CHAPTER 20
Brynn
Geneva Outskirts, Switzerland
Hour One Off Grid
The car was too quiet.
Not normal quiet. Not the kind that came after a long night or a bad argument or two people deciding they had nothing left to say.
This was tactical quiet.
The kind that made every sound feel assigned.
Tires over wet pavement. Wind pressing against the windows.
The faint click of the turn signal before he killed it halfway through a lane change.
His breathing, even and controlled, like he had trained it to stay that way no matter what was happening around him.
Mine, however, was not doing that.
Mine kept catching in strange places.
The apartment. The glass. His body slamming into mine. My world breaking open behind us.
The impact still sat in my ribs where he’d driven me down. Not hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to move me before death could.
That was the part my brain kept circling.
He hadn’t hesitated.
Not for a second.
One moment I was looking for my charger like an idiot because apparently I thought technology mattered while someone had a rifle trained on me, and the next I was on the floor with his body over mine and glass exploding across the room.
I looked down at my hands.
My camera strap was looped around one wrist. My laptop bag was wedged between my feet. I didn’t even remember grabbing both. I remembered wanting them. I remembered saying my camera like that was a reasonable concern while someone tried to shoot me through a balcony door.
And he had gotten it for me anyway.
I turned my head slightly and looked at him.
Jameson drove like everything on the road existed in relation to him.
Not aggressively or recklessly. Just with a constant awareness that made the inside of the car feel too small.
His eyes didn’t stay in one place for long.
Road, rearview, side mirror, road again.
His right hand rested low on the wheel, steady.
His left shifted occasionally, not because he needed to, but because stillness seemed to bother him unless he was choosing it.
His knuckles were pale against the leather.
That was the only sign.
His face gave me nothing.
Which was honestly rude, considering mine probably looked like someone had shaken all my internal organs loose and then handed me a pop quiz.
I let my gaze drift over him because apparently trauma hadn’t killed that part of my brain. It had only made it more inconvenient.
My memory hadn’t done him justice.
That pissed me off a little.
It should have exaggerated him. That was how memory worked with men you slept with once and never expected to see again. It softened them. Sharpened the good angles. Edited out the awkward parts and let fantasy do the rest.
Except fantasy had been lazy.
The real version was so much worse.
Dark hair, still damp at the edges from the rain.
Clean jaw. Mouth set in a line that suggested he was either thinking ten moves ahead or actively deciding not to commit a felony.
Possibly both. He looked carved out of restraint, and I hated how attractive that was because restraint wasn’t supposed to look like something I wanted to peel open with my teeth.
I looked away fast.
Not the time.
Definitely not the time.
“You’re quiet,” I said.
He didn’t answer.
I tried again. “Jameson.”
Still nothing.
I turned fully toward him. “I know you can hear me.”
“I’m listening,” he said.
“To me?”
He checked the mirror again. “Everything.”
What kind of answer was that?
I stared at him for a second longer, then looked out the windshield at the narrow road cutting through the dark.
Trees rose on either side, black against a sky bruised with cloud cover.
The city lights had thinned behind us until Geneva felt less like a place we’d left and more like something that had swallowed my apartment whole.
“I feel like I have no idea what’s going on,” I said.
He let out a quiet sound. Not quite a laugh. Not even close to humor. “Really? Because I feel like you know way too fucking much.”
I turned on him. “That’s not an answer.”
“No,” he said.
“At least we agree on something.”
His gaze stayed forward.
My pulse beat in my throat. The adrenaline had nowhere to go now. In the apartment, there had been movement. Throwing things. Bleeding. Packing. Running. The second we got into the car, my body had lost the ability to do anything with the panic except let it crawl under my skin.
“Can you tell me where we’re going?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
My jaw clenched. “Can you tell me why?”
“Not yet,” he said.
“Can you tell me whether the person who just shot at me is still behind us?”
“No,” he said.
“No, you can’t tell me, or no, they’re not behind us?”
He adjusted the rearview without slowing down. “No, I can’t confirm they’re behind us. No vehicle has held behind us for more than three turns. That doesn’t mean we’re clear. It means if we’re being followed, they’re good enough not to be obvious.”
I barked out a laugh that sounded a little unhinged. “Fantastic. Great. Love the confidence. Very comforting.”
I looked down at my lap and picked at a loose thread on the cuff of my coat. My fingers were still trembling. I curled them into the fabric to hide it, then hated myself for caring whether he saw.
“You’re crashing,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not,” he said.
“I said I’m fine.”
“You said words. That doesn’t make them accurate,” he said.
I closed my eyes for one second.
One.
Then opened them and stared at him. “Do you always talk like a psychological evaluation with cheekbones?”
That time, the corner of his mouth moved.
Not a smile, more like the memory of one.
“Only repeating what I know,” he said.
I blinked. “What does that mean?” I asked. “Are you a serial killer?”
“No.” His thumb tapped twice against the steering wheel.
I stared at him. “That was too fast.”
“Would hesitation have helped?” he asked.
“A normal answer would have helped.”
His gaze returned to the road. “I’m not sure I have one.”
I turned back toward the window because looking at him wasn’t helping.
The road curved upward, climbing away from the outskirts and into darker stretches where the houses became fewer and the trees grew thicker.
Rain tapped lightly against the glass, just enough to blur the world outside into streaks.
My reflection stared back at me.
Face completely devoid of make-up. Half-dry hair curling wildly.
Hoodie collar stretched out from when I’d pulled it on in a panic.
I looked younger than I felt and far less capable than I wanted to look next to a man who apparently kept tactical go bags, safe routes, and psychological assessments in his casual rotation.
And that was the part my brain finally caught on.
It wasn’t the cheekbones, or the memory of his hands, or even the fact that he’d pulled me out of my apartment before a bullet could end me.
The fact that I was in a car with him. Alone. Leaving the city.
I had no destination, no answers, and no one knew where I was except the man beside me.
He seemed to know exactly how people broke, and I hated how much that thought felt earned.
My throat tightened.
“I barely know you,” I whispered.
His hands tightened on the wheel.
“You barely know me,” he repeated.
There was something strange in his tone. Like he was testing the words.
“Yes,” I said.
Several seconds passed before he finally said, “We’ve had sex.”
My entire brain stopped.
I turned my head slowly to look at him.
He didn’t look at me, but added, “That’s not barely.”
For several seconds, I forgot every language I knew.
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
Nothing intelligent happened.
My skin went hot under the collar of my hoodie, sudden and impossible to hide.
“This is unreal,” I finally managed to say.
His gaze stayed on the road.
“Were you trying to make things less scary with that statement?” I demanded.
“Yes,” he said.
“It didn’t work.”
“It clarified that we’re not strangers,” he said.
I stared at him. “You can’t use penetration as a character reference.”
His grip loosened by a fraction. “Oh.”
I waited.
Nothing else came.
Apparently, that was the whole defense.
I hated him.
Well, that was a lie. I didn’t hate him.
This was going to be a real problem.
I faced the window again, pressing my fingers to my forehead like I could physically hold my thoughts in place.
The worst part was that the comment should have made me angrier than it did. It did make me angry. But beneath the outrage, there was something else. Something hot and inconvenient and stupidly alive.
Because my body remembered before my pride could stop it.
His hands on my hips. His voice against my throat.
I shifted in the seat, hoping the movement looked like discomfort and not whatever the hell my body had decided to do with that memory.
Do not think about that.
Absolutely do not think about that while fleeing and possibly being hunted.
I let out a breath and stared at the ceiling of the car. “You’re impossible.”
“I’ve been told,” he said.
“By who? Other women you’ve kidnapped into the mountains?”
“I didn’t kidnap you,” he said.
I turned back toward him. “I was shot at, shoved into a car, given no destination, and am currently being taken to an undisclosed location by a man with more firepower than emotional availability. Please educate me on your definition of kidnapping.”
His jaw flexed.
Good.
“You came willingly,” he said.
“Under duress.”
“Under fire,” he said.
“That’s not better.”
His silence returned.
“What happens now?” I asked.
For a long moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer.
Then he said, “One of my safe houses is less than an hour from the city. We’ll stay there long enough to get our bearings, clean your devices, and figure out what the hell is happening.”
I sat up a little straighter. “Safe houses?”
“Yes,” he said.
“As in, plural?”
His pause was too small for most people to catch. “Yes.”
I stared at him. “Who the hell are you?”
The road kept his attention. “Someone who should have gotten to you sooner.”
My eyes widened.