Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Alyssa woke to Mack’s heartbeat under her ear.
The faint hum of the dry-cleaning equipment drifted up from below. She opened her eyes and found Mack was already awake.
His left hand rested on her back, but his gaze swung between the window and the bedroom door. Part of him was always on watch. She was learning to love that about him rather than resent it.
“Morning,” she said.
He looked down at her. His expression softened. He kissed her forehead. “Morning.”
She stretched and sat up. The safehouse bedroom looked different in the daylight, the blackout curtains edged with thin lines of morning sun. Reality seeping in around the margins, the way it always did.
Mack swung his legs over the side, reaching for the sat phone on the nightstand. She watched the muscles in his back shift and saw him flinch. His wound had no doubt stiffened overnight.
“Let me look at your arm before you do anything else.”
He glanced back at her, a smile quirking his lips. She raised an eyebrow. He sighed and hung up the phone.
She went to the bathroom and washed up, smiling in the mirror when she saw how alive she looked this morning. She grabbed fresh bandages and alcohol from the medicine cabinet.
The gash looked better—the edges were clean, and the flesh around it was pink but not inflamed.
She finished taping the bandage. Smoothed it down with her fingertips. Let her hand rest on his arm a beat longer than necessary.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For changing your bandage?”
“For staying.”
She met his dark blue eyes and knew he wasn’t talking about the safehouse. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “We covered that last night.”
He kissed the tip of her nose, drew her into his lap for a long, lingering kiss. “Good.”
They dressed, and he called Claire while Alyssa made coffee. “Road’s clear,” he said when the call ended. “We can head to SPS headquarters. Garrett’s expecting us.” He paused. “Forty minutes and we’re behind compound walls. Best security in the state.”
Forty minutes. After everything—the party, the blizzard, the cabin, the shooting, the courthouse, this apartment—forty minutes stood between them and safety. It felt impossibly close and impossibly far at the same time.
She saw the ghost of a smile on his face as he checked his go-bag, holstered his weapon, and secured the sat phone.
She watched the transformation and marveled at it, the way he could carry both versions of himself simultaneously.
The man who’d whispered her name in the dark and the soldier who mapped exits before entering a room.
She gathered her own things. Sketchbook. Bag. Migraine medication. The borrowed clothes she’d been living in. It was the sum total of her life at the moment.
At the apartment door, Mack paused, hand on the deadbolt, and looked at her with an expression she couldn’t quite read. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“The ring.” He said. “Do you still have it?”
The look on his face made sense now. The question made her heart clench.
She’d kept it in its velvet box in the back of her nightstand drawer, underneath a book she never read and a stack of old birthday cards Mack had sent her while he was on his tours.
She’d told herself she kept it because she couldn’t bring herself to sell it, it was too beautiful to throw away, that it would be wasteful. She’d figured someday, she’d know what to do with it.
She’d told herself a lot of things. None of them had been the truth.
The truth was that getting rid of the ring would have meant accepting that she and Mack were over. And some part of her—the part that had never stopped loving him—had refused to let go.
“Yes,” she said. “I still have it.”
He nodded, gave her that ghost of a smile again. He started to speak, closed his mouth, and stared at the floor.
“When this is over,” she said, saving him from the roller coaster emotions she read on his face, “I plan to start wearing it again.” She met his eyes and held them. “If you’re ready to commit.”
The if was deliberate—an invitation. She wasn’t asking him to propose. She was telling him the door was open, and it was his move.
The smile grew with a bit of surprise, then warmth, then something fiercer than both. He pulled her toward him, kissed her once, hard, and said, “I bought that ring because I was sure. I’ve never stopped being sure.”
She grinned and nipped at his bottom lip. “Then let’s get to SPS,” she said. “I don’t know what the future holds, but I’m ready for it as long as I’m with you.”
The morning was bright and cold—the sun sharp against fresh snow, the sky so blue it looked artificial. Mack loaded their gear into the SUV and held open her door under the watchful eyes of the DEA agents.
She climbed in, buckled her seatbelt, and set the sketchbook in her lap.
With a nod to the agents, Mack pulled out of the lot behind the dry cleaners and headed north toward the highway.
The route to the Shadow Point Security headquarters wound through the foothills—two-lane roads flanked by timber, the mountains rising white and massive on either side. Traffic was sparse: a plow, a logging truck, a pickup with a dog in the bed, tongue flapping in the wind.
Normal life.
Mack scanned the road, his right hand resting on the gearshift, his left on the wheel. The scarred knuckles were spotlighted by the sun coming through his window.
She reached over and touched his hand on the gearshift. He turned it palm up and laced his fingers through hers.
The sun was climbing. The road curved ahead, following the contour of the mountain. Alyssa could see the valley opening up below—ranch land, fencing, the distant smudge of a town.
She was thinking about the ring. About his face when she’d said, “if you’re ready to commit. “
About the fact that for the first time since the party, she could see the shape of a future. Not perfect, not uncomplicated, but a future with Mack in it. A future where she wasn’t running.
She was thinking about all of this when a truck came out of nowhere, headed right for them.
One second, it was concealed by a stand of pines. The next it accelrated and before she could yell, Mack’s hand released hers and grabbed the wheel, wrenching it right.
The truck caught them at the rear quarter panel instead of the driver’s door. But a half-second wasn’t enough. The SUV spun. The world became a centrifuge of glass and metal and sound—tires screaming, the shriek of crumpling steel, the explosive percussion of her airbag deploying.
Alyssa was thrown sideways, then forward when they spun off the road and the front bumper clipped a tree.
Her airbag exploded, and she couldn’t see anything.
As the SUV fishtailed, it tipped—God, it’s going to roll—before slamming down on all four wheels in the snow=packed ditch, rocking violently, and going still.
The airbag powder stung her eyes like ground glass. She couldn’t see. The chemical residue—talcum, cornstarch, whatever they used—coated her face, her lashes, the membranes of her eyes. Tears flooded instantly, reflexively, blinding her more completely than the impact had.
She blinked, rubbed her eyes with the back of her hands, and that made it worse. Everything was a white, stinging blur.
Her ears rang with a high, steady tone that swallowed every other sound and replaced it with cotton. She could feel the seatbelt cutting into her chest. Could feel cold air pouring through a broken window. Could feel the SUV listing to one side, the ditch holding them at an angle.
“Mack.” Her voice sounded distant, muffled, as if she were speaking through a wall. “Mack?”
She reached for him. Her hand found his arm, his bandaged wound, but he didn’t flinch. Didn’t answer.
The impact had thrown him into the driver’s side window. She released her seatbelt and faced him, reaching. His head lolled against the driver’s side window.
Blinking through the blurriness, she nearly screamed, “Mack. Talk to me!”
She felt around his head, gently patting his cheeks. Her fingers found wetness on his temple—blood. His head had hit the glass.
“God, Mack, wake up. Please, wake up!”
“I’m...” His voice was thick, slurred, the voice of a man trying to surface through deep water. “I’m awake. Are you—are you hurt?”
Relief swelled in her chest. “I can’t see well, and my ears are ringing.” The words came out steadier than she felt. “But I think I’m…”
Verigo hit, and her stomach flipped. She fell back against the headrest, everything spinning.
She felt him trying to move. Felt the sluggishness in his body, the way his movements were imprecise and searching rather than the efficient, controlled motions she was used to. Concussed. He was concussed.
It was everything she could do to keep from vomiting. She closed her eyes, tried to steady her breathing…
Her door opened. Someone was pulling it open from the outside. Strong hands grasped her shoulders and dragged her out of the vehicle.
Mack. He was getting her out. He’s okay.
She let the strong hands guide her across uneven ground, her eyes streaming, her balance gone. The vertigo was terrible—the world tilting and swaying even though she knew she was on solid earth. Her ears were still ringing. She couldn’t orient herself. She reached for him—
And she was pushed into another vehicle. The seat was different. Higher. The smell was different—not the clean, neutral scent of the SUV but something older, dustier, with a trace of diesel. The hands secured her seatbelt. The door shut, but she heard a sound that made her blood go cold.
The door locked.
“What is…?”
She blinked hard, and through the blur, she saw it wasn’t Mack climbing into the driver’s side. The shape was wrong. The shoulders were wrong. The profile silhouetted against the bright morning was narrower.
And desperately familiar.
“Blake?”
The truck lurched forward, tires spinning, and they were moving. “You’ll be fine,” her brother said. “Sit still.”