CHAPTER 25
Brynn
Swiss Alps, Switzerland
Night One Off Grid
The side door opened.
I looked up from my notebook as Jameson stepped inside.
“It’s time to go,” he said.
I stared at him. “Shit. Already? We just got here.”
“Yes.” He locked the door behind him.
“What happened?”
“Your apartment made the news,” he said. “Police are looking for you, which means whoever fired through your balcony knows they missed.”
The notebook slid from my lap as I stood. “And that means we have to leave now?”
“This place is secure. It’s also too close to Geneva.” He reached for my duffel near the wall. “Grab your stuff.”
I stared at him for half a second longer, waiting for some sign that this was open for discussion.
He crossed to the cabinet beside the fireplace and pulled the satellite terminal from its housing, winding the cables around it with quick, precise movements before sliding everything into one of the equipment bags.
It wasn’t.
“Fantastic,” I muttered, snatching up my notebook. “I was worried I might accidentally become comfortable.”
He didn’t answer.
Within minutes, we were back in the car.
Jameson pulled away from the safe house without looking at it again. His attention moved between the road and the mirrors, his expression snapping back into the same blank concentration he’d worn directly after the shooting.
I twisted in my seat to watch the cabin disappear behind the trees.
“Where are we going?”
“Another safe house,” he said.
“Where is this one?”
“Deeper into the Alps. A few hours from here.” His attention moved to the rearview mirror.
I turned back toward him. “Why do you have so many safe houses this close together?”
“Geneva was useful,” he said.
“For what?”
“Moving people,” he said.
A cold little awareness moved through me. “Moving them where?”
“Wherever they were less likely to die.” His hands stayed steady on the wheel.
My eyes widened slightly.
Okay, then.
The road bent around the hillside, carrying us farther from Geneva. Trees crowded both sides, dark and wet from the rain. The city had disappeared behind us, replaced by long stretches of road and the occasional stone house set far back from it.
Jameson’s eyes kept returning to the rearview mirror, never staying anywhere for long.
Coldness settled around him by degrees, pulling him farther away even though less than three feet separated us.
I turned toward the window.
Fine.
I could be quiet too.
For nearly four minutes.
Then I noticed the bags in the back seat.
Groceries filled most of it. Bread, medicine, electronics, and enough canned food to suggest he expected civilization to collapse before dinner.
“I’m on the run in the mountains with a madman who apparently buys enough bread to feed a cult.”
“Small cult,” he said.
I dropped my head against the seat and stared at him.
Without taking his eyes off the road, he reached into the back seat, pulled a baguette free, and held it toward me. “Bread?”
I snatched it from his hand. “You’re insufferable.”
“I bought provisions,” he said.
“You bought a bakery.”
I twisted around to put the baguette back.
That was when I noticed the two bottles of wine resting near the top of one of the bags.
I reached back and pulled one free.
His eyes flicked toward it before returning to the road.
I lifted a brow. “Are we having a date?”
“No,” he said too quickly. “I bought them because survival supplies are memorable. Wine and bread are not.”
“Right,” I said slowly. “So the romance was tactical.”
“There was no romance.” His mouth flattened.
The words hit before his face did.
“Again, devastating delivery.”
His attention stayed fixed on the road. He looked like he wanted to correct himself and had already determined that every available correction would be worse.
I put the bottle back.
“I just need to know if you are or are not the man I fucked in Geneva.”
His expression went blank in that awful, controlled way.
I hated it immediately.
“Because you don’t even feel like the same person,” I said. “The man in Geneva looked at me like he actually wanted to be there. You look at me like I’m another situation you have to contain.”
His grip shifted on the wheel.
“Where is he?”
A muscle twitched in his jaw.
“Because he talked to me. He touched me like he wasn’t afraid of what it meant. He didn’t answer every question like the truth was classified.”
“That night was different,” he said.
My chest tightened in a way I hated. “Different how?”
“There was no active threat,” he said. “No operation involving you. No reason to calculate what every decision might cost.”
The explanation should’ve helped.
It didn’t.
“So it was easy because none of it mattered.”
“No.” His gaze snapped briefly to mine.
The word came hard enough to stop me.
“That isn’t what I said,” he said.
“It’s what it sounds like.”
“In Geneva, I didn’t know you well enough to understand what wanting you could cost.” His attention returned to the road. “Now I do.”
My heart gave one hard, painful beat.
“Those are called feelings.”
His jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
I laughed once, without humor. “You are so horrid at this.”
Still nothing.
He checked the rearview mirror again.
That was it, then.
Whatever argument he might have made would have to wait until he wasn’t driving us through the mountains while watching for someone trying to kill me.
I turned toward the window.
Eventually, my gaze drifted around the car. The burners still sealed in their packages. The bags of equipment. The weapons I knew were within reach even if I couldn’t see them. The way he assessed every vehicle that passed.
“Holy shit,” I said quietly.
His face went still.
“You’re a fed. Agency. Something?”
“I was,” he said.
Was.
My laugh came out thin. “Naturally.”
His attention returned to the road.
I waited for him to elaborate.
He didn’t.
The silence stretched until even my anger started losing its shape. The trees beyond the window blurred into dark streaks, broken occasionally by stone walls and isolated houses tucked against the hills.
I folded my arms and rested my head against the glass.
I wasn’t going to sleep.
That would’ve required trusting him, the road, and the fact that no one was following us.
I only closed my eyes because keeping them open had started to hurt.
The next thing I knew, the car had stopped.
I lifted my head too quickly, disoriented by darkness and the ache along the side of my neck.
Jameson was still behind the wheel, watching the mirrors.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Forty-four minutes,” he said.
“You could’ve just said forty-five.”
“It wasn’t forty-five.” His attention stayed on the rearview mirror.
Of course it wasn’t.
I looked through the windshield.
This safe house sat beyond a steel gate and a long bend in the road, its stone walls disappearing into the slope beneath a low timber roof. Cameras rested beneath the eaves, nearly invisible unless someone knew where to look. The windows reflected the dark without revealing anything inside.
It wasn’t a cabin.
It was a bunker pretending to be a house.
Jameson pressed a control near the steering wheel. The gate closed behind us, followed by the heavy mechanical slide of bolts locking into place.
A light on the dashboard changed from red to green.
Only then did his shoulders lower.
It was barely noticeable, but I saw it.
Whatever waited beyond those walls, he trusted this place to keep it outside.
Jameson switched off the engine. “Stay here.”
He got out before I could argue.
I watched him disappear toward the house, moving through the dark without using a flashlight. One camera shifted as he passed beneath it. A light flashed once near the door, then went dark again.
Several minutes passed before he returned.
He opened my door. “It’s clear.”
I climbed out, every muscle protesting the drive.
The air was colder here. Cleaner too, carrying the smell of wet stone and pine with none of the city left beneath it.
Jameson retrieved the bags from the back seat while I grabbed my duffel and notebook.
Inside, the house felt less like somewhere people lived and more like somewhere people survived.
The main room opened into a wide kitchen with stone counters, dark cabinets, and an old wooden table.
Steel shutters sat recessed above the windows.
A security panel glowed beside the door, larger than the one at the other house.
Beside it, a wall-mounted monitor displayed camera feeds from the gate, the drive, the tree line, and the rear slope.
A row of green indicators glowed along the bottom of the monitor.
Perimeter secure.
Windows sealed.
External sensors active.
He studied each camera feed, then entered a sequence into the security panel. Somewhere inside the walls, locks engaged one after another.
He took the gun from the back of his waistband and placed it on the counter.
Not out of reach.
But no longer in his hand.
Jameson carried the bags into the kitchen and began arranging supplies across the counter.
I reached into one and pulled out a bottle of wine.
His hands stopped.
“I’m taking this.”
“There are glasses in the cabinet.” He nodded toward the upper doors beside the sink.
“That would imply company.” I tucked the bottle against my side and picked up my duffel. “Bedrooms?”
“Down the hall.” He returned to the supplies. “Take whichever one you want.”
I chose the room farthest from the kitchen and closed the door behind me.
The bottle blessedly had a screw cap.
I sat on the edge of the bed and drank directly from it.
The wine was dry and expensive enough to make that feel disrespectful.
Good.
I drank again.
The room was comfortable. Large bed. Heavy curtains. A fireplace built into one wall. Nothing personal. Nothing that suggested anyone had ever stayed long enough to leave part of themselves behind.
Just another place he could disappear into, I guess.
He had wanted me.
He’d admitted that.
Somewhere between Geneva and tonight, I’d become something he couldn’t let himself have.
I took another drink.
I couldn’t decide which possibility hurt more.
That he had changed.
Or that I had.
By the time I stood, the bottle was nearly half empty and the ache beneath my ribs had become something meaner.
I carried it back into the hallway.
Jameson stood at the kitchen counter, sliding the burners and other devices into small black bags one by one. I had no idea what they did, but he sealed each with the same care he’d given the locks.
The gun remained on the counter beside him.
The security monitor cycled quietly through the exterior cameras.
He wasn’t watching it every few seconds anymore.
He looked up when I entered.
His gaze dropped to the bottle.
“It didn’t improve with solitude,” I said.
“I bought food.” He nodded toward the bags.
“I noticed. Enough to survive whatever emotional apocalypse you’re preparing for.”
His expression closed by a degree.
“No.”
His hands went still. “No?”
“I’m not letting you do that again.”
“Do what?” he asked.
“Turn into a wall every time I get close to the thing you don’t want to say.”
He watched me without moving.
I tightened my fingers around the neck of the bottle. “I want to know what’s so wrong with me.”
“Nothing is wrong with you.” His answer came too quickly.
“Then why was it easier to want me when you didn’t know who I was?”
“It wasn’t easier to want you.” His gaze held mine. “It was easier to let myself have you.”
“So if we met tonight, you wouldn’t take me to bed?”
“No.” His answer came too fast.
I closed my eyes and nodded once. “Got it.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said.
I opened my eyes again.
His face had gone pale beneath all that control, like he’d realized exactly where the word had landed and still didn’t know how to pull it back without making the wound worse.
A laugh caught in my throat and came out wrong. “Then say what you do mean. Spell it out.”
“I would want to.” His hand flattened against the counter.
I set the wine down before I dropped it. “Then what’s stopping you?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
His gaze moved over my face like the answer was there and he didn’t like what he found.
“I didn’t know you then,” he said.
“You keep saying that like knowing me is the problem.”
“It is.” His expression changed immediately. “Not because I want you less. Because now I know exactly what failing to pay attention could cost.”
“To the threat.”
“To everything.” His fingers curled against the edge of the counter.
My throat burned.
Not crying. Absolutely not crying.
But something blurred at the edges anyway.
“You asked me upstairs.”
“Yes,” he said.
“You told me you wanted to figure out why you didn’t mind me touching you.”
“Yes.” His grip tightened on the counter.
“You kissed me.”
“I remember,” he said.
“So that was real.”
“Every second of it,” he said.
The explanation came too close to making sense.
That made it worse.
“Then why can’t it be real now?”
“I’m trying to keep you alive,” he said.
“That isn’t the same as being alive yourself.”
“I am alive.” His gaze dropped to my mouth, then lifted again.
He wanted me.
That wasn’t the problem anymore.
The problem was that he still wouldn’t touch me.
I set the bottle down and walked around the counter.
His attention followed every step, but the rest of him didn’t move.
I stopped close enough that I could feel the heat of him. “Then stop looking at me like wanting me is something you have to survive.”
His throat moved.
I reached for the hem of my sweater, hesitated, then pulled it over my head.
The bra beneath it was thin, edged in black lace, something I still hadn’t taken off after the club.
Jameson went completely still.
Not disinterested.
Not unaffected.
Still.
I waited.
Nothing.
Not a step.
Not a hand.
He didn’t even lean toward me.
The silence took what little courage the wine had given me and turned it sour.
I picked up my sweater. “Right. Sorry.”
I made it three steps toward the hallway before his hand closed around my wrist.
Not hard. Not even close.
But enough to stop me.
I could’ve pulled away.
I didn’t.
“You didn’t give me a chance,” he said.
I turned slowly.
He stood too close and not close enough, his hand still around my wrist like he’d caught himself reaching and didn’t know what came after.
“You took off your sweater, and I stopped processing the conversation,” he said.
I blinked. “What?”
“I was calculating the height of the kitchen table against the counter.” His eyes held mine. “Whether the floor would hurt your knees. How quickly I could remove your bra. Whether I could kiss you without making you think sex was easier for me than honesty.”
My pulse tripped.
“By the time I finished,” he said, “you had already walked away.”
I didn’t know what to do with my face.
Or my hands.
Or the fact that every word out of his mouth was making the room feel smaller and hotter and much, much worse.
“I’m not...” He stopped, frustration flickering through his expression. “I’m not like everyone else.”
The admission landed quietly.
No performance.
No cover.
Just him.
My wrist was still in his hand.
His thumb hadn’t moved once.
I looked down at it, then back at him.
“No,” I said softly. “You’re not.”