CHAPTER 27
Brynn
Swiss Alps, Switzerland
Day Two Off Grid
I woke up alone.
For one stupid second, my body remembered before my brain did.
His hands.
His mouth, and the way he’d said my name like it was the last piece of control he had left.
Then the cold sheet beside me registered.
My eyes opened to a dim room, pale morning leaking around the edge of the curtains, the air too still for the amount of noise suddenly happening inside my chest.
The other side of the bed was empty.
The pillow was dented. The sheet was twisted low, one corner dragged loose from the mattress where his hand had gripped it sometime after midnight.
So he had been here.
He just wasn’t now.
I stared at the empty space and tried very hard not to be dramatic about it, which would have been easier if my thighs didn’t ache, my mouth didn’t remember his, and every nerve in my body wasn’t sitting up like, excuse me, where did he go?
A floorboard creaked beyond the door.
I exhaled so hard it was almost embarrassing.
Not gone, just awake.
I pushed myself up, dragging the sheet with me, and listened.
Movement from the kitchen. A cabinet opening. Something set down with too much care. The faint electronic chirp of the alarm panel.
Naturally.
Jameson Mercer apparently processed emotional vulnerability by inventorying danger before breakfast.
I dropped back against the pillow and covered my face with both hands.
Last night had happened.
Really happened.
My body had no issue remembering that part. The rest of me was still trying to catch up.
He had been there. Not smooth, not easy, with nowhere left to hide.
Just there.
And now he was awake somewhere beyond the door, apparently capable of leaving bed after that and doing responsible adult things like checking locks.
Rude.
I was also starting to understand that he didn’t move away from feeling.
There had been too much of it in the way he touched me last night. Too much in the way he watched me, like every reaction mattered.
It was more like he organized around it.
Kept it contained.
I found his shirt on the floor and pulled it over my head, then searched for my underwear with as much dignity as a woman could maintain after realizing one sock had somehow ended up under the nightstand.
By the time I stepped into the hallway, I had almost convinced myself I was calm.
Then I saw him.
He stood at the kitchen island in black pants and a gray shirt, one hand braced on the counter while the other moved across a paper map, his hair still damp from a shower I had apparently slept through.
A genuine tragedy.
The burner phones sat beside him, along with my laptop, closed and unplugged.
My poor phone was sealed in a small metal sleeve like a cursed object.
A mug of coffee waited near the edge of the island.
For me.
A second laptop sat open beside the map, its screen angled away from the windows.
The old satellite terminal sat beside it, connected by a thick cable, its status light blinking between yellow and green like it couldn’t decide whether it intended to cooperate.
This screen was black.
White text moved across the screen in short, controlled bursts, stalling every few seconds before another cluster of lines stacked and cleared too fast for me to follow.
My eyes snagged on one word.
DARROW
Then it disappeared.
“Christ that’s intense.”
He looked up at the sound of my voice.
His gaze moved over me once, fast enough to be polite and slow enough to make my skin remember things it had no business remembering before coffee.
“Morning,” he said.
I leaned against the doorway. “Is it?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Brutal.”
His attention dropped to the map again, but one corner of his mouth tipped before he caught it.
I crossed the kitchen and picked up the mug. “Did you stay?”
His hand paused over the map. “Yes.”
His eyes lifted. “If you recall, I’m not the one with a habit of leaving before morning.”
Ouch.
I wrapped both hands around the mug. “That was one time,” I muttered into the coffee.
He only lifted a brow.
I took a sip, then pointed the mug at him. “Should I ask why you’re dressed like someone about to ruin my morning?”
“Because I need to ruin your morning,” he said.
“See? That’s the honesty people complain about.”
For a second, he looked at me like he finally remembered exactly why I was wearing his shirt and standing barefoot in his kitchen.
Then his gaze returned to the map.
I took another sip of coffee. “So what did you do this morning when you left me naked in bed?”
“I checked the perimeter,” he said.
“Of course. Very normal post-sex behavior.”
“The people looking for you don’t care what changed between us,” he said.
Heat moved up my neck before I could stop it. I hid behind another sip of coffee and nodded toward the second laptop.
“And apparently committed some light cybercrime before breakfast. I saw Darrow on the screen.”
His fingers paused near the edge of the map. He looked at the laptop, then back at me. “Yes. I wanted to start identifying pressure points.”
“Okay, so apparently the cybercrime thing wasn’t a joke. We’ll circle back to that. What exactly do you mean by pressure points?”
“Ways into Darrow’s systems that don’t announce me at the front door.” He closed the laptop halfway, leaving the black screen glowing through the narrow gap.
“Ahh, yes. The aforementioned cybercrime. Got it.”
He looked up, and his gaze locked with mine, unblinking.
Then he reached for his coffee, grimaced after a sip, and carried it to the counter.
“Like I was saying yesterday, the news coverage changed the timeline,” he said as he poured another cup.
“Whoever shot at you knows you’re not dead.
They know they missed. I don’t know what’s running under Darrow, but we have to assume they figured out who you really are. ”
He returned the pot to the warmer and brought the mug back to the island.
“Now more than ever, we need to be careful. Your phone is still a liability. Your laptop stays offline. No contact with anyone unless we both agree it’s necessary.
No bank cards. No uncovered windows after dark.
No public transit unless there’s no other option. No predictable routines.”
The list kept coming, each rule feeling like another lock sliding into place.
“No leaving without telling me where you’re going,” he continued.
I stared at him. “I need to tell my brother something or he’ll worry.”
“We can get a message to him,” he said. “Something controlled. You’ll be out of range in the mountains for a few weeks.”
Weeks?
The coffee went sour in my stomach. “A few weeks?” I repeated, louder than I meant to.
“Long enough to keep him from looking for you,” he said.
“Jameson.”
“And short enough that it doesn’t invite intervention. If he thinks you’re working, traveling, taking space, whatever phrasing fits your established behavior,” he said, “then he’s less likely to come looking.”
“Jameson, stop.”
He stopped.
Literally stopped.
Hand on the map. Eyes on me. Mouth shut like I had hit a switch instead of said his name.
“I’m not something you get to hide and manage.” I set the coffee down before I dropped it. “You don’t get to decide what happens to my life, who I can talk to, or how long I disappear.”
“You’re not,” he said.
“Then stop making me feel like one.”
Silence stretched between us.
I kept going before I could lose the nerve.
“I have a life. A job. A brother who will absolutely notice if I vanish into the Swiss Alps for a few weeks with some vague message about being out of range. I have rent and editors and deadlines and people who are going to start asking questions if I stop existing.”
His jaw tightened.
“And before you tell me those are all exposure points or some bullshit, I know,” I said. “I know. That’s the problem. You keep turning every part of my life into something dangerous, and maybe you’re right, but it’s still my life.”
“I know,” he said.
I gave a humorless laugh. “Do you?”
“No,” he said finally. “Not the way you mean.”
That shut me up.
His eyes dropped to the map, then to the burner phones, then back to me. “I know how to keep people alive. I know how to identify threats, reduce exposure, and control the variables around them.”
“Comforting.”
“It isn’t enough,” he said.
The words were quiet enough that I almost missed them.
My hand tightened around the edge of the island.
“You’re right,” he said. “I keep turning your life into a list of risks.” His gaze dropped to the map. “That’s the only way I know how to protect it.”
“And me?”
His gaze held mine. “You are the unpredictable element in this equation.”
I looked away first.
My fingers tightened around the mug until the ceramic bit into my palms.
That was easier than letting him see my face.
“This is why you need training,” he said.
I looked back at him. “That is a violent subject change.”
“It’s not,” he said.
“It absolutely is.”
“If I treat you like an asset, I make decisions for you,” he said. “If I train you, you make better decisions for yourself.”
Asset?
My mouth opened.
Then closed. I filed that away for later investigation.
I hated that he made sense.
“You want me to stop managing you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then learn what I’m seeing,” he said.
I narrowed my eyes. “Fine.”
He looked at me more closely.
“But I have terms.”
“Terms,” he said.
“Yes. For every terrifying life skill you force on me, I get one question.”
“About what?” he asked.
“You.”
“No,” he said.
“That was fast.”
His mouth flattened.
I smiled sweetly. “You want me to learn how to survive being hunted? Fine. I want to learn who I’m being hunted with.”
“No classified details,” he said.
“Obviously.”
“No questions that compromise current security,” he said.
“You are wildly overestimating how romantic this sounds.”
“It wasn’t meant to be romantic,” he said.
“And yet here we are.”