Chapter 23 JACE
JACE
I’m awake before the room is.
Early morning. Gray light at the edge of her blinds.
She is on my chest.
Her breathing is slow and even. Her hair is across my collarbone and her hand is flat over my heart. One leg is hooked over mine. She makes a small sound and shifts but doesn’t wake.
I don’t move.
I’ve been awake for an hour. Possibly longer. Old habits die hard. I checked the window, the door, the silence outside, and then settled back into the weight of her on me.
She makes the small sound again.
I look down at her.
Her face against me. Lashes resting against her cheek.
The line of her jaw and the bare slope of her shoulder where the sheet has slipped down.
My hand is on her back without my having put it there.
My thumb moves against her skin without me telling it to.
I notice both things. I don’t stop either of them.
I should be at the office at six. I’m not going to be.
I think about Dawson.
I think about the photograph he sent a week ago—desert camo, two of his guys on either side of him, the caption, keep an eye on my sister .
The last time I called him I told him he could trust me with her.
He meant it one way. I’ve done it another.
I’ve known her since she was too young for me to look at twice, and there is no version of this that isn’t a betrayal.
Every day I wait, the conversation gets harder.
Every day I have her in my bed, it gets worse.
I haven’t figured out what I’m going to say to him, or when.
I’ll have it when he’s home.
Until then, I keep her safe.
That’s the other thing I’m thinking about.
Tyler Vaughn is still out there. He hasn’t been on her block for forty-eight hours.
The cameras are green. Park’s on the corner.
Davis is rotating in at noon. The lobby man started Monday and is competent.
None of this means anything. Vaughn is patient and careful and he’s going to come back, and the only reason I’ve been able to lie in this bed for an hour without my pulse off the line is that I know—without having to check—that my entire operation is currently watching her building.
I’ve moved her into the center of my professional architecture without telling her I’ve done it.
The architecture has been there for weeks.
What changed last night is that I’m inside it with her.
The light shifts on the ceiling. She stirs.
Her chin comes to rest on her hand on my chest, eyes soft, still heavy with sleep. Her hair is a mess, and I’ve never wanted to stay exactly where I am more than I do right now.
“Morning,” she murmurs.
“Morning.”
“You’re still here.”
“I said I wasn’t going anywhere.”
Her smile is slow, lazy. She presses it into my chest like she’s claiming the space.
My hand finds the back of her neck, fingers sliding into her hair.
She makes a quiet, content sound that hits somewhere low and steady in me.
My thumb drifts over her skin—once, twice—and she shifts closer.
Her hand trails down my chest, settling warm and sure against my stomach. Lower. Her fingers drag past my hip.
“Ashford.”
“Mm?”
“Don’t start something you can’t finish.”
She tips her head up and looks at me. Eyes bright. Wide awake now.
“Who says I can’t finish?”
I look at her for a long second.
Then I roll her onto her back.
She lets out a surprised laugh that fades into something quieter—a soft moan—when I drop my head to her neck, when my hand moves over her like I’m relearning her in the morning light. She leans into me without thinking, instinct now.
I don’t rush her. I don’t rush any of it.
Her hands press into my back, her voice soft when she says my name, and when she comes her head goes back, her eyes close, her body arches up under mine—and I follow her over the edge with my mouth at her throat.
After, she settles against my chest, breathing uneven. Her hand rests over my heart like it belongs there.
I’m late. Very late.
I don’t move.
After a long minute she lifts her head off my chest.
“Shower,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“With me.”
“Yeah.”
I take her to the shower.
* * *
She makes coffee in a French press at eight-thirty. She’s in jeans and a cream tank, ready for the shop. The jeans are a problem. I’m not making it through coffee if I keep looking at them. She moves around her kitchen like last night solved something.
I sit on a stool at her island and try to remember how to drink coffee.
She sets a mug in front of me. Black. No sugar. She remembered.
“You staring at me?”
“Hard not to.”
She smiles into her coffee. Sets the mug down. Looks at me across the island.
“You okay this morning?”
I look at her.
“I’m good.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I take her hand off the counter and turn it over in mine. Her palm is warm. I run my thumb across it once.
“Are you?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
She tears a piece of toast off the plate between us and feeds it to me across the island. I take it. She watches me chew.
“What’s your day?” I ask.
“Wedding consult at ten. The bride is bringing her mother. Mood board’s already a mess. Then a funeral spray. Then the standing order for the restaurant on Smith.” She drinks her coffee. “What about you?”
“Meetings. Calls. Whatever Ryker hasn’t broken.”
“Sounds important.”
“It’s not.”
She laughs. “Carrington. You run a security firm.”
“Today I’m driving you to your shop.”
“I have a van.”
“Park can drive your van. I’m driving you.”
She looks at me over her mug. The corner of her mouth moves.
“Okay.”
She turns to put her mug in the sink, and I’m off the stool and around the island before I’ve decided to move.
Hands flat on the counter on either side of her, my chest at her back, I drop my mouth to the curve where her neck meets her shoulder.
She goes still. I can feel her pulse jump under my lips.
“Jace—”
“Mm.”
I turn her around. Lean down and bite the corner off the toast still in her hand, eyes on hers the whole time. Press a quick kiss to her mouth. Wink.
“Get your bag, Ashford.”
She huffs out a laugh. Shakes her head at me.
“Bossy.”
* * *
At her door, she stops with her hand on the knob and turns into me. Her arms go around my waist. Her face against my chest.
She is small against me. She is mine.
The thought lands before I can stop it. Mine . I have not let myself say that word about a woman in my life.
It doesn’t feel wrong.
I kiss the top of her head, then tip her chin up to mine, my hand settling against the side of her face. The kiss starts soft and stops being soft about three seconds in—her mouth opening under mine, my tongue finding hers, her hand going up to the back of my head.
My hand slides down her back. Lower. I can’t help myself. My palm fits over the curve of her ass through those jeans I’ve been thinking about since she walked out of the bedroom in them, and I squeeze, and she makes a small surprised sound into my mouth.
I press her back into the door.
She makes that sound again.
I press my forehead to hers and groan, low.
“You’re going to have to be the one to walk out that door, Ashford. Because I’m about five seconds from carrying you back to bed.”
She laughs. Soft. Right against my mouth.
“Tonight.”
“Tonight.”
She turns in my arms and opens the door.
* * *
Park is on the corner when we step out of her building. He clocks me, clocks her, gives me a small nod. Davis is in a vehicle on the opposite side of Court. The lobby man—new hire, started Monday—is at his post. The block is quiet.
I watch it anyway.
I’ve watched this block for five weeks from cameras and from a sedan across the street and from a chair at her shop with my hand on a coffee. I’m watching it now with her hand in mine.
She is looking up the block.
“Where are you parked?”
“There.” I nod toward the black Range Rover at the curb half a block down. “That one.”
“The big one.”
She looks at it. Looks at me.
“How many cars do you have, Jace?”
“A few.”
“A few.”
“Mhm.”
“Define a few.”
I open the passenger door for her. “Get in, Ashford.”
She gets in. I shut the door, walk around to my side, and get in beside her.
She talks the whole way to Wild Tide. I listen.
I pull up at the curb in front of her shop. Clock the block before I let her get out. Two cars I recognize, three I don’t—running plates in my head, none flagged. The bodega across the street. The dry cleaner two doors down.
Davis is in his sedan a half-block down. He sees me, gives me the nod I need from him, and goes back to his coffee.
I’m out first, walking around to her side when her door opens—she’s already getting out, of course she is.
She steps onto the sidewalk and turns into me.
“Thanks for the ride.”
I look down at her. She is right there, strawberry blonde hair catching the morning sun, squinting up at me. I smile before I’ve decided to.
“I’ll pick you up. Five-fifty.”
“I can just meet you somewhere after, Jace.”
“Five-fifty, Wren.”
She looks at me. She fights a smile.
“Five-fifty exactly?”
“Five-fifty exactly.”
I kiss her once at the door of her shop and get back in the Range Rover.
* * *
Ryker walks into my office at two-fifteen carrying a folder. One look at his face tells me everything. He shuts the door behind him.
“Jace.”
“What?”
“Camera at her apartment caught movement at the door at ten-twelve this morning.”
I’m already standing.
“From the hallway side. Subject in a hood. Stopped at her door for forty seconds. I’ve got him on three cameras coming up to the floor and one going down.”
“Did he go in?”
“Lock sensor pinged at ten-fourteen. The door opened. He went in. We have him entering on the hallway camera and exiting forty seconds later. We need eyes inside the apartment to know what he did.”
“He picked it.”
“Forty seconds, no force. Yeah. He picked it.”
I let that sit.
“How did he get in the building?”
“Tailgated a group. Five tenants came home—bachelorette weekend, lots of bags, lots of noise. The lobby man was looking up something at the desk. Vaughn slipped in behind them in the crowd.”
“Where was Park?”
“On the corner. Talking to you.”
I look at him.
He’s right. Park walked up to me at the Range Rover for ten seconds before I drove off—said good morning, confirmed rotation. Vaughn was inside the lobby in the same minute. He timed it.
“Pull it up.”
He does.
I watch a man in a hood go up the stairs in her building this morning.
It is him.
“Tell whoever’s on the shop not to take his eyes off her until I say otherwise. I’m going to her apartment.”
I’m already moving. Phone. Keys. I pull the Glock from my desk drawer.
Ryker’s on his feet. “I’m coming.”
* * *
I stand inside the door and scan the room. Ryker stops behind me. We both wait for our eyes to adjust to what we’re seeing, which at first looks like nothing.
We move room by room. Living room, clear. Kitchen, clear. Bathroom, clear. Nothing out of place. Nothing moved.
We get to the bedroom.
I see it from the door.
On her pillow.
A photograph.
Color, glossy, four by six. Taken from across the street with a long lens. The two of us coming out of her building this morning. My hand at her lower back. Her looking up at me.
I stand in the doorway of her bedroom and don’t move.
I’ve made a career of staying inside the gap between what someone wants to do and what they’ve done. I’ve built an entire company on that gap. Tyler Vaughn has just stepped across it.
He was in here. He stood in this room. He put a photograph of us on the pillow where her head was seven hours ago.
Behind me, Ryker says my name once.
I don’t answer.
I walk to the bed. I bag the photograph without touching it directly, seal the evidence sleeve, and look at the pillow where her head was this morning.
He was standing over her bed.
That is worse than if he had taken something.
I’m still in her bedroom with the bagged photo in my hand when the apartment door opens and shuts.
“Jace?”
I freeze.
She’s home. She’s not supposed to be home.
She comes around the corner of the hall and stops three feet from me.
Looks at me. At Ryker behind me. At the bag in my hand.
“Why are you both here?”
“Wren.”
“What’s that?”
“Wren—”
“What’s in your hand, Jace?”