CHAPTER 17
GAbrIEL
◆
Tomás answered on the first ring.
I put the call on speaker in the farmhouse kitchen. Helena stood beside me with her arms folded.
Sofia sat behind the stone island, still holding the coffee she had carried inside. Mara returned from the orchard with the drone sealed in a metal case.
“Lena,” Tomás said. “Thank God. Are you safe?”
Helena’s expression did not change. “How did you hear about the drone?”
A pause.
“Campaign security monitors court chatter.”
“The explosion happened less than a minute before your message.”
“Vale’s people were discussing the strike before it occurred.”
Mara looked at me and mouthed, Possible.
Helena asked, “Why didn’t you warn us before?”
“I did not know the target. The chatter named a rural communications node, not you.”
“Who gave you the location?”
“No one. Lena, you told me citrus property. There are six abandoned estates registered to Bastion shells within two hours of the resort.”
I disliked that he had found them. I disliked more that the explanation made sense.
“Send the court chatter,” Helena said.
“It came through a protected senate intelligence brief.”
“Then send the time and source classification.”
“I can’t release—”
“Do not ask me for original evidence while hiding yours.”
Silence.
Tomás exhaled. “You’re right. I’ll send a redacted header.”
“Now.”
The message arrived fifteen seconds later. It showed a monitored court channel flagging an attack at the estate three minutes before the drone reached us.
The header appeared authentic.
Mara ran it through a verification tool and nodded reluctantly.
“I told you I’m trying to help,” Tomás said.
Helena looked at the broken drone case. “Then help by moving Dario’s Reserve Authority hearing to tomorrow.”
“That is impossible.”
“Augusto Vale moved the Stability Council vote from seven days to forty-eight hours.”
“He chairs the emergency review. I do not.”
“You chair the Senate Financial Oversight Committee.”
“For six more weeks, assuming voters remain sentimental.”
“Use it.”
Tomás gave a quiet laugh. “You always did make requests like indictments.”
“Can you do it?”
“I can subpoena Dario for a public hearing. Vale will challenge jurisdiction.”
“Let him do it on camera.”
“I need a summary of what Dario will testify.”
“No originals.”
“A summary.”
Helena looked at me. I nodded once.
“We’ll send one,” she said.
After the call ended, I took the phone from the table.
“You believe him,” I said.
“I believe the header exists.”
“That was not my question.”
“No. It was your jealousy wearing an investigator’s coat.”
“I can be two things.”
“I know.”
She went to the counter and cut the remaining bread. I watched the knife in her hand, the red key at her throat, the way she tried to make ordinary motion out of a near assassination.
“You should rest,” I said.
“So should you.”
“I will when the property is secure.”
“You said that at the penthouse, the coast house, and the hotel.”
“None remained secure.”
“Perhaps the flaw is your definition.”
I had no answer I liked.
Mara opened the drone case. “Charge was directional. Camera transmitted through a burst relay. No stored route.”
“Can you identify components?”
“Commercial shell, custom board. I’ll need two hours.”
“We move in one.”
Sofia stood. “I can continue the publication packet from the van.”
Helena shook her head. “You go with Mara. I’ll stay with Gabriel while he checks the fallback route.”
I looked at her. “No.”
Her eyes narrowed. “We are not doing this again.”
“The shooter knows the estate.”
“That is why the others should leave first.”
“And you?”
“I am not the fragile package in the middle of your convoy.”
“You are the primary target.”
“I am also the person who understands the key.”
Sofia picked up the unicorn backpack. “I’m going to load the car while you two turn concern into foreplay.”
Helena threw a napkin at her.
Mara followed with the drone case. “Forty-five minutes. Try not to destroy the kitchen.”
The door closed.
Helena leaned against the counter. “They think we’re ridiculous.”
“They are correct.”
“You agreed too quickly.”
“I am learning.”
She smiled.
For a minute the farmhouse held only the hum of the refrigerator and the low rustle of wind through the orange trees. Helena buttered bread. I checked the window, the door, the local cameras, then checked them again.
“Sit,” she said.
“I am sitting internally.”
“That explains a great deal about you.”
She placed a plate on the table and pulled out the chair with her foot.
I sat.
Helena stood between my knees and took the challenge coin from my hand. I had not realized I was rolling it across my knuckles.
“Rafael’s?” she asked.
“Yes.”
One side carried the Air Intelligence crest. The other had a dent from the blast that killed him. I had recovered it from the hospital bag they gave my family.
“You use it when you’re afraid,” she said.
“I use it when thinking.”
“You are afraid while thinking.”
The observation should have irritated me. Instead, I felt seen in the same exacting way she read ledgers.
She set the coin beside the plate. “Eat.”
“Is that an order?”
“It is a desperate appeal to your common sense.”
I recognized my own phrase and smiled.
We ate bread and cold cheese. Helena told me about the first time her father took her to a budget hearing and paid her five veros for every politician who answered a different question than the one asked. She made forty-five.
“He said I had a gift,” she said.
“You do.”
“I thought he meant journalism. He meant irritation.”
“I also admire it.”
“Careful. You sound affectionate.”
“I am far beyond affectionate.”
Her smile faded into something softer.
The statement had escaped without strategy. I did not take it back.
She touched the scar beneath my ribs through my shirt. “Does this hurt when it rains?”
“Yes.”
“You never say.”
“You never asked.”
“No withheld truth.”
“Pain is not evidence.”
“It is when you use it to decide what your body can do.”
I looked at her fingers over the old wound. “Today, it can do whatever is required.”
“That is not an answer either.”
“No.”
She unbuttoned my shirt to inspect the scar as if she had authority. I let her.
The air changed with the second button.
“Helena.”
“I am checking your capacity.”
“You are enjoying the investigation.”
“Immensely.”
Her palm moved over my chest. My body tightened under the touch.
I caught her wrist and kissed the inside, where her pulse jumped.
“We have thirty minutes,” she said.
“Twenty-eight.”
“Of course you counted.”
I stood and lifted her onto the table.
This kiss began differently. No gunfire. No jealousy.
Her mouth softened under mine, then opened with a quiet sound that reached somewhere bullets could not. I slid my hands beneath my shirt on her body, skin against skin. She shivered.
“Cold?” I asked.
“No.”
Her fingers pushed my shirt from my shoulders. She traced every scar she could reach, not pitying, not ignoring. I stripped her borrowed shirt over her head and found no bra beneath.
“Strategic choice?”
“Laundry crisis.”
“I support it.”
I bent and took one nipple into my mouth.
Helena’s hands tightened in my hair. Her body arched, warm and alive against me. I used my tongue slowly, then moved to the other breast while my hand traveled between her thighs.
She wore soft black shorts. I slid beneath them and found her wet.
“Gabriel.”
There was no warning in my name now.
I knelt.
Her eyes widened. “The floor is dirty.”
“I own the floor.”
“That does not clean it.”
“I will replace it.”
She laughed, then the sound broke when I pulled her to the table edge and put my mouth on her.
I wanted every version of her: the laugh, the argument, the sharp intake when my tongue circled her clit. She opened her legs and let me have the truth of her body. I held her hips, tasting, teasing, then pressing exactly where she needed.
Her heel dug into my shoulder.
“Do not stop.”
I had no intention.
I slid two fingers inside her and curled them as I sucked her clit. She came with my name in a breathless cry, thighs tightening around my head.
When I rose, she caught my belt.
“Your turn.”
“Later.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Do not make generosity another form of control.”
I went still.
She had found the habit beneath the act. Giving allowed me to remain protected. Receiving required trust.
I unfastened my trousers.
Helena smiled like victory.
She wrapped her hand around me, then slid off the table and took me into her mouth. The sensation destroyed thought. I gripped the table edge rather than her head, and she noticed.
Her eyes lifted to mine as she took me deeper.
Control became impossible in precise increments.
I stopped her before I lost it completely, hauled her up, and kissed her hard enough to taste myself on her tongue.
“Bedroom,” I said.
“No time.”
“Then table.”
She laughed against my mouth.
I found a condom in the emergency bag, rolled it on, and entered her with her back against the scarred wood. This was not the violence of the hotel. It was slow, deep, the room bright with morning and the windows open to the orchard.
Helena held my face in both hands.
“What do you want after this?” she asked.
The question reached beyond the table.
“You alive.”
“After.”
I thrust, buying one second. She did not let me hide inside movement.
“A house where you choose the locks,” I said. “Your papers on every surface. Sofia insulting my coffee. Mornings that are not escape routes.”
Her eyes shone.
“You have thought about this.”
“For two years.”
“That is alarming.”
“I know.”
She pulled me closer. “Keep going.”
I moved harder. Her body tightened around me, warmth and friction and the fierce trust of being wanted after the truth.
She came beneath me, biting my shoulder. I followed with my face against her neck, the imagined house filling my head like a weakness I could finally admit.
We were still breathing hard when a red dot appeared on the wall beside her cheek.
Training took over.
I threw us to the floor as the window shattered.
The bullet struck the place where her heart had been.