Chapter Five | NOA #4
“Unfortunately, I am.”
His mouth curved. “That mouth is still working, then.”
“Don’t look pleased. It encourages you.”
“I’m encouraged by nature.”
He eased out of me, and I hated the empty feeling enough to resent him for causing it. He came back with a warm cloth, cleaned me with hands that were too careful for a man who had just wrecked me, and I let him because pretending I didn’t like it would have required more energy than I had left.
When he finished, I caught his wrist before he moved away.
Torin looked down at my hand.
I said, “Tonight, if something happens, don’t do the heroic thing where you make a decision for me.”
His eyes came back to mine.
“I make decisions fast,” he said.
“So do I.”
“I know that.”
“Torin, I need you to listen to me.”
He went still.
I tightened my grip. “You don’t trade yourself for me. You don’t lock me out of the plan. You don’t decide my life is worth more because you’ve appointed yourself the man who gets to make that call.”
His jaw flexed.
Then he said, “I can’t promise I won’t put myself between you and a weapon.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I know,” he said. “It’s the only honest answer I have.”
He used almost the same words Landon had.
I let go of his wrist.
Torin bent. His mouth brushed the corner of mine, rougher than gentle, and he stood before I could decide whether to let him do it again.
“You should take the shower first,” he said. “The gala delivery will be here soon, and I’m not sending you into that ballroom looking anything less than lethal.”
I sat up, pulling the sheet around me. “Gala delivery?”
“Formalwear, handoff clutch, comms, and whatever else Evie decided was necessary to make half the room look at you.”
“You arranged that while arguing against using me as bait?”
“I argued against the bait part. Once I lost that argument, I made sure the trap had teeth.”
“That sounds dangerously close to useful.”
“I’ll try not to let it spoil me.”
I took a shower hotter than necessary and stayed under the spray until my legs felt like they belonged to me again.
Steam filled the marble bathroom, fogging the mirror and turning the lights soft around the edges.
I washed sex and sweat from my skin and smoke from memory, but the marks on my hips stayed where Torin’s hands had been.
When I shut off the water, voices sounded beyond the bathroom door.
Torin spoke first, his voice low. “Come in and set everything on the bed.”
A woman answered, crisp and unfamiliar. “Delivery from HPG.”
“I’ve got the room covered.”
“Landon said the red case holds the Simmons handoff clutch and comms. Evie said the garment bag is exactly what the plan requires.”
“Evie usually is.”
“She said you would say that, and she said not to look smug about it.”
“I’ll disappoint her privately.”
“No signature required.”
“Understood.”
The suite door opened, then shut. Locks turned again.
I dried off, pulled on clean underwear, and wrapped myself in the hotel robe.
When I came out, garment bags lay across the bed.
Matte black boxes sat beside them. A cosmetics case.
A slim earpiece case. One hard red case with HPG’s logo embossed so discreetly it almost qualified as humility.
One velvet jewelry box sat beside it, large enough to make me suspicious and expensive enough to make me worse.
Torin stood near the window in tuxedo trousers and an unbuttoned white dress shirt.
I stopped.
He looked up.
The room didn’t need another threat. It had one anyway.
His hair had dried into dark waves that made his blue eyes brighter. The shirt hung open at the throat and showed the Latin tattoo along his ribs when he moved. A black tuxedo jacket waited over the chair. A bow tie sat beside it like an insult he hadn’t yet decided whether to tolerate.
“You look like you’re about to ruin a charity board’s evening,” I said.
“I’ll take that as praise.”
“You take weather as praise.”
“I’ve been complimented by worse.”
I crossed to the bed. “What did HPG send?”
“Your way into the gala.”
The gown was red.
A pure, unapologetic red. The kind of color that entered a room before the woman wearing it and dared anyone to look away.
I pulled it free of the garment bag and held it up.
For one second, I didn’t say anything.
The dress was strapless and floor-length, cut in a mermaid line that would hug every curve from breast to hip before flaring below the knee.
The fabric had weight and sheen, silk or something close enough to be criminal, and the left side hid a slit that would let me walk fast, run if I had to, and strap a knife high enough that no one would see it unless the evening went badly.
I looked at Torin. “Who chose this?”
“Evie.”
“I like Evie.”
“You’ve never met her.”
“She understands fabric and psychological warfare.”
“That she does.”
The shoes were red satin heels with ankle straps, low enough that I wouldn’t break my neck on marble and sharp enough to make every step look intentional.
The jewelry box held diamond drop earrings, a necklace that caught light like a dare, and a bracelet that glittered hard enough to start a fight.
The cosmetics case held everything a woman would need to look like she had arrived at a gala on purpose instead of after running from arson, murder, and bad men with better connections than judgment.
I lifted the diamond necklace. “Subtle.”
“Subtle was never the plan.”
“The plan is for every person in that room to see me.”
“That’s exactly the plan.”
“And for the ones who want the drive to think I still have it.”
“They’ll think that until it’s too late.”
“And for you not to look like you’re about to murder every man who notices me.”
His eyes moved over the gown in my hands, then over the bare skin above the hotel robe, and his jaw tightened.
“I make no promises about my face.”
“That seems unprofessional.”
“I’ll manage.”
“That came out strained.”
“It was, because I meant it.”
The vanity mirror was large enough to reflect the bed, the window, and Torin pretending not to watch while I took the dress into the bathroom.
I did the makeup first. Not soft or pretty in the way that asked permission.
Dark eyes, sharp liner, red lipstick. I left my hair down and worked my fingers through the long brown waves until they fell over my shoulders instead of looking like I had slept in a hotel room with a man who had no business touching me again and every intention of doing it anyway.
Then I stepped into the dress.
It took time. The fabric was fitted enough that it required patience and immoral engineering. I fastened the hidden closure, adjusted the bodice, and tested the slit with one knee lifted. I could move. I could run. I could kick if the evening deserved it.
The knife strapped high on my thigh didn’t show.
The drive went into the red clutch with the false bottom and comm lining. The clutch looked like a decorative accessory and carried the evidence that could burn down the room.
I put on the diamond earrings and necklace. The borrowed bracelet went on my right wrist. My own bracelet stayed on my left.
When I opened the bathroom door, Torin had finished dressing.
Black tux. White shirt. Black bow tie after all, though he wore it like he had won the argument by letting it survive.
The jacket fit across his shoulders with the kind of precision that made violence look expensive.
He had shaved again, and the clean line of his jaw made my mouth remember things the rest of me didn’t have time to revisit.
His gaze hit me.
He stopped moving.
Torin Dempsey, who had an answer for everything and a command for most of it, stood in the middle of the suite and forgot to speak.
The silence stretched.
My pulse kicked once, hard.
“Problem?” I asked.
He took one breath. Then another.
“I’ve never had less of a problem in my life,” he said, his voice lower than before. “Christ, Noa.”
He crossed the room slowly, blue eyes on me as if the rest of the suite had ceased to exist. By the time he stopped in front of me, the space between us had gone hot and narrow.
“That good?” I asked.
“That dress is going to stop conversations.”
“That’s the point.”
“I know.” His gaze moved from my hair to my mouth to the diamonds at my throat, then down the line of the red silk and back up again. “Knowing the point doesn’t help.”
“Careful, Dempsey.”
“You’re breathtaking.”
My fingers tightened around the clutch.
Torin noticed. Of course he did.
He lifted one hand and stopped before he touched me, as if the dress had made him remember the rules for half a second and hate every one of them.
“You look like every man in that room is going to turn his head,” he said. “You look like every woman will want to know who you are. You look like the exact kind of trouble they won’t be able to ignore.”
“That’s useful.”
“It is.”
“You sound unhappy about that.”
“I’m a man of conflicting talents.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning I need them to notice you, and I want to break the hands off anyone who looks too long.”
“That sounds inefficient.”
“That sounds honest.”
I looked past Torin to the mirror. The woman reflected there wore a red gown cut to be noticed, diamonds at her throat and ears, and her own thin gold bracelet still on her left wrist beneath all the borrowed glitter.
Torin stood behind her in a tux, broad and dangerous, his hand hovering near my waist like touching me was a bad idea he wanted very much to have.
I had spent years being unseen because unseen was safe. Tonight, everyone who mattered needed to look straight at me.
“Then get your head on straight,” I said. “You’re not there to admire me.”
His eyes lifted to mine in the mirror.
“I know,” he said. “I’m there to keep you alive.”
The room shifted back into focus.
The evidence. Simmons. Pamela Warren. The unknown protector. The gala. The trap.
It all waited in Halo City’s polished dark.
Torin reached for the earpiece case and opened it. “The earpiece goes in your left ear. It’s small enough to hide under your hair, and I’ll be gentle enough that you can’t accuse me of enjoying the excuse to touch you.”
“I can accuse you of anything I want.”
“You can, and you will. Turn your head for me.”
I turned so he could set it.
His fingers brushed the shell of my ear. The touch was careful, almost delicate, which made it worse. The earpiece settled in place, then he drew my hair over it.
“I need you to say something so I can test the channel,” he said.
“I’m choosing not to make that easy for you.”
His mouth twitched. “That came through clearly.”
“You’re still bossy.”
“That did too.”
He handed me the clutch. “The files stay in the false bottom until Simmons has them. You make the handoff first. After that, you let the room do what that dress was built to make it do.”
“Look at me,” I said.
“Exactly. If I have to suffer through that, so does every villain in the building.”
“I know the plan.”
“I know you do. Say it back anyway so I can sleep eventually.”
“You think you’re sleeping after this?”
“I said eventually.”
I looked at him. “I enter with you. We keep enough spacing that I can be seen and you don’t look like obvious backup.
I locate Simmons in the east gallery. I hand off the drive before Pamela or whoever is protecting her knows I’m in the room.
Simmons verifies and publishes. Only after the drive is out of my hands do I make myself visible. ”
“And if Pamela approaches before the handoff?”
“I don’t engage.”
“If anyone separates you from the room?”
“I move toward light, cameras, and people.”
“And if I tell you to move?”
“I move where you can reach me.”
His jaw flexed once.
“That one cost you,” he said.
“I survived.”
“You’re very brave.”
“I’m very motivated.”
“I’m motivated enough to make myself difficult.”
I didn’t ask him to explain.
He slipped a slim blade into the sheath under the slit of the dress and fastened it high on my thigh with steady hands. His knuckles brushed bare skin once. My breath caught before I could stop it.
His eyes lifted.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re considering ruining Evie’s work.”
“I’m considering it.”
“You can ruin Evie’s work after.”
His hand stilled.
My own word hit me a second late.
After.
As if there would be one. As if we both expected to walk back into some room somewhere when this was done. As if the night had any obligation to let us keep making promises neither of us had said out loud.
Torin stood slowly.
“There will be an after,” he said.
I looked up at him. “That was almost a prayer.”
“It was a threat.”
My mouth curved. “That’s more believable.”
He took the red clutch from me, checked the false bottom himself, then handed it back.
“Simmons gets the files first. You become visible after the handoff. If anything changes, you move where I can reach you, because I’ll be moving toward you before anyone else in that room understands there is trouble. ”
“If anything changes, I move.”
His eyes narrowed.
I lifted my chin. “Where you can reach me.”
“That version will keep me from developing an ulcer before dinner.”
“Don’t get sentimental. It makes you difficult.”
“I was difficult before.”
“You were.”
He smiled then, not soft, not easy. Something hotter and worse.
Outside the window, Halo City glittered under the low June sky.
Pamela Warren was probably stepping into gold and diamonds while Maren Bell stayed missing, Sawyer Price stayed dead, and the person protecting the whole rotten structure still believed the drive could be recovered and the courier could be erased.
They were about to learn otherwise.
I slid the red clutch under my arm and looked at Torin.
He opened the door and checked the corridor before he let me through.
“Are you ready to walk into this?” he asked.
“No, but I’m walking anyway.”
The suite door locked behind us. The plan was live, the evidence was in my hand, and across Halo City, the Harbor Lights Gala was already glittering—diamonds, champagne, and teeth.