CHAPTER 51
Brynn
Tallinn, Estonia
Night Thirty-Five Off Grid
I didn’t realize how fast we were walking until the cold hit my lungs. The museum doors shut behind us, and the night air felt harsher than it had an hour ago. Maybe because everything inside had been too bright, too loud, too close.
Jameson didn’t slow. He didn’t speak. He just kept moving toward the car like the ground might open if he hesitated.
“Slow down,” I hissed, trying to keep up with him in heels while regretting every decision I’d made about underwear tonight.
He glanced back at me.
I raised a brow. “Don’t look at me like that. Your enthusiasm is the reason walking currently requires strategy.”
For the first time since I’d met him, Jameson Mercer blushed.
Actually blushed.
Then his hand drifted toward the pocket square tucked neatly into his jacket.
I narrowed my eyes. “So help me God, if you hand me that like I’m supposed to do something useful with it in the middle of this freezing Estonian parking lot, I might slap you.”
His hand stopped.
“Now slow down and act like my husband,” I said.
He took my hand, bringing the back of it to his mouth and kissing it. “I’m sorry.”
I wasn’t sure if it was an act or him, but it gave me shivers.
“We need to regroup when we get back to the hotel,” I said.
“We’re not going back to the hotel,” he said as he opened the car door for me.
I looked at him.
“Our stuff is there,” I reminded him. “Everything.”
“Then we abandon it,” he said.
“No.” I grabbed his arm, forcing him to stop. I’d be damned if I was leaving my camera and laptop. “We call the front desk. Say we had a family emergency. Ask them to pack everything and bring it to the front doors. We don’t go inside. We don’t linger. We just take the bags and leave.”
He stared at me for a long second, then nodded once. “Fine.”
It wasn’t agreement. It was triage.
He made the call while I watched the museum entrance, half expecting Tomar to step out again, cigarette case in hand, amused that we thought we could outrun her.
She didn’t.
Which left me alone with the horrifying clarity of what we had just done.
I’d done a lot of reckless things in my life. Broken into places I had no business entering. Lied to powerful men with smiles on their faces and blood on their hands. Stared down danger long enough to convince myself I wasn’t afraid of it.
But I had never had sex in front of a woman who might have been testing whether I was a liar.
And I had definitely never enjoyed parts of it enough to still feel embarrassed by my own body.
Half an hour later, we were parked outside the hotel, and the pickup was already taking longer than I’d imagined when I suggested it.
Jameson drove without speaking. His jaw was tight, his hands steady on the wheel. I could feel the calculation happening behind his eyes, the kind that didn’t leave room for anything else.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly. “That was...” I exhaled, not sure there was a clean word for any of it. “A lot.”
“Yes,” he said. “It was.” His hand tightened on the wheel and he drew in a slow breath, like he was forcing something dangerous back into its cage.
His eyes flicked to mine, softer now. “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” I said.
His jaw shifted, like he didn’t believe me yet.
“I know she was there,” I said quietly. “I know it was… violating.”
His hand left the wheel and crossed the console, finding mine where it rested in my lap.
“But it doesn’t feel ruined,” I said. “Not completely. Because under all of that, it was still you touching me. You listening to me. You stopping when she left.” My throat tightened. “It was still you and me.”
His grip tightened, firm and quiet, like he needed the answer and hated that I’d had to give it.
It wasn’t long enough to make Jameson go inside, but it was long enough for every passing car to feel interested in us. He kept the engine running by the curb while I watched the lobby doors and tried not to imagine Tomar appearing behind the glass.
Eventually, a bellhop rolled our bags out on a luggage cart, polite and confused and entirely too slow.
Jameson got out only long enough to load everything into the back. He tipped the man with cash, thanked him like a normal husband having a normal family emergency, and slid behind the wheel again without looking at the hotel twice.
I didn’t breathe right until the hotel disappeared behind us and the streets started to thin. “Pull into that Hesburger,” I said, pointing at the glowing sign ahead. “They’ll have Wi Fi. We can look for a new place.”
He didn’t question it. He turned into the lot and parked beneath a flickering streetlamp.
I reached into the bag and pulled out one of the unopened burners. “Here.”
He took it, peeled off the plastic, and powered it on.
The blue startup screen lit his face in a way that made him look even more exhausted.
For a second, he didn’t dial.
He just stared at the phone.
“What?” I asked.
His thumb rested against the edge of the screen. “I think we’re out of our depth.”
The admission was quiet. Controlled. He was assessing the problem, and that scared me more.
“Do you want me to call Beckett?” I asked.
He looked over at me.
For a moment, I thought he might say yes.
Then his gaze dropped back to the burner. “Not yet.”
I nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“I’m not saying no,” he said. “I’m saying I want to talk to Whitaker first. He knew her. He may know what happened after the task force, or how long she’s been operating under another name.”
“And maybe he can help.”
“Maybe.” His mouth tightened. “I need some air.”
He got out of the car before dialing.
I watched him through the windshield as he walked several spaces away, stopping beneath the edge of the flickering streetlamp. He kept his back half-turned to me, one hand at his hip, the burner pressed to his ear.
I couldn’t hear a word.
But I could read his body language. His shoulders told me enough. The stillness of them. The way his head dipped once, then lifted. The way his free hand curled slowly into a fist before he forced it open again.
Whatever Whitaker was saying, Jameson didn’t like it.
By the time he ended it, I was gripping the strap of my bag so tightly my fingers ached.
He stood outside for another few seconds, staring at nothing.
Then he came back to the car.
He slid into the driver’s seat, shut the door, and didn’t start the engine.
He only stared out through the windshield, the Hesburger sign washing his face in red, then yellow, then red again.
“How’d it go?” I asked.
His gaze stayed on the windshield. “I told him Tomar is in Tallinn, operating under the name Ingrid Sarv.”
I hated that I couldn’t tell if saying it hurt him or relieved him.
“He didn’t believe she was involved at first. I told him I saw her tonight. In person. Not on a feed. Not in a file. With my own eyes.” His jaw flexed.
“I told him she’s publicly attached to something called Serpens Geminus,” he continued. “They’re presenting it as a humanitarian foundation, but it’s essentially a resurrected Mirrorstream.”
His hand tightened around the burner.
“Why do you look... rattled?”
“He asked what I did after I left him in London,” he said. “I told him I picked up a civilian complication.”
I blinked. “A civilian complication?”
His eyes cut to mine. “It was the least incriminating way to describe you.”
“I’m touched.”
“You should be.” His mouth tightened. “I considered liability.”
Despite everything, a laugh almost escaped me.
Almost.
He looked back through the windshield. “I gave him the short version. Geneva. The safe house. The mountain road. Every time we got clear, something else pushed us into motion.”
The humor faded out of me.
“And?”
He rubbed his thumb once over the blank screen of the burner. “He thinks the contracts aren’t about killing us.”
The car’s interior began to feel like it was closing in.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“He thinks we may have been flushed out,” he said.
I stared at him. “Explain.”
“That the attacks weren’t meant to catch us,” he said.
“They were meant to scare us into moving. We thought we were choosing the next place, but maybe we were only choosing from the doors they left open.”
I looked toward the dark street beyond the parking lot, suddenly aware of every parked car, every shadow, every empty stretch of sidewalk. “To bring us here?”
He nodded.
I ran a hand down my face. “So what’s the plan?”
“We need to get out of Estonia,” he said. “Whitaker wants to meet in London.”
I stared at him. “So we’re going to London.”
He looked at me then.
Slowly, he shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I’m going to London.”
I blinked. “What?”
“I don’t know who to trust right now,” he said. “I don’t know who sees us, who’s moving us, who’s waiting for us to choose the next obvious door. I can’t risk taking you with me.”
“So what am I supposed to do?”
My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.
His expression shifted. Not enough to change his mind. Enough to hurt.
“We find somewhere between here and London,” he said. “Far enough from Estonia and far enough from London that no one watching me gets you for free.”
I blinked at him.
“You just heard we may have been deliberately herded into Estonia, and your plan is to split up?”
His jaw tightened. “My plan is to stop dragging you directly into every room where someone might be waiting for me.”
“Oh, good,” I said. “So we’re making stupid decisions for noble reasons now.”
His eyes flashed.
Good.
I wanted the reaction. I wanted anything that looked less like him quietly deciding where to place me on a board.
“This isn’t about nobility,” he said. “It’s about exposure. If I walk into London with you beside me, anyone watching me gets you for free.”
“And if you walk into London without me?”
“Then they get me,” he said.
My throat closed around whatever I meant to say next.
He softened, but only a little.
“Brynn.”
“No,” I said, looking away. “Start the car.”
He didn’t move.
I stared through the windshield, at the glowing sign, the empty lot, the dark road waiting beyond it.
“We’re not finishing this argument in a fast-food parking lot in Tallinn,” I said. “Start the car.”
He still didn’t start the car.
Then I looked down and realized he was holding the burner out to me. “Look for a private rental near Olsztyn. A house, not an apartment. Something outside town. No shared entrance. No neighbors close enough to care.”
I took the phone from him, even though my hand didn’t feel steady.
“This argument isn’t over,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“Good.”
He started the engine.
***
By the time Estonia disappeared behind us and Latvia stretched dark ahead, we’d had the argument ten different ways.
Every version ended the same.
With me being left behind.
I tried logic first. That didn’t work. Then anger, which worked even less because Jameson knew what to do with anger. He could answer it with strategy. Exposure. Visibility. Risk. All the clean, bloodless words men used when they were trying to make fear sound like a plan.
At some point, I cried.
Not to manipulate him. Not because I thought tears would change his mind.
I was just that tired.
Tired of running. Tired of being watched. Tired of trusting rooms and roads and people who kept turning into traps.
Jameson had no idea what to do with me after that.
He could handle bullets. Former lovers resurfacing under aliases. Burned identities. Contracts that weren’t contracts and countries that stopped being safe the second we stepped inside them.
But me crying quietly in the passenger seat seemed to break something in him.
That was when he decided we were stopping for the night.