Chapter 11
Kane
I t had been the longest day of my life. Or at least, it felt that way.
By the time we reached the safehouse, exhaustion had settled deep into my bones. The kind that went beyond physical fatigue. Too much adrenaline. Too many emotions I’d spent the entire day trying not to acknowledge. Too much Charlotte .
Now, finally, blessedly, the day was over.
I double-checked every alarm in the house, tested every sensor, confirmed that every entry point was secured. Then I slipped into Charlotte’s room just long enough to verify she was actually asleep, her breathing slow and even, her face soft in a way it never was when she was awake.
Then I collapsed into the other bedroom and passed out like someone had hit me with a tranquilizer dart.
If anyone tried to breach the perimeter, the alarms would wake me. But I desperately hoped no one would. I needed a full night’s rest before I could handle anything else. Please, God, just let me have this one thing .
When I woke, pale morning light was filtering through the curtains and my phone showed a text from Sutton.
Tate had briefed him on everything—the spyware, the assassin, Charlotte’s ongoing refusal to leave town.
Sutton acknowledged that I’d taken her off the grid to a safehouse, his message coded despite the military-grade encryption Tate’s team had installed on our devices.
I’d never been more grateful for Tate. I wasn’t a technology person myself.
I could navigate the basics, but this new world of hacking and data tracking and eyes in the sky would have tripped me up eventually.
I was better at old-fashioned police work.
Interviews and instincts and reading people’s faces when they lied.
Old-fashioned in general, maybe. I’d once believed in things like human decency. Loyalty. The idea that you could trust the people who stood beside you. I’d believed the police represented peace and justice, that wearing the badge meant something.
Now, when I thought about how naive I’d been, I could almost laugh.
But dwelling on my personal failures wouldn’t help anyone. Even if Charlotte seemed determined to drag every buried feeling back to the surface just by existing in my space.
Taking her to the club was supposed to purge whatever remained between us. Burn it out so we could work together professionally. Instead, I wanted her more than ever.
I dressed and headed to the kitchen. The pantry held some emergency nonperishables, but we’d need real food if we were staying here any length of time.
Charlotte was still asleep, so I ordered basic staples from a local grocery service—eggs, bread, coffee, the essentials and a few of my own go-to items.
By the time the delivery arrived and I’d finished putting everything away, I heard movement in Charlotte’s room indicating she was awake.
I started a pot of coffee and got to work cooking breakfast. Scrambled eggs with diced potatoes, crumbled sausage, a healthy splash of Tabasco—all of it wrapped in warm tortillas.
Quick, protein-heavy, filling. The kind of meal that would keep us both fueled for whatever the day threw at us, if anything at all.
Charlotte appeared in the kitchen doorway just as I was plating the last burrito. She wore one of those impossibly soft t-shirts and leggings that clung to her curves, her face scrubbed clean of any makeup and she was still breath-takingly beautiful.
She looked at the food like a wolf sizing up prey.
“Did you actually cook ?” she asked, sounding almost shocked that I’d honed such a skill.
“Yes.”
Charlotte lunged for a burrito and immediately stuffed it into her mouth, barely pausing to breathe. A sound escaped her—something between a moan and a growl of satisfaction—and I had to smother a laugh at the sheer, unfiltered intensity of it.
You do not find her adorable , I told myself sternly. This was the woman who had ruined my life. She was not cute .
I took my own plate to the kitchen table like a civilized human being. A moment later, Charlotte followed, still inhaling her burrito with alarming speed. I poured her a cup of coffee and a glass of orange juice, setting both within her reach before settling into the chair across from her.
She didn’t say a single word until the burrito was gone. Then she wrapped both hands around her coffee mug and sipped with an expression of such profound contentment that you’d think I’d handed her liquid gold instead of basic drip brew.
Finally, after the coffee was half-finished and the orange juice had disappeared entirely, she looked up and said brightly, “Good morning!”
This woman was certifiably insane. “You’re welcome.”
She made a face at me. “I was going to say ‘thank you’ next, but fine , have it your way.”
I finished my own breakfast at a normal human pace, one that wasn’t likely to result in choking. “Are you always like a ravenous animal in the morning?”
“We never finished dinner last night.” Charlotte ticked off points on her fingers.
“Then we fucked. Then we fucked again after you edged me for—what was it, an hour? Then we had to flee my apartment in the middle of the night and drive to an undisclosed location here in the desert.” She shrugged.
“I was starving. I think I’ve earned the right to be a little feral about breakfast.”
She had a point. Not that I was going to admit it out loud.
Charlotte’s expression shifted, something more tentative entering her voice when she next spoke. “So. I need to finish my story and get it published.”
I didn’t disagree. The sooner that happened, the sooner this assignment would end and we could return to our separate lives. “Do you have all the evidence you need?”
Her posture changed a bit, a slight hunching of her shoulders and tension around her eyes. She suddenly looked smaller. Younger. Vulnerable in a way I assumed she rarely allowed anyone to see.
“Ruth was supposed to be the backbone of the piece.” Her voice was quieter now.
“I have recordings of all our conversations, detailed notes, everything she told me. But it’s different when the witness is dead.
She can’t testify. Calloway’s lawyers will claim she was lying, that she had ulterior motives, that none of it can be verified. ”
That was, unfortunately, exactly how the legal system worked. A dead witness’s testimony was hearsay at best, inadmissible at worst. Even for a newspaper story rather than a courtroom, the lack of a living source weakened everything.
“So what do you want to do?” I asked, leaning back in my chair across from her. “If we pretend, just for a moment, that your life being in danger isn’t a factor.”
Charlotte stood and refilled her coffee, using the movement to buy herself thinking time. When she returned to the table, she studied me with an expression I couldn’t quite read.
“I’m surprised you want to know.”
“I’m trying to work with you.” The words came out more clipped than I’d intended. “You’re our client, and you’ve made it abundantly clear that you won’t stop. So if you tell me what you’re actually trying to accomplish, maybe we can find a way to do it that doesn’t end with you in a body bag.”
It grated, saying this. Every professional instinct I had screamed that I should have put her on a plane last night to another undisclosed city, no arguments, no negotiations. That’s what I would have done with any other client.
Instead, I’d let her stay. Agreed to help her chase a story that might get us both killed. Because apparently I found her stubbornness and her righteous fury and her complete inability to back down from anything endearin g, like some kind of masochist.
Charlotte tapped her finger against her coffee cup, thinking.
“If my life wasn’t in danger, I’d want to dig deeper and find a way to access Calloway’s private files.
Financial records, communications, anything that proves what he’s actually doing.
I already have some things—the shell companies that own the properties where his clubs operate, for example. Those are technically public record.”
“How did you find those?” The question came out before I could stop it. Reluctant admiration, despite everything.
“Anyone can find them, theoretically. It just requires an enormous amount of patience. Combing through property records, cross-referencing business filings, tracking ownership chains that were deliberately designed to be confusing.” She shrugged. “It took me months.”
“What made you suspicious in the first place?”
Charlotte’s shoulders stiffened in a defensive posture. Her expression went guarded in a way that told me we were approaching sensitive territory.
“I was looking for something substantial after my piece about the police,” she said carefully. “Something that would prove I could handle serious investigations, not just local corruption.”
She glanced away, and for a split second I could have sworn guilt flickered across her features. But that had to be my imagination. Charlotte was a driven journalist who fully believed I was guilty—why would she feel guilty about anything?
“I was frustrated that nothing came of that story,” she continued, her gaze still avoiding mine.
“Publicly, I mean. The police department ordered an internal investigation, fired some people, accepted resignations from others. But no one was prosecuted. No one faced real consequences. My editor had warned me that might happen, but I’d been naive enough to think the truth would matter. ”
My jaw clenched and I weighed my next words carefully before speaking them. “I was upset that the people who actually committed those crimes didn’t face real justice either.”
Charlotte’s head jerked toward me, surprise flashing in her eyes at my comment as she studied my face. Then she looked away again, a complicated mix of emotions flickering across her expression.
“You were saying?” I prompted, when the silence stretched too long.