Chapter 3 #2
"Now I'm going to grab you. I want you to break free using what I just showed you."
Her jaw tightens. "Okay."
I move slowly, giving her time to react, and wrap my hand around her wrist. She twists, pulling against my thumb like I taught her, and breaks my grip on the first try.
"Good. Again."
We run the drill several times, my grip getting stronger, her responses getting faster. She's a natural, her body learning the movements with surprising speed. But I can see fear flickering beneath the concentration. This isn't abstract for her. She's fought for her life twice already.
"Now something harder." I move behind her. "Someone grabs you from behind. What do you do?"
Before she can answer, I wrap my arms around her torso, pinning her arms to her sides. She goes rigid, breath coming fast.
"Don't panic. Think. Where am I vulnerable?"
She squirms against me, testing my hold. The movement presses her body against mine in ways that make professional thoughts impossible. Her ass against my groin. Her back against my chest.
Focus.
"Your head." Her voice is strained. "And your feet."
"Show me."
She throws her head back, nearly connecting with my chin, and simultaneously stomps down toward my instep. I dodge both, but the movements are correct.
"Good instincts. Again."
We drill until she's breathing hard and sweat darkens her hairline. Each repetition requires me to put my hands on her, to press my body against hers, to feel every curve and plane through the thin fabric of my shirt on her body.
It's torture. The best kind.
"Enough." I step back, running a hand over my beard to ground myself. "You need rest. We'll do another session tomorrow."
She bends over again, catching her breath. When she looks up at me, her eyes hold a new respect.
"You're a good teacher."
"I'm a competent instructor. There's a difference."
"No." She straightens, pushing sweat-dampened hair from her face. "You're good. You explain things clearly, you adjust to my learning style, and you don't treat me like I'm fragile even though I know you think I am."
"I don't think you're fragile."
"You called me a liability."
"Being untrained isn't the same as being fragile." I hold her gaze. "Fragile people break under pressure. You killed a man with a lamp because you refused to be a victim. That's not fragile. That's a survivor."
That seems to shake something in her. For a moment, she looks almost vulnerable.
"Thank you for doing this." Quiet, stripped of her usual armor. "For taking this assignment. For training me. I know this isn't what you wanted."
"What I want isn't relevant. Keeping you alive is the mission."
"Right. The Mission.”
I study her in my shirt. Think of the feel of her body against mine during training. The sound of her voice when she asked if I was okay last night.
"That's all it can be."
She nods slowly. But her eyes say she doesn't believe me.
I'm not sure I believe me either.
"I'm going to take a shower." She moves toward the hallway, pausing at the door to her room. "What's the plan for this afternoon?"
"Rest. Recovery. Tonight I'll brief you on emergency protocols and we'll do a trial run of the panic room procedures."
"Fun times." The dry humor is back, her walls rebuilding. "Do you ever do anything that isn't tactical preparation?"
"No."
"Shocking." She disappears into her room, and I hear the bathroom door close a moment later. The shower starts running.
Don't think about her in the shower.
I grab my coat and head outside, desperately needing the cold air.
The afternoon passes in perimeter checks and equipment maintenance. Keeping busy. Staying active. Doing anything to avoid being in the cabin with her. The distance is necessary. Every minute I spend with Vivian Russo makes it harder to remember why professional boundaries exist.
She's not my type. Sophisticated and polished and urban. She belongs in courtrooms and corner offices, not mountain cabins with off-grid survivalists. And even if she was my type, she's a job. A responsibility. Someone I'm required to keep alive, not someone I should be thinking about.
But my brain doesn't seem to understand the difference.
When I return to the cabin at sunset, she's curled up on the couch with a book from my shelf. She's changed into different yoga pants and an oversized sweater, her hair still damp from the shower and twisted into a loose braid. Soft. Comfortable.
Dangerously at home in my space.
"I made dinner." She doesn't look up from the book. "Nothing fancy. Just pasta and sauce from your pantry. I figured you might be hungry after brooding outside all afternoon."
"I wasn't brooding."
"You were absolutely brooding. I watched you do three complete perimeter circuits and reorganize your woodpile twice." Now she looks up, amusement in her dark eyes. "I'm a prosecutor, Deck. Reading people is literally my job."
"Then you should know that what you're reading is professional focus, not brooding."
"Sure. That's definitely what that was." She sets the book aside and unfolds from the couch with a grace that makes my mouth go dry. "Come eat. Then you can tell me all about panic room protocols."
Dinner is surprisingly good. The pasta is perfectly cooked, the sauce seasoned with herbs she must have found in my cabinet. She's comfortable in my kitchen, moving around the space like she belongs there.
She doesn't belong there. She's temporary. A mission. A responsibility.
But watching her plate food and pour water and settle across from me with easy familiarity makes my chest ache.
"Tell me about before." She twirls pasta around her fork. "Before the military. Before all this. Who was Decker Cross?"
I think about deflecting, but find myself answering honestly anyway.
"A kid from Montana with too much energy and not enough direction. I enlisted at eighteen because it was either that or get in serious trouble. Turned out I was good at it. Good at following orders, good at leading men, good at the physical and mental demands."
"And you liked it?"
"I loved it." The admission comes easier than expected. "The structure. The purpose. The sense of being part of something bigger than myself. The military gave me a family when I didn't have one."
"And then Kandahar took that away."
I set down my fork, appetite gone. "Kandahar didn't take it away. Bad intelligence and bureaucratic failure took it away. Kandahar was just where it happened."
"Do you blame yourself?"
"I gave the order to enter that building. I trusted intel that shouldn't have been trusted. So yes. I'll always blame myself."
She's quiet for a moment, studying me with those dark eyes that see too much. "That's why you don't want to be responsible for anyone else. You're afraid of failing again."
"I'm not afraid of failing. I'm certain of it." I meet her gaze. "Everyone I've ever been responsible for has either died or left. That's not paranoia. That's pattern recognition."
"That's trauma talking. Survivorship bias combined with catastrophic thinking." She says it gently. "You're not doomed to fail everyone. You're carrying guilt from an event that wasn't entirely your fault."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"I know exactly what I'm talking about. My father was a police officer.
He died in the line of duty when I was sixteen.
I spent years believing I should have somehow prevented it, even though I was a teenager with no control over his shifts or his cases.
" She reaches across the table and touches my hand.
"Guilt doesn't mean we actually did something wrong.
It just means we loved someone enough to wish we could have saved them. "
Her touch sends electricity through my system. Her words hit places I've kept locked away for five years.
"You're very good at that." My voice comes out rough. "Getting people to reveal things."
"It's my superpower." She withdraws her hand, and I immediately miss the contact. "Also, I wasn't trying to manipulate you. I just recognize the look. The one that says you're carrying weight you shouldn't have to carry alone."
"And what about you? What weight are you carrying?"
She's quiet for a long moment. When she speaks, her voice is softer than I've heard it.
"I dated Dominic Castellano's cousin in law school.
Lorenzo. We were engaged for almost a year before I discovered he was laundering money through his practice.
" She laughs, but there's no humor in it.
"I almost married into the family that's now trying to kill me.
When I saw Dominic pull that trigger, I recognized him because he kissed my cheek at a Christmas party six years ago. "
The revelation lands hard. "Does the marshal know?"
"No one knows. It's not relevant to my testimony, and I was afraid it would compromise the case." Her eyes find mine. "You're the first person I've told."
The weight of that trust settles over me. She gave me a secret that could destroy her credibility, and I gave her the guilt I've carried for five years.
Dangerous. This is dangerous.
"Thank you for telling me." It's inadequate, but it's all I have.
"Thank you for listening." She stands and starts clearing plates. "Now. Teach me about this panic room. I want to know every protocol, every contingency, every worst-case scenario you've planned for."
I watch her move through my kitchen, putting away dishes and wiping down counters. She's rebuilding her walls, and I should let her. Should rebuild my own.
Instead, I’m sitting here wondering what it would feel like to watch those walls come down completely.