Chapter 23
MARSHALL
The security guards escorted him back toward the service corridor.
They still seemed shaken from the earlier scuffle, but they didn’t need to lay a hand on him this time.
He walked. Not because they’d won, not because Hale had intimidated him, but because Norah’s voice had landed like a blade between his ribs.
He let the security guys herd him. A thousand options for disarming them again presented themselves but he ignored them. What good would it do?
“Keep it moving, pal.”
He clenched his jaw, resisting the urge to show the two-bit guard why they weren’t pals.
He kept his gaze straight ahead. He didn’t look toward the ballroom. By the time they pushed through the service door and into the cooler, quieter back corridor, his palms ached from how hard he was clenching his fists.
“Garage elevator’s this way,” one of the guards said. “We’ll see you to your vehicle. You’re not welcome to return tonight, Mr. Kincaid.”
Marshall didn’t answer. Kincaid. Right. The alias fit about as well as the tux. At the moment, he didn’t feel like either man.
The freight elevator rattled on the way down, fluorescent light buzzing overhead. One guard watched him like he expected him to explode. The other shifted his weight from foot to foot, hand hovering near the concealed weapon in his waistband.
“You going to make this easy?” the first one asked.
Marshall slowly rolled his shoulders once. “If I wasn’t, you’d already know.”
He let the heavy door shut behind him and stepped into the cool parking garage air. He descended the ramp, ignoring the way the guards hovered, unsure if they should keep following. They didn’t matter.
What mattered was the look on Norah’s face.
He reached the armored SUV, unlocked it, and slid into the driver’s seat. The door thunked shut with a dull finality. For a second, he just sat there, hands braced on the steering wheel, forehead dropping to rest against the leather-wrapped rim.
His comm crackled in his ear, like it had on and off for the last several minutes. Stephen had been talking to him the entire way through the hotel, and he was nearing the edge of panic.
“Marshall, talk to me. What happened? Are you out? Are you moving? Marshall?”
“Not right now.” His voice came out rough—somewhere between a growl and a groan.
“Are you okay?”
He almost laughed. The sound would’ve come out wrong.
Okay?
Sure. Instead of answering, Marshall tore the earpiece out and tossed it into the cup holder. The sudden silence was worse. It left too much room for the sound of Norah’s voice in his head.
He finally put the SUV in reverse, maneuvering out of the garage with crisp, controlled movements.
Muscle memory kept him steady as he drove.
He hit the ramp. The garage spit him out into the DC night.
He crossed the circle in front of the hotel.
Turned east. Hit the main boulevard. Kept going.
Street after street. Block after block. DC glittered past in streaks of gold and blue, reflected in windows.
Another standard-issue evening in the capital. Somewhere above all this, people were drinking champagne and applauding a senator who wanted to set the world on fire and call it progress.
His grip tightened.
Left at the light. Merge with traffic. Right toward the river. He knew these streets. They’d been burned into his muscle memory. Every turn, every choke point, every alley that could serve as an escape route.
Tonight, he wasn’t looking for escape.
He was just . . . leaving. Norah had made her choice. He’d told her more about the Syndicate than he should have. She knew who they were, and she’d picked the wrong side.
He replayed everything. Hale’s sanctimonious tone, the guards pulling their weapons. Norah’s sharp inhale of horror. Her hand rising—not to reach for him, but to stop him.
The way she’d stepped toward Hale for protection.
He turned another corner too sharply, tires whispering against the pavement.
She chose Hale. Every logical part of him knew that wasn’t fair. Knew she’d been blindsided. Knew she was scared and angry and operating on half-information. But logic didn’t stand a chance against the heat that surged through him.
His jaw locked until it hurt. He’d put himself between her and a man who would probably have her killed without blinking . . . and she’d sided with him.
He could still hear her voice—tight, sharp, cutting him clean.
“Leave.”
The SUV felt too small. The air, suffocating.
Anger rolled through him, hot and humiliating.
He’d risked everything for her. Ignored orders to maintain distance. Bent protocol. Got himself nearly shot in a ballroom hallway. All because the thought of her standing beside Hale unsupervised had made something savage coil under his ribs.
And she’d looked at him like he was the weapon in the room. His anger spiked again. She’d betrayed him.
But as he hit the far side of the bridge, the anger began to change shape. The fury didn’t fade. It sank deeper, turning heavy, weighted with something worse. The anger was easier. Anger he knew what to do with. But beneath it, quieter and far more dangerous, was the truth—he was hurt.
He hadn’t expected it to hit this hard. Not after so many years of telling himself he was over her. Not after convincing himself that he’d let go. He thought he’d armored that part of himself long ago, welded it shut with discipline and distance.
But seeing her eyes fill with hatred? Hearing her choose Hale’s word over his? Feeling her recoil like he’d become the monster she feared?
That cut straight through fifteen years of steel.
The farther he got, the more the truth gnawed at him.
She’d chosen Hale. His anger blurred with exhaustion, with disappointment and the brutal knowledge that he’d somehow pushed her toward the very danger he meant to shield her from.
For the last ten years, that son of a gun had burrowed his way so deep into Norah’s psyche that she couldn’t comprehend that he was the bad guy.
He’d seen monsters like that before. Men who wrapped their brutality in charm and called it necessity. He knew how to handle them. Sometimes unpleasant measures must be taken.
What he didn’t know how to handle was the look on Norah’s face when those monsters told her he was the threat.
You lied to me.
He hadn’t. Not in the ways that mattered.
He’d kept operational details from her, sure.
Shielded her from the worst of it. He’d gone after Hale’s phone without briefing her first because every instinct he had screamed that giving her plausible deniability was the only way to keep her on the right side of this when the dust settled.
It hadn’t mattered.
She’d seen him with the phone, put the wrong pieces together, and Hale had been right there, whispering a narrative into the cracks.
And Marshall had walked away.
Just like last time.
He swore under his breath, low and vicious, and checked his mirrors out of reflex. No tails. No threats. Just his own reflection staring back at him—hard eyes, clenched jaw, bowtie tugged loose, looking like someone who’d lost a fight without ever throwing a punch.
Fifteen years ago, he’d boarded a plane because she had said, “You should go.”
What he’d heard was rejection. A closed door.
What she’d meant had been more complicated. More fragile. He knew that now, in a way he hadn’t had the emotional vocabulary for at twenty.
Tonight, she’d said, “Leave.”
He’d heard the same thing.
And he’d obeyed. Again. Because it was easier than standing in the hallway and watching her choose someone else. Easier than holding the line in front of a woman who stared at him like he was the one holding the knife.
The city lights were thinning now, the skyline opening up to the long stretch of highway and the dark river off his left. The SUV’s cabin was a box of shadows and dashboard glow. The GPS screen threw pale blue light over his hands.
He’d done this before, too.
Put distance between himself and the thing that hurt. Call it tactical retreat. Pretend the hollow in his chest was just fatigue.
Ross would agree it was tactical.
Ryder would call him a coward.
And God—if He was listening—probably had His own thoughts on the matter.
Marshall exhaled slowly and leaned back in the seat, letting the road roll under him while his mind replayed the last hour on a loop.
Norah’s laugh on the dance floor. The warmth of her hand in his when she’d let herself relax for half a verse.
The way her body had gone stiff when security appeared. The shock when Hale turned the conversation and painted Marshall as the threat. The horror when she put the pieces together wrong.
The way she’d stepped closer to Hale.
That part played in slow motion, every time.
Her shifting weight. The small, unconscious move of her shoulder brushing Hale’s arm instead of his. The choice written in the angle of her spine.
It felt like the exact moment Afghanistan had taught him what it meant to lose a teammate—part disbelief, part freefall, part excruciating clarity about how little control he really had.
He flexed his hands on the wheel again.
He thought of what he’d told Norah in her apartment, the night they’d prayed—awkward, raw, him stumbling through words he hadn’t strung together since before the Army.
He thought faith meant control. That if he held everything tight enough, he could keep it from breaking.
That wasn’t faith.
This wasn’t, either.
This was fear.
He felt it now—sharp, specific, lodged under his ribs like shrapnel.
He was afraid that if he stayed, he’d make it worse. Afraid that if he pushed back against Hale in front of her, he’d force her into a corner she wasn’t ready for. Afraid that loving her out loud would cost her more than his silence.
So he’d done the thing he’d always done best.
He’d left.
The SUV reached the far side of the river. The city dwindled in the rearview mirror, a smear of glitter and shadows.
He took the exit ramp automatically, following the route toward the Black Tower headquarters. It was built into the op plan. If you get burned, you fall back, regroup, hit them another day.
Textbook.
He put his blinker on.
He hadn’t had an answer back then, beyond the loyalty drilled into his bones and the instinct that said if a grenade ever rolled into the room, he’d be the one to jump on it.
So he’d gone.
And she’d taken that as his answer.
He saw her again now, in his mind’s eye, only the image bled into the present. Gala lighting instead of porch light. Silk instead of denim. The same hurt in her eyes.
I’m not doing this twice. The thought came with the force of a body blow.
He flipped the blinker off and coasted onto the shoulder instead, letting the SUV roll to a stop under a lonely stretch of streetlight.
The engine idled, a low, steady rumble. His own pulse matched it, shaking slightly from whatever adrenaline hadn’t burned off yet.
He shoved the gear into park and scrubbed a hand over his jaw, rough stubble rasping against his palm.
“You left her,” he said quietly.
The windshield didn’t argue.
He’d walked out of the building and left her with a man he knew was dirty. With a senator who was being puppeteered by a woman who had a sitting president killed. All because it hurt to stay.
He let the accusation sit there, cold and honest.
Duty or love.
He’d always framed it that way.
Tonight had proved how easy it was to use duty as cover for fear.
Tonight had ripped off whatever illusion of control he’d been clinging to. Every nudge he’d felt since the day Summit appeared on the Syndicate’s radar—every quiet, persistent tug in his spirit—had been God telling him the same thing. Let go. Trust Me.
Marshall hadn’t listened. Control was safer. Predictable. His.
“I’m sorry I haven’t trusted You.” His voice was low, unsteady.
“I want to. I just . . . don’t know how.
Not with this. Not with her.” He swallowed hard.
“We need your help. I don’t know how to fix what I broke with Norah.
I don’t even know if I can. But I know this—I can’t leave her in there alone. Not with those people.”
He blew out a long breath, feeling the decision settle—heavy, certain—like chambering a round.
“She can hate me. Fine. But I’m not abandoning her again. Not to them.”
The old Marshall—the soldier who believed mission was everything, who built his identity on sacrifice and silence—would’ve stayed on the highway. Followed the op plan. Left the cleanup to Ross and Joey. Told himself distance was discipline.
But the man gripping the wheel now knew better.
Love laid down, the pastor had said at the wedding. Sacrifice. Anchored in something greater than yourselves.
He’d always thought that meant dying for someone.
Maybe it also meant staying for them when every instinct screamed to run.
He didn’t know what he was walking back into or if Norah would ever forgive him. He didn’t know if coming back would cost him his career, his freedom, or his life.
He just knew one thing with absolute, immovable certainty.
He was done choosing the path that let him walk away from Norah Winslow.
And he was done pretending that control belonged to him instead of the Father he kept trying to outrun.
The emotion gathering in his gut was sharp and clear. He wasn’t in control of the outcome. But he knew what obedience looked like tonight.
He was going back for her.
Marshall shifted in his seat, threw the SUV into a hard U-turn across the empty lanes, and pointed the nose back toward the city.