Chapter 39
Even with their knowledge that Devyn’s threat has been neutralized, my brothers have stuck around for a couple of weeks, with each of them taking turns heading home to their own families—Hawk to England to see Reese on an assignment, Damon to Chicago to see Mackenzi, and Jagger to Baltimore to see Blake and his kids while they visit her father’s place.
Their absences are calculatedly staggered, each departure and return precisely timed to create a labyrinth of alibis that would confuse even the most seasoned investigator.
Each of them maintains the illusion of normal life as we bury another secret that binds us closer than blood ever could, giving us all plausible deniability when Jake’s body is eventually found. The choreography is meticulous, almost beautiful in its precision.
We’ve been careful. We’ve been patient. We’ve been beyond thorough.
There have been no signs that the police have found his body yet.
The warehouse is isolated, tucked into an industrial district that sees less foot traffic than a ghost town.
The security system is armed, and the climate control is set to a steady temperature that will slow decomposition, at least a little.
The utilities are running on automatic payments that Jake set up himself.
The possibility of missed payments won’t trigger alarms for months, if not years.
When they do find him—and they will, eventually—there will be nothing to tie him to us, except for Devyn, and she is beyond capable sell her surprise and grief.
She will slide into the role of devastated client, learning her trusted agent has been found dead under mysterious circumstances, giving an Oscar-worthy performance of a shocked woman who had no idea her friend was capable of such darkness.
She’ll cry on camera that the revelation breaks her heart.
The media will eat it up, watching her mourn the man who helped catapult her to stardom, when in reality, she’s feeling nothing but cold relief that the monster is no longer in her life
While we wait, we’ve made sure to fully cover our tracks.
Devyn has sent a handful of texts and emails, a slew of well-crafted, simple updates that didn’t require responses, giving the illusion she is unaware he is currently rotting in hell.
Each message was drafted with legal precision, vague yet specific enough to seem personal.
Reading scripts. Excited about the Bateman project. Will call next week.
Premiere went well. Thanks for setting that up last month.
I am swamped, but we really need to set up a lunch.
They tell the story of a busy actress, overwhelmed by her schedule, gradually drifting away from a professional relationship that is slowly running its course.
If and when investigators eventually subpoena her phone records, they’ll find nothing but the mundane correspondence of a woman too busy to notice her agent had gone silent.
The guys are loading the last of our gear into a black SUV in the driveway, the tinted windows reflecting the morning sun.
I hand Damon my luggage, a simple duffel that’s seen better days, the canvas frayed at the corners and shoulder strap padded with duct tape, where the original cushioning has long worn away.
He catches it with a raised, judgmental eyebrow.
“That’s it?” he asks, hefting it and feeling the lightness. “That’s everything you brought?”
I nod, and he accepts the answer without pushing, walking from the porch and adding it to the pile of gear in the back of the Suburban.
With the nightmare that brought me to this house gone, this job is over.
And that means returning to real life, the moment I’ve been dreading since the first time I touched Devyn and allowed myself to imagine something beyond the professional boundary I was hired to maintain.
Real life means the practical impossibilities of a Hollywood actress and a security contractor who lives in Chicago and spends months on end in hostile territories. Real life means facing the fact that what we’ve built here was born of crisis and proximity. Real life means saying goodbye.
The door opens behind me, followed by the soft scuff of footsteps.
I turn to see Devyn stumbling through, panting, lugging a suitcase that is nearly as big as she is.
It’s designer, of course, hard-shelled and rose gold.
The thing probably costs more than my monthly mortgage and holds approximately one-tenth of what my duffel contains.
She’s wrestling with it, her hair falling across her face, and her cheeks flushed from exertion.
I’m not saying goodbye to her. I could never.
I’m saying goodbye to the life I built before her, the solitary existence of a soldier-for-hire who measured time in contracts instead of moments.
This is our first page, instead of the last chapter, the opening sentence of a story we’re going to write together.
“Baby girl.” I sigh, stepping forward and reaching for the suitcase, my fingers brushing hers as they wrap around the handle. “I would’ve got that.”
She tightens her grip, playfully pulling it away from me, her eyes sparkling with mischief that makes my chest ache with affection.
“Tell you what,” she says, breathless from the effort.
“I’ll let you take it to the car.” I laugh, collecting it from her hand and carrying it down the steps toward the SUV with ease.
Damon stares at the massive bag for a moment before rearranging the gear to make it fit.
He shakes his head with the kind of bemused resignation that suggests he’s given up trying to understand the mysteries of women’s packing logic.
Devyn is coming to Chicago with us. With me.
The decision was made between kisses in the dark a few nights ago, whispered into the hollow of her throat as she trembled beneath me.
We then ironed out the logistics in the morning over coffee.
Since the majority of her career happens on set and at social events that take her all over the world, there’s no practical reason to maintain a permanent residence in Los Angeles.
She can work from anywhere. She can live anywhere.
We can live anywhere. The plan is simple in its flexibility—bounce between Chicago, where I have a home I’ve barely lived in for the past five years, and wherever she needs to be for work.
I really don’t care where we are, as long as we’re spending our nights in the same bed and I can wake up to her beautiful face.
That last part hit a little hard with my brothers when I told them yesterday.
Their faces cycled through a range of emotions as they learned I’m hanging up my tactical gear and stepping back from fieldwork with Aegis.
I fucking love what I do: the adrenaline, the purpose, the absolute certainty that I’m making a difference in a world that desperately needs people willing to do the hard things.
But let’s be real, I’m not exactly thirty-five.
My knee aches when it rains, my shoulder never fully healed from that job in Kabul, and some days, I feel every bit the old man that Jagger teases me to be.
Devyn slips her hand into mine, her soft fingers intertwining with my calloused ones, the contrast between us never more apparent than in this simple gesture.
I look down at her, at the woman who briefly visited hell and came out the other side with her light somehow undimmed and her capacity for trust still intact. “Are you ready to go home?” she asks.
I look at her house one last time—the place where I found her, lost her, and found her again. At the beachfront property where I became someone new, someone better… someone capable of love without reservation. Then I look back at her, at the only home that has ever really mattered.
I pull her close, my fingers tucking wind-blown hair away from her face and tracing the line of her jaw as I memorize the feel of her skin for the thousandth time. Smiling at her, I wrap my arms around her small frame and pull her against my chest before pressing my lips to her forehead.
“I am home,” I whisper against her skin, the truth of it resonating through every bone in my body. “Wherever you are, baby girl, that’s my home.”