Chapter 6 #2
“I started out in the Denver PD, but I wanted federal jurisdiction. Bigger cases. More resources to actually make a difference.” He shrugged. “Naive, maybe. But I thought if I worked hard enough, learned enough, I could actually stop the evil instead of just cleaning up after it.”
“Can you?”
“Stop evil?” He laughed. Hollow sound. “No. But maybe I can slow it down. Keep people alive long enough to testify. Put bad guys away long enough to matter.” He met her eyes. “That’s something.”
It was something.
“Let’s run it again,” Daphne said. “Top to bottom. If Ruthie or Dean asks tomorrow, I want us in sync.”
He nodded “Right. I’m a contractor. And you’re a travel agent.” He smiled.
Shoot, he had a nice smile. “So…our first date? After I finally agreed to date you.”
“Ooh, feisty.” He pretended to consider. “All right, I accept your terms. Location?”
“Okay, um, how about…church?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Church?”
“Do you attend?” She took a bite of her pizza.
“Do you?”
“For a while, after my dad died. With my mom.”
He nodded. “Yeah. My mom dragged me to church too. For a while, I…well, believing that God cared helped. Until my sister died. And that sort of felt like a betrayal, so…”
She nodded, her mouth a grim line. “Yeah. I had a hard time trusting like my mom did. Her faith made her stronger. I wanted what she had…but in the end, I couldn’t hold on.”
“So…not church then. How about the gym? We had a workout date.”
“No girl likes her man to see her sweaty.”
“So now I’m your man?” He grinned.
She rolled her eyes. “Pay attention. Where’d you take me?”
“Okay, so you said no to coffee. I had to ask twice more before you said if I bought you food—no, steak instead of coffee, you’d consider it.”
“Steak?” Daphne raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t strike me as a cheap date.”
Despite everything, she smiled. “Steak works. What happened at dinner?”
“You told me about your father. I told you about my sister. We bonded over dead family members and bad guys who needed to be caught. I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever met. You thought I was persistent and maybe kind of charming.”
“Maybe?”
“You’re tough to impress.”
“I am tough to impress.” But he was right about the charming part. Oh my.
He leaned back, folded his arms across his chest. “By the end of dinner, you agreed to a second date. By the end of the month, we were dating seriously. By the end of the year, I proposed.”
“Where?”
“Mountains. Hiking trail. Sunrise. Simple. Just us.”
Daphne could picture it. Could almost see the version of herself who’d say yes to that proposal.
“You said yes,” he said, as if he could read her thoughts.
They sat there, the cover story becoming something more. Something that felt like it could be real.
“We eloped, like we said,” Daphne said, breaking the moment.
“Yeah. Simple ceremony. Courthouse. Just us and a judge.”
“Because neither of us have family,” Daphne finished. “And we didn’t want a big production. Just wanted to be married.”
He nodded. Then, “Except, do you have family? You know, in real life?”
“No.” She pushed her plate away. “My mom died five years ago. Cancer.”
“Aw, I’m sorry, Daphne.”
“No ‘sweetums’?”
He smiled. Said nothing.
And the silence of it turned to heat and slid into her. She swallowed, got up, grabbing their plates. “Do we fight?”
He too got up, closing up the pizza boxes. “Sometimes. You think I take too many risks. I think you’re too controlling. But we always make up because we love each other more than we annoy each other.”
Daphne’s chest tightened. The cover story was good. Believable. Detailed enough to hold up to scrutiny.
And dangerous enough to make her forget it was fake.
She rinsed the dishes, put them in the dishwasher.
Asher threw out the pizza boxes after transferring the leftovers into one. “I’ll take first watch.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes, I do. You’ve been securing the house all afternoon. My turn. Get some sleep. I’ll wake you at two for second shift.”
Daphne watched him move through the house, checking doors. Professional. Competent. Protective.
Something her father used to say echoed in her mind: Good cops don’t stop being cops when they go home. They keep watch. Keep everyone safe. Can’t turn it off.
Asher couldn’t turn it off either.
“Thank you,” she said. “For the groceries. The chocolate. The coffee. All of it.”
He paused. Looked at her. “Yeah. You’re welcome.”
She headed upstairs to the bonus room. Made up the pullout sofa bed with sheets from the linen closet. Changed into sleeping clothes—yoga pants, tank top. Always ready to move.
Lay down.
Tried to sleep.
Couldn’t.
Because Asher’s words kept echoing: Wanted to stop the evil instead of just cleaning up after it.
Her father used to say the same thing. Used to talk about making a difference. Protecting people. Standing between the innocent and the darkness.
Asher reminded her of her father.
Oh boy.
Daphne got up and moved to the railing. Looked down into the living room below.
Asher sat on the sectional. Book in his hands. Reading. Alert but calm. Keeping watch.
As if sensing her gaze, he looked up.
Their eyes met across the distance.
He smiled. Small. Almost shy. Not the operative smile or the professional smile. Something real.
Something moved inside her chest. Shifted. Settled into a space she’d thought was permanently closed.
Daphne stepped back from the railing. Returned to the pullout bed.
Lay down again.
Stared at the ceiling.
She needed to be careful. Needed to keep boundaries. Needed to remember this was operational necessity, not real life.
But lying there in the dark, listening to the quiet sounds of Asher turning pages downstairs, Daphne had the sinking feeling that being careful wasn’t going to be enough.
Not when domestic bliss felt this good.
Not when his smile made something move inside her.
Not when waiting for him to come home felt exactly like the safety she’d been running from for fifteen years.
She closed her eyes.
Twenty-seven days to go.
She could maintain professional boundaries for twenty-seven days.
Probably.
Out of all the undercover assignments in his life, who knew that a retirement village potluck might be the thing that did him in?
Asher stood in the retirement community clubhouse watching Destiny talk with a woman named Ellen about local artists. Roger was sulking in the corner, his mood matching the thick gray clouds that cluttered the sky. The air smelled of rain, maybe snow.
And across the room, Daphne, his wife, was laughing in a group of other women, like she belonged here.
Yeah, the most dangerous part of this operation wasn’t the syndicate hunting them—it was how easily fake normal was starting to feel real.
A week of domestic routine. A week of no threats. A week that made him wonder if maybe they could actually pull this off.
The clubhouse smelled like casseroles and baked cookies. A hockey game played on the mounted TV in the corner—Avalanche up by two. Long tables were covered with crockpots and foil-covered dishes, with desserts crowding a separate table, and on another, paper plates, plastic utensils, red SOLO cups.
Not just normal. Aggressively normal.
“Asher!” Julie Martinez waved from across the room. Lively brunette with bright energy and a smile that lit her whole face. “Come settle an argument. Dean says the Avalanche are going all the way this year. Craig thinks they’ll choke in the playoffs. What do you think?”
Asher moved toward the cluster of men near the TV.
Dean—tall, solid build of a former athlete and girls’ basketball coach who still looked like he could run drills.
Craig—balding, professorial, gesturing with a beer.
Mark Sullivan, standing slightly apart, dark-haired, watching the game with quiet intensity.
He was their next-door neighbor, an aficionado of “vintage” cars, given the decrepit Chevy Nova from the Stone Age sitting in his driveway, rust dripping onto the pavement.
Asher had seen him once with the hood open, tinkering.
“I think it’s still November,” Asher said. “Little early to be predicting playoffs.”
Dean handed him a beer, despite the community’s semiofficial “no alcohol in common areas” policy. Asher took it. Refusing would be suspicious. But he sipped slowly. Stayed alert.
“So,” Dean said during a commercial break. “You and Daphne. How long you two been married?”
“Year and change. Last October.”
“Newlyweds!” Julie appeared beside Dean with a plate of seven-layer dip. “That’s so sweet. Where did you meet?”
The story rolled out easily now. “She hired me to remodel her house. I’m in construction, she’s in the travel industry.”
“Ooh, falling for the contractor. Classic romance trope,” Julie said. “I love it. Do you have kids?”
“Not yet. Careers are busy. But we’ll think about it when the timing’s right.”
“Timing’s never right.” Ellen joined the conversation. “You just jump and figure it out. Craig and I have two girls. Both grown. One’s a teacher, one’s an economist.”
“They succeeded despite our mistakes,” Craig added.
“That too.”
Across the room, Daphne stood with Destiny and Renee Sullivan. Renee—beautiful in that effortless way, dark hair falling in waves, artist’s hands gesturing as she talked. Destiny looked more relaxed than she had all week.
And Daphne was laughing again.
Head tilted back slightly. Eyes bright. Hair pulled back in a casual ponytail. She wore jeans and a soft blue sweater. Nothing tactical. Nothing that screamed protection officer.
She was just…normal.
And Asher couldn’t tell if it was performance or real.
“Your wife’s lovely,” Ruthie said, appearing at his elbow. Always watching. “Daphne fits right in.”
“She’s good with people.”
“How’s Roger doing? He seems to be enjoying himself.”
Asher followed her gaze. Roger sat at a table with Dean, now engaged in conversation about college basketball.
“He’s mending.”
“And your mother? Destiny’s wonderful. Renee’s already invited her to the garden club.”
“She appreciates the welcome.”