23. Chapter 23
Colt
The protective instincts that had made me an exceptional Sergeant at Arms returned with full force.
The difference was that this time, I couldn’t pretend they were professional.
Caroline wasn’t a club asset. She wasn’t someone whose safety had been assigned to me or a name on a threat assessment.
She was the woman whose apartment I had started waking up in, whose coffee I now knew needed enough cream to barely qualify as coffee, and whose bare foot had nudged mine beneath the blankets that morning before she sleepily accused me of stealing her side of the bed.
Four days.
That was all we’d had between admitting we wanted this and Ghost discovering Xtinction had identified her as leverage.
Four fucking days of learning how Caroline looked first thing in the morning. Of finding out she hummed under her breath while answering emails and left half-finished glasses of water everywhere. Of kissing her without either of us pretending it was a mistake.
Then Ghost put her photograph on a screen.
Everything inside me changed.
Ditch called the emergency meeting the next morning.
Prez, Doc, Sweet, Prime, Ghost. The entire leadership structure crowded around the table while surveillance photographs covered the surface between us.
Caroline crossing the hospital parking lot.
Caroline entering her office.
Caroline beside her car.
I had already seen them.
Didn’t matter.
Every time I looked, something cold tightened beneath my ribs.
“They’ve identified her as leverage,” I said. “Surveillance is accelerating. Based on the pattern Ghost found, we’ve got two to four weeks before they transition from reconnaissance to active threat.”
The room went silent.
Ditch leaned forward, forearms braced against the table. “Full security protocol. Effective immediately.”
Nobody argued.
Sweet started coordinating personnel. Prime handled equipment. Ghost and I divided surveillance systems, counterintelligence, and threat analysis.
Within twenty minutes, we had the beginnings of a plan.
Within thirty, I had decided Caroline was no longer going to her office.
I didn’t realize I’d made that decision until I told her.
She was standing in her kitchen that evening, barefoot in loose black pants and one of my T-shirts, although I wasn’t sure when it had officially become hers. Her hair was twisted into a messy knot, and she was slicing vegetables while I sat at the counter with my laptop open.
It should have felt domestic.
For a few minutes, it did.
“You’re hovering,” she said.
“I’m sitting.”
“You’ve looked at me fourteen times in the last five minutes.”
I glanced at the knife in her hand. “You counted?”
“I’m observant.”
“You’re a menace.”
Her mouth curved.
That smile still did something strange to me. Something warm and uncomfortable that made me want to drag her between my knees and forget every photograph on my laptop.
I reached for her when she passed.
Caroline made a quiet sound of surprise as I caught her by the hips and pulled her closer. The knife was safely on the counter, so I let myself take the second I wanted.
Her hands settled on my shoulders.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“This is very clearly something.”
I pressed my face against her stomach.
She went still.
Then her fingers slid into my hair.
The touch nearly broke me.
I had spent most of the day studying photographs of someone following her. Mapping routes. Identifying vulnerabilities. Calculating how quickly a person could get from her parking garage to the interstate if they put her in a vehicle.
Now she was standing between my knees, warm and alive, scratching lightly at my scalp.
“You okay?” she asked.
The question was soft.
Not clinical.
I tightened my arms around her.
“Yeah.”
A lie.
She knew it.
For once, she let me have it.
After a moment, Caroline bent and kissed the top of my head. “Dinner in twenty.”
“You’re not going to the office tomorrow.”
Her fingers stopped.
I felt the exact second the room changed.
Slowly, I lifted my head.
Caroline looked down at me. “Excuse me?”
“Ghost is still working through the surveillance pattern. Until we know how often they’ve been watching the building, you work from here.”
She stepped out of my arms.
The loss of contact was immediate.
“I have patients.”
“Reschedule.”
Her eyebrows rose.
I should have heard myself.
I didn’t.
“Colt.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“You can do telehealth.”
“Some appointments, yes. Not all.”
“Then cancel the rest.”
She stared at me long enough that irritation crawled beneath my skin.
Not at her.
At the fact that she wasn’t understanding something that felt painfully obvious.
“They have photographs of you, Caroline.”
“I know.”
“They know where you work.”
“I know.”
“Then why the fuck are we arguing?”
Her face changed.
Not dramatically.
That almost made it worse.
She folded her arms. “We’re arguing because you didn’t ask me.”
I pushed away from the counter. “This isn’t about permission.”
“Apparently not, since you’ve already decided.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive.”
“And I appreciate that.”
“You don’t sound appreciative.”
“And you don’t sound like someone who remembers I’m an adult.”
The words hit something sharp inside me.
I closed the laptop harder than necessary.
Caroline’s gaze dropped to it.
I saw the caution that entered her expression.
Hated it immediately.
I forced myself to step back.
“Fine,” I said. “One day.”
Her arms remained folded.
“One day working from here,” I continued. “Until Ghost finishes the first analysis.”
She watched me.
“That’s a request?”
My jaw tightened.
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t.
We both knew it.
But after a moment, she nodded.
“One day.”
I told myself that was compromise.
It was the first lie I made about what I was becoming.
***
The next morning, I woke to an empty bed.
Panic hit before thought.
I was upright so fast my ribs screamed.
“Caroline?”
No answer.
I grabbed my jeans from the floor, every possible scenario detonating at once.
Front door breached.
Parking garage.
Stairwell.
A hand clamped over her mouth—
The bedroom door opened.
Caroline walked in carrying two mugs of coffee.
She froze.
I froze.
Her gaze moved over me. “What happened?”
I couldn’t answer.
My heart was beating hard enough to make me sick.
She set both mugs down and crossed the room.
“Colt.”
“I woke up and you were gone.”
Understanding moved across her face.
Not pity.
Thank fuck.
“I was in the kitchen.”
“I know that now.”
Her eyes dropped to my hands.
I was gripping my jeans so tightly my knuckles had gone white.
Slowly, I let go.
Caroline stepped closer. “Do you want help?”
The question from our first night together.
Our rule.
I closed my eyes.
“Yeah.”
Her hands settled against my sides, careful of the healing ribs.
“I’m here.”
I breathed.
Tried again.
Her forehead rested against my chest.
“I’m here,” she repeated.
My arms closed around her.
For several minutes, we stayed that way in the middle of her bedroom.
Then she tipped her head back.
“You know what’s incredibly inconvenient?”
“What?”
“I left the coffee on the dresser.”
I stared at her.
“It’s getting cold.”
A laugh tore out of me.
She smiled.
I kissed her before I could think better of it.
Caroline melted against me, one hand sliding around the back of my neck as I backed her toward the bed. The kiss deepened, and for a few seconds, there was no Xtinction. No surveillance. No photographs.
Just her mouth.
Her body.
The quiet sound she made when my hand found her waist beneath the shirt she’d stolen from me.
Then my phone rang.
I stopped.
Caroline’s forehead dropped against my shoulder.
“I hate your club.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Right now, I deeply resent it.”
I smiled against her hair and reached for the phone.
Ghost.
Reality came back fast.
By noon, there were cameras covering Caroline’s building, trackers in both our vehicles, and a rotating security detail she had reluctantly agreed to after insisting on reviewing every part of the plan.
I told myself I was including her.
For the first few days, maybe I was.
We ate dinner together when I wasn’t at the clubhouse. I learned she hated sleeping with the closet door open but refused to admit why. She learned I couldn’t sit with my back to a restaurant entrance without tracking every person who moved behind me.
She teased me about the way I folded towels.
I accused her of crimes against laundry.
She kissed me in her kitchen while pasta boiled over because neither of us remembered the stove.
Those moments were small.
They became everything.
The problem was that every time I got something good, fear followed.
Caroline laughing beneath me on the couch became Caroline’s photograph on Ghost’s screen.
Her hand finding mine beneath the blankets became a mental inventory of every window in the apartment.
The sleepy way she whispered my name became the imagined sound of her screaming.
So I added another camera.
Then another man to the rotation.
I changed her route to work.
She objected.
I explained.
She gave in.
Three days later, I asked Sweet to run background checks on two people in her building without telling her.
Then I canceled a dinner reservation because Ghost found an unfamiliar vehicle near the restaurant.
Then I started checking the security feed when she took too long in the shower.
The first time Caroline caught me, she leaned against the bathroom doorway with wet hair dripping down the front of her robe.
“Did you just check the hall camera?”
“No.”
She stared at me.
I set my phone facedown.
“Yes.”
“I was in the shower for twenty-five minutes.”
“Thirty-two.”
The silence that followed should have warned me.
Instead, I said, “Your normal average is eighteen.”
Her entire face went blank.
Fuck.
“Did you just quote my average shower time?”
“When you say it like that—”
“How else would I say it?”
I rubbed a hand over my jaw. “Caroline.”
“No. I genuinely want to know.”
“I’m monitoring pattern deviations.”
“I was conditioning my hair.”
I almost laughed.
She did not.
I sobered immediately.
“Right.”
“Right.”
She walked past me.
I caught her wrist gently. “Hey.”
Caroline stopped but didn’t turn.
“I’m sorry.”