11. Emma #2
Emma crossed to him, ignoring the fact that they had an audience, and put a hand flat against his chest where she could feel his heart slamming too fast for a man who rarely let anyone see it race.
“I know exactly what it cost you last night. I’m not asking you to be fine with it.
I’m asking you to trust the plan the way I trusted you in that warehouse.
You had a route. I ran it without checking twice. This is Gerri’s route. Let her run it.”
Jace looked down at her for a long moment, a rawness cracking open behind his eyes he rarely let anyone see, and when he finally exhaled, it sounded like surrender even though his jaw never fully unclenched.
“I want a security plan so thorough, Kane’s own mother couldn’t get within a hundred feet of that campus without my knowing about it before she parked.
” His hand came up to cover hers where it still rested on his chest, gripping hard enough to bruise before he caught himself and gentled it.
“Every exit covered. Every staff member vetted twice. Eyes on that property, corner to corner, before Gerri sets foot on it again.”
“Now that,” Gerri said, delighted, “is a yes I can work with.”
“Rotation on the clinic wing specifically. Kids in that building. No exceptions, no gaps, ever.” Jace was pacing, plan taking shape faster than Emma could track it.
“Tucker, campus wired inside a week—cameras, motion sensors, a line to this building Kane can’t intercept.
Roman, Diesel, you’re both on rotation there starting tonight, undercover as facilities staff. ”
“Tonight?” Roman’s eyebrows went up. “Ambitious.”
“He’s already scouting. Tonight.”
“On it, boss.” Roman was halfway to the door, energy restored now that there was a concrete task to throw it at. “I make an excellent groundskeeper. I have extremely strong opinions about mulch.”
“Nobody asked about your mulch opinions, Roman.”
“Everybody’s getting them anyway.”
Diesel, silent through the whole argument, finally spoke up. “Somebody’s got to guard the pastries during the op. I volunteer. Important assets require protection.”
“Nobody asked you to guard the pastries, Diesel.”
“Nobody needed to ask. I know where the valuable stuff is.”
Emma found Jace alone in the basement command center that evening, the rest of the team scattered across the brownstone or already halfway to Riverside, the wall map still glowing with red pins in the low light.
He hadn’t heard her come in—or if he had, he didn’t turn around right away, only stood there with his arms crossed, shoulders rigid, staring at the cluster of pins around his family’s land like he could will them into meaning anything less terrifying than they did.
She crossed the room without a word and slid her arms around his waist from behind, pressing her cheek flat between his shoulder blades. He went tight for one second, then melted into it, one hand coming down to cover hers where it rested against his stomach.
“Hey, yourself,” he said, before she’d said anything at all.
“I wanted to say thank you.” She pressed a kiss between his shoulder blades, feeling him shudder faintly at the contact. “For today. For trusting my read on the plan even though it terrified you.”
“It still terrifies me.” He turned in her arms until they faced each other, and the honesty on his face was the kind he usually kept locked behind three deadbolts and a security clearance.
“Leadership’s never scared me before you.
My instincts only ever want one answer where you’re concerned, and it isn’t tactical.
It’s keep her out of it. Wall her off somewhere with no exits until this is over. ”
“That’s not who I am.”
“I know it isn’t.” His hand came up to cradle her jaw, thumb tracing her cheekbone with a gentleness that didn’t match the raw hunger in his eyes at all.
“I chose you anyway, which means I don’t also get to want the version of you that hides.
I’m working on holding both truths at once.
Some days I manage it better than others. ”
“You did good today.” She turned her face into his palm and kissed it. “You let her choose. You let me weigh in. That’s not nothing, coming from a man who spent his first month with me plotting to relocate me to a bunker.”
“I still think about the bunker.”
“I know you do.” She laughed, and the sound of it visibly eased the tension sitting in his shoulders. “You’re allowed to. Don’t act on it, though.”
He kissed her—not slow, not careful, a hand fisting in her hair and the other banding hard around her waist, lifting her half onto her toes with a low sound rumbling in his chest, rougher than anything he’d ever let her hear from him before.
She kissed him back with matching fierceness, fingers curling into his shirt, and for one long minute, neither the map nor Kane nor the three weeks on the clock existed at all.
“Stay here with me a while,” he said, against her mouth, when they finally broke apart, both of them breathing hard. “I’m not ready to stop touching you yet.”
“You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”
They dropped onto the old couch shoved against the far wall, her back against his chest, his arms locked around her, and Emma let herself exist for a few stolen minutes in the simple fact of being held by a man who’d learned to fear losing her instead of fearing nothing at all.
“Tell me something that isn’t about Kane,” she said, tracing lazy patterns on the back of his hand where it rested against her stomach.
“Anything?”
“Anything. I’ve had enough of the map for one lifetime.”
He considered a moment, and when he spoke again the flat command edge had dropped away, gone soft in a way she hadn’t gotten used to yet, no matter how many times she heard it.
“My mother’s going to ask about grandchildren the second she meets you properly.
Fair warning. She’s been asking since I turned thirty, and she’s already got a baby name book she thinks I don’t know about. ”
“That’s not fair warning, that’s a threat.”
“Consider it both.” He dropped a kiss on the crown of her head, easy, unthinking. “She’s going to love you. It’s going to be deeply embarrassing for both of us.”
“I look forward to it. My own mother would have adored this—the danger, the wolves, all of it. She used to say I inherited her nose for trouble and my father’s complete inability to leave it alone once I’d found it.
” Emma said it lightly, but something quieter moved underneath it.
“She died when I was twenty-three. I don’t usually lead with that. It still catches people off guard.”
“I’m glad you told me anyway.”
She reached up to trace his jaw, feeling it ease under her palm in a way it never quite managed for anyone else in the building. “I want the version of this where I meet your mother and pretend to be surprised by the baby name book. I think mine would have liked that joke.”
His expression cracked wide open—want, and terror, and a hope he clearly hadn’t planned on admitting to out loud tonight. He didn’t say anything. He kissed her again instead, slower this time, and Emma let the moment stretch as long as either of them needed it to.
Confirmed, the message read, delivered to a phone in an office Emma would never see, in a voice she would never hear. Wilder refuses to sell. Foundation stays fully occupied, staff doubled, security already moving in.
Understood, came the reply, entirely untroubled, the words of a man who hadn’t needed to raise his voice in twenty years to get exactly what he wanted. If we can’t buy the property—burn it.