Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DELANEY WOKE TO THE steady sizzle of eggs in hot cast iron on the other side of the bedroom door, along with the scent of bacon riding the air mixed with coffee that smelled strong enough to wake the dead. It woke her after all, and when she had laid down she thought she’d sleep for days.
For one quiet, disoriented second, she didn’t remember where she was, and a slight panic crept up her spine. She quickly glanced around the room as the cabin walls came back into focus, taking in the stark blue curtains and the small spattering of personal items on the dresser and shelves.
Rolling onto her side, she reached across the mattress without thinking, remembering how the night before Bobby had been right there in bed with her.
But not this time. This time, she woke to an empty bed, and her chest tightened as everything came flooding back, Leon beating the hell out of Roman, the escape out of the casino, the switching of cars too many times to count, and then the long drive to the cabin, which had been the opposite of where she thought they were going.
She pushed herself upright slowly, drawing the blanket around her shoulders as she took in the unfamiliar room.
The cabin was still half wrapped in dawn, pale light slipping through the gaps in the curtains as dust motes drifted lazily in the air.
The rustic structure carried the faint scent of pine and old wood, nothing personal about it really, just shelter against the elements.
But Bobby was there. Not in the bed with her, and not even beside her right then.
But he was there, having chosen the chair in the main room instead, the hard angles of watchfulness over the comfort of sleep.
And somehow, even unconscious, she’d felt him moving through the space.
The soft whisper of boots across the floorboards just after the faint shift of weight as he paused near her doorway long enough to listen inside.
The quiet click of a door being checked to make sure she was still safe and secure.
She remembered stirring once in the night, drifting up through layers of exhaustion, and hearing him murmur something low under his breath, not words meant for her, just a sound of reassurance or presence. It had wrapped around her like a promise before sleep pulled her back under.
No one had kept vigil over her like that in years, if ever, and she felt her chest tighten at the thought.
She rested her palms on her thighs and closed her eyes for a moment, letting herself feel the strange, fragile comfort of knowing someone was standing between her and the world while she slept.
Not because someone had ordered him to do it or because it was his job, but because it was him and it was her.
Because somewhere along the way, guarding her had become instinct, something he had never forgotten even after fifteen years apart.
She blew out a slow breath, emotion pressing behind her ribs in equal parts gratitude and fear and something dangerously close to hope. She had spent fifteen years teaching herself not to need anyone. And now here was Bobby Jenkins again, moving through shadows so she didn’t have to.
Sliding out of bed, she quickly slid back into her clothes and headed for the main room to see what chaos was about to swallow her.
She found him where she expected, leaning against the kitchen counter, coffee mug in hand, eyes alert even as Abe worked the stove with practiced ease.
Abe glanced up at her, his eyes bright with morning eagerness. “Good morning. Hope you like eggs and bacon. I’m not exactly fancy.”
She gave a soft laugh, bobbing her head. “At this point, I’d eat cardboard if you fried it.”
Bobby turned then, his gaze sweeping over her in that quiet way that always made her feel seen.
He didn’t comment on the way her hair still held sleep in its curls or how she wrapped her arms around herself, still trying to wake up.
He simply nodded once, like he was confirming she was still here, a soft smile lighting up his eyes.
“How did you sleep?” he asked.
“Like the dead, I think. I passed right out. How about you?”
“Not bad. The couch is more comfortable than it looks.”
“Bullshit,” Donovan said from where he sat in the recliner by the fire. “I slept on that thing, too. It has a loose spring.”
She glanced at Bobby, but he simply shrugged. “I’ve slept on worse.”
They moved around each other carefully, sharing the small space without touching, both pretending the night hadn’t left fingerprints on their skin.
Abe plated the food and set it on the rough wooden table, retreating to the porch afterward to give them privacy.
Donovan grabbed his plate, gave Delaney a stern look, and then followed the other man outside.
They took their time eating at first, both lost in their thoughts and circumstances. Delaney stared at her fork more than she used it, her thoughts a jumbled mess.
“Have you heard about Roman?” she asked. “How he’s doing?”
Elvis leaned back in his chair, fork still in hand. “Stable, according to Hawk. He checked in on him before sunrise. He’s bruised, pissed, and already asking when he can get back to work. I think he plans on heading back to Oregon today if they’ll turn their backs on him long enough.”
Her throat closed around something sharp as she remembered what he looked like before Bobby whisked her away. “That sounds like him.”
“He keeps asking about you,” Bobby told her as he picked up a strip of bacon. He chuckled as he shook his head. “Hawk says he does it in harsh whispers, as if the walls have ears and he’s afraid of giving anything away.”
Her hand tightened around her coffee mug. “I should’ve stayed. It’s all my fault he got hurt in the first place.”
Bobby shook his head as he rested his forearms on the edge of the table. “No. You shouldn’t have.”
She glanced over at him. “I’m responsible for him. He’s my partner. Would you have run off on yours?”
“I get it, but you getting grabbed in that hallway or in your room or even in the bathroom where I’m sure you wouldn’t let me follow wouldn’t have helped him, and you know it.”
She swallowed, sliding her fork into her eggs with irritation. “I still feel like I ran out on him.”
He reached for his mug. “You survived. That’s what you did.”
The words landed heavier than he probably intended, but she felt them all the same.
She stared out the window toward the tree line, seeing the woods wrapped in the pale morning fog. Every relocation felt like this. A reset. A rupture. A reminder that safety was always temporary and always conditional.
Blaze’s name lit up Bobby’s phone just as Delaney opened her mouth to speak. He glanced at the screen, already feeling the shift in the air, then he set it on the table and pressed the speaker button as he stepped away from the table.
“You’re on speaker. What do you got?”
Blaze didn’t waste time with greetings. “We picked up movement just before dawn. Leon cleared Biloxi around five-thirty using a rental SUV, heading east. I lost him outside of Mobile, but not before he bounced signals off three shell nodes. Serrano’s widening the net even more, and it looks like he figured out which direction you actually went, though I don’t believe he knows where you ended up. ”
Delaney felt the words settle into her chest like cold stones as she wrapped her arms around herself, staring at the floorboards, her breakfast forgotten.
Bobby closed his eyes briefly, jaw tightening as he absorbed the news. “That’s not what I really wanted to hear. I was hoping we had bought ourselves some more time.”
“Well, we still have several decoys that went east but in various directions,” Blaze said. “So you still might have plenty of time. He’s careful, though. Whoever set this up knows how to stay just ahead of the trail.”
Delaney lifted her eyes then, watching Bobby as he turned toward the window, his posture shifting into something harder, quieter. Protective in a way that didn’t need words. She could almost feel him mapping the trees beyond the glass.
Elvis dragged a hand down his face and stared out the cabin window, eyes tracking the tree line automatically. “Thanks. I need to figure out our next move. Go ahead and send me what you’ve got.”
“Already uploading.”
Bobby ended the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket. Silence rushed back into the room, heavier than before.
Delaney didn’t speak right away.
Neither did Bobby.
She sat there, listening to the other men out on the porch, each sharing war stories and bragging about scars.
Serrano had determined to keep chasing her, she assumed. She knew that now in her bones.
Her hands trembled, and she wrapped them together in her lap, breathing through the familiar spiral, the one that always came when movement happened too fast and patterns began repeating themselves.
“I hate this part,” she admitted, glancing down at the uneaten portion of her breakfast. “The waiting. The wondering. Serrano believes he still owns pieces of me, that he can use me to get to my mother.”
Bobby sat back down, grabbing his cup once more. He didn’t rush her, letting her talk it out. He never rushed her, even back then.
She pushed back from the table and walked toward the window, pressing her forehead against the cool glass. “This feels like the beginning again.”
His voice came from behind her, low and steady. “Tell me about it.”
“You’ve already heard all this.”
He shrugged. “So, tell me again. It might help.”
She hesitated. Then she took a deep breath and started sharing.
“My mother testified against a financial syndicate that thought they were untouchable. Shell companies stacked inside shell companies. Offshore laundering and political payoffs. She was an accountant for one of their front operations, and she figured it out by accident. Then she found that video.”
Bobby sipped his coffee, just letting her speak.
“She tried to walk away. At first they tried to bribe her, give her a cut to keep quiet. When that didn’t work, they sent threats, men who sat in cars across the street, even tried to snatch me at school.”
“You said it happened while I was at football practice. I wish you would’ve told me all this was going on.”
“I didn’t want them to go after you, and your mom was already so sick…” She sighed, shaking her head. “But now I wished I would have told you too. Then you would’ve at least known what happened to me.”
Her reflection stared back at her from the glass as she stared at the window. “Anyway, my mother went to the feds regardless of everything happening. Or maybe because of it. Who knows?”
She blew out a slow breath, the memory of it all tightening a knot in her stomach. It was as if it all was happening again and she was on the verge of losing everything.
“They moved fast after that. Marshals showed up at our door at two in the morning. Told us to pack one bag each. Said we had thirty minutes and then told us more of what we couldn’t take rather than what we could.”
Her voice didn’t break. She had done that enough already.
“I remember standing in my bedroom trying to decide what version of myself I could keep. I grabbed a hoodie and a photo of you from prom night and left everything else behind.” A devilish grin slipped across her face.
“They still don’t know I took the picture.
I still have it, tucked away in my room. ”
She glanced over at him, his face soft, smiling.
“I watched strangers inventory our lives while my father signed forms with shaking hands. I watched my mother apologize to my sister and me like it was her fault.” She turned then, feeling crestfallen.
“Bobby, I watched my childhood get erased in real time, and there was nothing I could do about it.”
He didn’t move. Nor did he interrupt, for which she was glad. She didn’t think she could keep talking if he did. He didn’t even try to fix it, probably knowing there was no way he could.
She kept going.
“They changed our names. Our schools. Our everything. I learned to make myself smaller. Learned not to get attached. Learned that disappearing was safer than staying, but it hurt like hell.”
Her chest tightened. “And then I became Delaney Mae Rhodes.”
Bobby set his cup down and reached across the table to take her hand in his, still not speaking.
“I stopped apologizing for surviving a long time ago,” she said.
“But sometimes it still feels like I don’t get to exist unless someone else signs off on it.
You don’t know the headache I had starting my own company, the concessions I had to make, like someone else pretending to be me in the public eye. ”
He squeezed her hand, rubbing the back with his thumb. “You exist,” he said. “With or without their permission.”
Her throat burned, and she gave him a curt nod, too choked up to speak anymore.
Later, she set up at the small desk near the window, Blaze patched in remotely, her laptop balanced on a stack of old paperbacks Callen had left behind. She traced Serrano’s shell companies through layers of corporate camouflage, following money the way others followed blood trails.
She refused to sit idle, refused to be cargo while someone else did all the work to protect her. She was finished being a passenger in her own life.
Every connection she mapped gave her something solid to hold.
Bobby stayed nearby, cleaning weapons, checking sightlines, letting her work without hovering.
By the afternoon, her eyes burned, and her shoulders ached, but something inside her had shifted.
She wasn’t running anymore.
She was standing.
And for the first time in a long time, she stopped apologizing for that. It was her life, and she was taking it back.