Chapter 6 #2
“I’ve been thinking about your nightmare. Your, um, memory. That’s a heavy thing to carry,” she said finally. “Knowing you were right and no one listened.”
He nodded, looked up, met her eyes. The pool lights rippled. A couple at a nearby table laughed at something. The warm night pressed in, thick with humidity and the scent of frangipani flowers.
Suddenly, the telling didn’t seem so raw, so terrible.
“I left the military after my first tour. I just couldn’t .
. . well, three of my buddies died because I made the wrong decision.
” The names surfaced without permission: Martinez.
Torres. Beckwith. “The nightmare is—it’s always the same.
Running the analysis. Knowing it’s wrong. Watching my buddies die.”
She leaned back, her mouth a tight line. The wind played with her dark hair, and he pushed away the urge to reach out and wrap a thick lock around his finger.
“Thank you,” she said. “For telling me.”
Dakota nodded. Took a sip of wine. Let the moment settle into something that felt almost like peace.
“What about you?” The question came out before he could stop it. “Any nightmares?”
Jayden’s expression flickered. Just for a second—a shadow crossing her face. There and then, just like that, gone, replaced by that warm, practiced smile.
“No.” She laughed, short and sharp. “All my nightmares I live out loud. Or at least on inspection reports.”
Still, he longed to chase the shadow. “Really,” he said.
She lifted a shoulder. “Oh, you know. Cockroaches in the bathroom. Mold behind the wallpaper. Mice in the kitchen. I did a resort in Bali once where I found a gecko in my bed.” She shuddered theatrically. “The real horror stories are always in the hotels.”
All my nightmares I live out loud.
He didn’t buy it. That wasn’t about cockroaches. That was something else entirely. Something she’d buried so fast he’d almost missed it.
Something about her didn’t feel . . . right.
Aw, it was just his scars, his wounds. She had done nothing to make him suspect her of anything. Including being the owner of the gun secreted in the suitcase.
So calm down, South!
“Geckos,” he said. “Terrifying.”
“You laugh, but they move fast.”
They finished dinner as the sky turned dark and star-studded.
The pool lights shifted through their purple-blue cycle.
The conversation stayed lighter after that—travel stories, hotel disasters, the time Dakota had gotten food poisoning in Morocco and spent three days convinced he was going to die in a riad’s bathroom.
She laughed at his stories. He laughed at hers. And somewhere in the warm tropical night, with the wine loosening edges and the pool casting strange, beautiful shadows, Dakota let himself forget—just for a moment—that he was supposed to be investigating her.
Maybe she was exactly what she seemed. A beautiful woman he’d met on a plane, with whiskey eyes and a magnetic laugh and magic in her smile.
He paid the bill before she could argue about splitting it.
They walked back toward the lobby slowly. Maybe she hated for the evening to end too.
Dakota held the door for her—automatic, ingrained—and his hand found the small of her back as she passed. Just a brush. Just guidance.
She didn’t pull away.
The lobby was quiet, the green armchairs empty, the reception desk staffed by a single night attendant. Dakota paused there, Jayden beside him.
“Any word on the bag situation?” he asked.
The attendant—different from Avery, a young man with an earnest expression—checked his computer. “Nothing reported yet, sir. But it’s only been a few hours. These things usually sort themselves out by morning.”
“Right.” Dakota nodded. “Thanks.”
They took the elevator to seven in comfortable silence. The doors opened onto a carpeted hallway.
Their rooms were at the end. 714 and 716. Adjoining.
Jayden stopped at her door, key card in hand. Turned to face him.
“This was nice,” she said. “The dinner. The company.” A pause. “Unexpected.”
“Unexpected good or unexpected bad?”
“Unexpected . . . unexpected.” She smiled. “I don’t usually enjoy travel disasters this much.”
“Neither do I.”
They stood there, half a step apart, her eyes on his.
Oh. Dakota’s heart decided to betray him, hammering so loud it filled his ears.
How easy it would be to reach out, tilt her chin toward him, pull her to himself.
To close that distance and find out if she tasted like Queensland wine and tropical air and something he’d been missing without knowing it.
She was watching him. Waiting. Her lips slightly parted, her eyes searching his face for—what? Permission? Intention? Some sign he was feeling this too?
Oh, he longed to kiss her, the urge rushing up through him. What?
And then, she took a breath and smiled. “Thanks for dinner, Bugsy.”
Again? “Why Bugsy?”
“I don’t know. There was this musical I liked as a kid—Bugsy Malone. He’s this charming gangster.”
“I’m not a gangster.”
“Yeah, well I definitely think there’s more to you than I can see. Trouble under that Boy Scout exterior.” But she smiled, and it didn’t sound like she hated the idea.
He swallowed, and his gaze dropped to her lips.
Don’t. Because if he kissed her now and she turned out to be something other than what she seemed, he’d never forgive himself for being that stupid.
He stepped back. “Good night, Jayden.”
Something flickered across her face. Disappointment? Relief? Both? Then, a smile. “Good night, Dakota.”
She disappeared into her room. The door clicked shut behind her.
Dakota stood in the hallway for a long moment, staring at the closed door.
All my nightmares I live out loud.
She was hiding something—he felt it in his gut. The question was whether it was something that mattered—something dangerous—or just the ordinary secrets everyone carried.
He went into his own room. Stared out the window at the ocean, the darkness beyond.
Yes, there was trouble. He just didn’t know what kind.
She’d almost kissed him.
Jayden stood in the hotel room, door safely locked behind her, and pressed her palms flat against the wall.
C’mon, Jayden.
Worse—she’d almost told him about Ian.
Any nightmares?
No, she’d said.
Whatever.
But maybe she needed that little nightmare reminder right now—a sort of pep talk against what happened when a gal fell for a guy she shouldn’t.
People get hurt.
Die, even.
She pushed off the wall and crossed to the window. The night arched over the ocean, stars blinking through the last thinning cloud cover.
And of course, her mind just kept circling back. The soft light from the hallway sconce. The faint scent of Dakota, emanating, tugging at her. The look in his blue eyes as they’d traced her face.
She’d almost leaned in too. Almost closed the distance. Almost pressed her mouth to his and let herself forget everything—the mission, the danger, the aliases that kept her alive.
See, she did live her nightmares out loud. Because she’d nearly groaned and grabbed his shirt and pulled him to herself.
Stop it.
She turned from the window and caught her reflection in the mirror above the desk. Hair down, almost wild. Cheeks flushed. Eyes too bright, too vulnerable, too much like the woman she’d been three years ago.
Before Ian.
She hadn’t thought about him in a year—okay, not true. Weeks. Sometimes months. But in the last twenty-four hours?
Too much. Because right behind Dakota’s laugh, she’d heard the echo of Ian’s. And sometimes in Dakota’s eyes, she’d spotted a reflection of the woman she’d been with Ian—happily lost, playing the game without regret.
Ian Weber. Black Swan asset turned more.
He’d seen through her, maybe from the first, and hadn’t cared.
His face surfaced unbidden—dark eyes, crooked smile, the way he’d laughed when she’d finally dropped her guard. There you are, he’d said, sharing a glass of wine as Notre-Dame loomed above them, the cool wind of the Seine winding through the linden trees.
She’d let him in. Let herself believe that maybe she didn’t always have to perform. That maybe she could be enough without the costume.
And six months later, she’d learned the truth.
Because he’d been playing her the entire time.
Because she’d let herself believe the act.
So, yeah, that was a relationship that had ended well.
Ian had used her, and she’d missed every sign because she’d wanted to believe him.
She would not make that mistake again.
Her phone buzzed in her hand. She grabbed it like a lifeline.
“Yes.” Her voice came out steadier than she felt.
“Status?” London’s crisp tone cut through the line—professional, focused, everything Jayden needed to be and wasn’t feeling.
“Still grounded in Cairns. Storm shut down all flights. I’m at a local hotel until it clears.”
“And the security consultant?”
Jayden’s throat tightened. “Next door.”
A pause. “Nimue did a deep dive into the data you sent.”
“And?”
“He’s not just a security consultant.”
The words landed in Jayden’s stomach like stones. “Explain.”
“He’s in possession of a security assessment we found on a Russian cloud server—something we think sets up an attack.”
Jayden stilled. “What?”
London paused. “We’ve seen this pattern before, Lynx. Operatives who look clean on the surface but serve other masters underneath.”
Jayden sank onto the edge of the bed. The mattress creaked beneath her weight. “You think he’s the threat?”
“I think we can’t rule it out.” London’s voice was careful. Measured. “We’ve received intel that Alan Martin is meeting someone in Sydney. Someone who was on your original flight from Hawaii.”
The room felt suddenly smaller. “Dakota was on that flight.”
“So were approximately two hundred other passengers. But how many of them had a reason to be there, the same tour group, the same hotel—next door to you?”
Jayden pressed her free hand against her thigh, willing herself to think clearly. “Our bags were switched.”
“Tell me.”
“Three identical bags got mixed up in the chaos. I grabbed Dakota’s by mistake. He grabbed another bag. Thought it was mine—it wasn’t.”