7. Brock
Brock
Hazel's been buried in the case files for three hours straight.
She's sitting at the table with the folder spread open, pages arranged in clusters around her notebook.
Every few minutes she makes a small noise, a hum or a muttered "huh" or a sharp intake of breath that means she's found something.
She hasn't looked up in over an hour. Her pen moves constantly, filling page after page with notes and circled names and arrows connecting things I can't see from across the room.
She's good at this. That's the part that keeps catching me off guard. I've worked with federal analysts who don't read files with that kind of focus. She processes information the way I read terrain: instinctively, patterned, always looking for the thing that doesn't fit.
I've been using the time to inventory the weapons cache, check the comm equipment, and monitor the frequency from that intercepted transmission. Nothing else has come through. Just static and the storm. But I logged the band and set the sat phone to scan. If they talk again, I'll catch it.
The list from last night is still in my pocket.
I haven't looked at it since I folded it up, but I can feel it there, a small square of paper reminding me that my plan to keep my distance lasted exactly one morning.
I'm not running from it anymore. Lying on that couch last night after Colt's call, I made a decision.
Not to act on what I'm feeling, but to stop pretending I'm not feeling it.
The pretending is what makes me stupid. The running is what makes me sloppy. And sloppy gets people killed.
So I'll feel it. I'll let it be there. And I'll do my job anyway, because that's what I was trained to do.
The storm hasn't let up. If anything it's gotten worse, the wind shifting to the north and bringing heavier snow.
We're not leaving this cabin tonight. Probably not tomorrow either.
Which means we've got time, and the smartest thing I can do with it is make sure Hazel can handle herself if I'm not right beside her.
"Hazel." I push off the couch. "Take a break."
She holds up one finger without looking up.
"Give me thirty seconds. I think I found something.
There's an incident report from two years ago, a wildlife officer near Crescent Fork filed a complaint about unauthorized vehicles on a restricted trail.
The complaint was logged and then nothing.
No follow-up. No investigation. The officer's name was Calvin Hutchins. "
I go still. "Your source. The game warden."
"Retired game warden. But two years ago he was still active.
He filed an official report about suspicious activity on one of the exact trails we identified this morning, and somebody buried it.
No follow-up means someone in the system decided it wasn't worth pursuing.
Or decided it was worth suppressing." She looks up at me, eyes bright.
"Brock, if there's a law enforcement contact inside this network, that changes everything.
It means the ring doesn't just have routes and supply chains. It has cover."
"Yeah." The word comes out harder than I intend.
Law enforcement corruption is the nightmare scenario.
It means we can't trust the usual channels.
It means whoever we report to could be the same person making evidence disappear.
"We flag it for Mason. He's the only one I trust completely on the federal side.
But we keep it tight until we know more. "
She nods and scribbles something in her notebook. "Agreed. I want to go through the rest of these files, but my back is killing me and my eyes are starting to cross."
"Good. Stand up. I'm going to teach you some self-defense."
Her eyebrows climb. "Self-defense? Right now?"
"Storm's got us locked in. You've got a target on your back. If anything goes wrong and I'm not right beside you, I need to know you can buy yourself a few seconds to run." I clear a space in the center of the room, pushing the table and chairs against the wall. "You game?"
She stretches her neck, winces, and stands. "Fair warning, the last time I tried anything athletic I tripped over my own yoga mat and nearly took out a lamp."
"Noted. We'll start simple." I drop into a basic stance, feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent. "Stance first. Solid base so nobody can knock you down easy. Copy me."
She mirrors me, but her feet are too close together and she's standing too straight.
I step in and nudge her feet wider with the side of my boot.
Then I set my hands on her hips and adjust her posture, tilting her slightly forward.
She's warm under the flannel she's still wearing.
My fingers register the curve of her waist before I make myself let go.
"Like this?" Her voice is a little higher than usual.
"Just like that. Now. If someone comes at you from the front, you don't freeze. You move." I show her how to raise her forearms to protect her face. She copies the motion, clumsy at first. I guide her arms into position, hands around her wrists. "Keep your elbows in. Don't leave gaps."
I throw a slow, controlled punch toward her shoulder. She blocks it and grins when her forearm connects with mine.
"I did it! Do I get a cool code name?"
"You get to do it again. Faster."
We run the block drill over and over. Each time I throw a punch she gets better at meeting it. Her laughter fills the cabin every time she succeeds, bright and unrestrained. The sound pushes against something in my chest that I've kept locked for a long time.
Next I teach her how to break a wrist grab. I take her wrist in a firm hold and show her the angle she needs to twist against my thumb. She fails the first two times, face scrunched in concentration.
"Use your whole body. Not just your arm. Step in, rotate, pull free."
I move behind her to correct her angle. She's close enough that I can smell coffee and something warmer underneath, something that's just her. She breaks free on the third try and pumps her fist.
"Take that, imaginary bad guy."
I show her a palm strike to the nose and a knee to the groin, both aimed at creating space so she can run. We practice the palm strike against my open hands. She's breathing harder now, cheeks flushed from the effort.
"You're picking this up fast," I tell her. And I mean it. She's coordinated when she stops overthinking. Her instincts are better than she gives herself credit for.
"My secret is pure spite. Nobody's dragging me into a van without getting a palm to the face first." She bounces on her toes. "What's next?"
"Escaping a grab from behind." I step in close, wrap my arms around her middle, and pin her arms to her sides.
The second her back presses against my chest, everything sharpens. She's warm. She fits against me perfectly, her shoulders against my ribs, her head barely reaching my chin. I can feel her breathing speed up. My arms tighten before I can stop them.
"Okay," she says, slightly breathless. "How do I get out of this one? Asking for a friend who's currently being bear-hugged by a very large marshal."
I keep my voice even. "Drop your weight. Stomp my foot. Elbow back into my ribs. Then turn and run."
She tries. Her stomp is light. Her elbow barely lands. I don't let go.
"Harder, Hazel. Mean it. Pretend I'm one of the men on that radio."
Something changes in her body. The playfulness drains out and something fiercer takes its place. She drops her weight hard, stomps down on my instep with real force, and drives her elbow into my ribs. I release her and she spins away, breathing hard, eyes bright.
"Again," I say.
We run it four more times. Each repetition she gets sharper, faster, more committed. By the last round she breaks free and spins to face me in one clean motion, hands up in the guard position I taught her, feet right where they should be.
"There she is," I say quietly.
She's flushed and grinning and standing in the firelight in my flannel with her hair falling in her face. The storm is screaming outside. The fire is popping behind us. And the look in her eyes isn't fear anymore. It's something brighter. She's proud of herself. She should be.
"Stronger than I look, right?" She pushes the hair out of her face, still breathing hard. "That's what you're going to say."
"Yeah." My voice comes out rougher than I planned. "That's exactly what I was going to say."
She's still standing in that guard position, hands up, chin lifted, close enough that I can see the firelight reflected in her eyes. Neither of us moves. The air between us thickens the way it does before a storm breaks, charged and waiting.
"Brock." She says my name quietly, like she's testing the weight of it. Her hands lower slowly. "You can stop pretending you don't want to kiss me."
Everything in me goes tight.
"That's not a good idea."
"Probably not." She doesn't step back. "I'm scared and there are men on radios looking for me and the storm might actually kill us. But right now you're looking at me the same way you've been looking at me since the parking lot in Timber Creek and I'm tired of pretending I don't notice."
I should step back. I should put distance between us the way I'm trained to. I should remember the list and the code of conduct and the fact that she's my responsibility.
I don't do any of those things.
I close the distance between us slowly enough that she can stop me. She doesn't. I bring my hand up and cup the side of her face, my thumb tracing along her jaw. She leans into the touch and her eyes flutter half shut.
"If I kiss you," I say, low, "I'm not going to want to stop."
"I know." She puts her hand over mine where it rests against her cheek. "I don't want you to stop either."
I lean in. The first brush of her mouth against mine is barely a kiss. Just pressure. Testing. She makes a small sound against my lips and her fingers curl into the front of my thermal. I pull back half an inch, searching her face for any sign of doubt.
She grabs a fistful of my shirt and pulls me back down.
The second kiss isn't tentative. I angle her head back and kiss her properly, deep and thorough, the way I've been thinking about since she waved at me in that parking lot.
She opens for me and the taste of her wipes out every rational thought I've had in the last twenty-four hours.
Her hands climb from my chest to my shoulders to the back of my neck.
I slide my free hand to the small of her back and pull her flush against me.
She fits. The way she fit against me last night in the bed, but different. Alive with intention. Her fingers thread into my hair and she kisses me back with a fierceness that doesn't match her size and matches everything else about her.
I walk her backward until her shoulders touch the wall beside the fireplace. The warmth of the flames heats one side of us. She arches into me, her hips pressing against mine, and the groan that comes out of me is involuntary and loud enough to make her smile against my mouth.
I break the kiss just enough to press my forehead against hers. We're both breathing hard. Her hands are still in my hair. My hand is still cradling her face.
"We should talk about this," I manage.
"Probably." She's slightly cross-eyed from how close we are. "But if you apologize and run outside to chop wood I'm going to be really annoyed."
A real laugh escapes me. Short and surprised and more honest than any sound I've made in years. "No wood chopping. I'm done running from this."
"Good." She smooths her hands down from my hair to my chest, palms flat against my heartbeat.
"Because I've been thinking about kissing you since approximately thirty seconds after you told me to get in your truck, and it was even better than I imagined, and if you try to take it back I will use every single self-defense move you just taught me. "
I tilt my head and look at her. Flushed cheeks. Swollen mouth. Fire behind her eyes that has nothing to do with the hearth. She's the bravest person I've met in a long time, and the most reckless, and both of those things pull at me in ways I don't fully understand yet.
"I'm not taking it back," I say. "But I'm also not rushing you. Whatever this is, we go at your pace. You say stop, we stop. No pressure. No expectations."
"Okay." She nods, suddenly serious. "Same goes for you. I know I'm your protectee and this complicates things. If you need to keep it professional, I can handle that. I'd rather have your honesty than your guilt."
That lands harder than I expect. Because guilt is exactly what I've been running on every time I think about her. Guilt about wanting her. Guilt about the line I'm crossing. And she just called it out like she could see it sitting on my shoulders.
"No guilt," I say, and something loosens in my chest when I say it.
"I spent the last twenty-four hours making lists and chopping wood and reciting the code of conduct trying to talk myself out of this.
It didn't work. None of it worked. So here's the truth.
I want you. I'm going to keep you safe. And those two things aren't in conflict.
They never were. I just needed to stop being too stubborn to see it. "
She smiles. Not the bright, deflecting smile she uses to hide her fear. Something quieter. Realer.
"That might be the most words you've said at once since I met you."
"Don't get used to it."
She laughs, and I lean down and kiss her again because I can.
Softer this time. Slower. The kind of kiss that isn't going anywhere tonight but promises it will eventually.
She sighs against my mouth and her hand settles over my heart and the storm outside doesn't matter.
The men on the radio don't matter. Not right now.
When we finally pull apart the fire has burned lower and the windows are black with night. She steps back, touches her lips, and shakes her head with a disbelieving little laugh.
"I should get back to those case files," she says, but she doesn't move.
"Tomorrow." I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. "Storm's not going anywhere. Neither are we."
She nods. Turns toward the bed. Stops. Looks back over her shoulder. "For the record, I'm still going to find that list."
"Goodnight, Hazel."
"Goodnight, Marshal." She grins and crawls under the quilts.
I settle onto the couch with the sat phone set to scan the frequency from the intercepted transmission. The fire crackles. The storm howls. Across the room she shifts once, twice, and then goes still.
I touch my mouth where hers was and stare at the dark ceiling.
No more lists. No more running.
Just a man doing his job, protecting a woman who's already changing everything, and the quiet certainty that when this storm finally breaks the real fight is just beginning.