of cars and voices until there is only the occasional sweep of headlights across the ceiling.
My phone buzzes.
"Movement." Vanessa's voice, sharp enough to cut. "Three blocks out. On foot. Dark clothing, hood up."
Angelina's head comes up.
"Confirmation?"
"Working on it." Keys clatter through the channel. "Thermal's got one body, no backup vehicle. She's alone."
I rise from the chair. Cross to the window. The street outside is empty—porch lights glowing, parked cars dark and still. The kind of quiet that could mean peace or could mean something waiting.
"Two blocks." Vanessa. "She just cut through the Peterson yard. She knows the neighborhood."
Angelina stands. The book falls closed, forgotten on the cushion.
"Is it her?"
"We don't know yet."
"One block." Vanessa's voice pulls tight. "She's slowing. Looking at the house."
I draw my weapon. Check the chamber. Position myself between Angelina and the front door.
"All units." Kade, low and controlled. "Hold positions. Let her approach. We need visual confirmation."
The seconds stretch. The house holds its breath.
"Crossing the street." Vanessa, barely a whisper. "She's on the front path."
Footsteps on concrete—slow, deliberate.
Angelina's hand closes on my arm. Her fingers dig in hard enough to bruise.
The footsteps reach the porch.
Stop.
Silence.
Then Vanessa's voice:
"She's at your door."