Chapter 18 #2
Harper's back was against the desk. The lamp was to her left—a heavy ceramic base, solid enough to do damage if she could reach it. Her phone was in her pocket. She didn't know if the message to Caleb had gone through.
"I'm a travel writer," she said. "I'm writing a book about small-town Florida."
The tall man moved fast. He grabbed her laptop bag and upended it on the bed. The laptop, the USB drive, the photo album, a notebook, two pens, and a granola bar spilled across the sheets. He picked up the laptop and opened it.
"Password."
"Go to hell."
The shorter man pushed off the door and stepped toward her. He didn't hurry. His face was blank, professional, bored. This was routine for him.
"Last chance," the tall one said. "Tell us who you sent it to, and you walk out of here."
She looked at his eyes. Cold, flat, the kind of eyes that had delivered this speech before. He was lying. She could see it in the way his weight was balanced, the way his hand rested at his side—not relaxed, ready.
They weren't going to let her walk out of here no matter what she said.
Harper grabbed the ceramic lamp base and swung it.
It caught the shorter man across the jaw. He staggered sideways, and she drove past him toward the door, but the tall man was faster. He caught her arm and twisted it behind her back, and the pain buckled her knees.
She went down hard on the tile floor. The tall man pinned her arm and put his knee in her back, his weight pressing the air from her lungs. The glass on the floor bit into her forehead.
"Who did you send it to?"
She couldn't breathe well enough to answer. The shorter man had recovered, blood running from a cut on his chin where the lamp base had connected. He pulled something from his belt. A knife. The blade caught the light from the overturned lamp.
"Hold her still," the shorter man said.
Harper closed her eyes.
The window exploded inward.
Glass sprayed across the room. Harper felt it hit her back, tiny biting fragments, and then the weight on her spine was gone—the tall man ripped away by something that moved through the broken window like a controlled demolition.
She rolled. Got her hands under her. Pushed herself up.
Caleb had the tall man against the wall, one forearm across his throat, the other hand controlling the man's right arm in a joint lock that bent the elbow past where elbows were meant to go. The tall man's feet were off the ground. His face was turning red.
The shorter man with the knife lunged. Caleb released the tall man, pivoted, and met the blade with a forearm block that redirected the knife past his body.
His other hand caught the shorter man's wrist, twisted, and the knife clattered to the floor.
Two strikes—open-handed, precise, devastating—and the shorter man collapsed.
The tall man was reaching for something at the small of his back. A gun. Harper saw it before Caleb did.
"Behind you!"
Caleb turned. The tall man had the gun halfway up when Caleb's foot connected with his wrist. The gun skittered across the floor and disappeared under the bed. Caleb closed the distance and put the man down with an elbow strike to the temple that dropped him like a marionette with cut strings.
Silence. Broken glass. Two men on the floor, neither moving.
Caleb turned to Harper. His chest was heaving. His forearm was bleeding where the knife had nicked him through his shirt. His eyes moved over her face, her body, checking for damage the way he checked surveillance feeds—systematic, thorough, missing nothing.
"Are you hurt?"
She was shaking. Her arm throbbed where the tall man had twisted it. Her lip was split where she'd hit the floor, and she could taste copper.
"I'm okay."
"You're bleeding."
"So are you."
He looked at his forearm like he hadn't noticed. Then he crossed the room in two steps and pulled her to her feet. His hands were on her shoulders, firm and careful, and his face was close to hers. She could see the pulse hammering in his throat.
"We need to go," he said. "Now."
"My files—"
He was already gathering them. The laptop, the USB drive, the photo album, the notebook. He swept everything into her bag and slung it over his shoulder. Then he checked both men’s pulse, secured the gun from under the bed, and tucked it into his waistband.
"Can you walk?"
"Yes."
"Then walk. Stay close."
He led her through the broken window because the shorter man's body was blocking the door. The night air hit her face, warm and thick with salt, and she breathed it in as if she'd been underwater.
His truck was at the end of the lot. He opened the passenger door, and she climbed in. Her hands were shaking badly enough that she couldn't work the seatbelt. Caleb reached across and buckled it for her, his hand brushing her hip, his face inches from hers.
"You came," she said. Her voice didn't sound like her own.
"I was already watching." He pulled back and met her eyes. "Even after our fight. Even after you said—" He stopped. "I was still watching."
She didn't say anything else. He started the truck and pulled out of the lot without turning on the headlights. Behind them, the bungalow door hung at an angle, and the broken window gaped dark against the white siding.
Harper pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the passenger window and let the shaking take her. She could still feel the tall man's knee in her back. Still feel the floor against her face. Still see the blade catching the light.
Caleb drove. His bleeding forearm gripped the steering wheel. His jaw was set, and his eyes moved constantly—mirrors, road, mirrors. He didn't speak. He didn't reach for her hand.
But he'd come. Through a window, without hesitation, when she'd given him every reason not to.
That was going to matter. She wasn't ready to think about how much.