Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
The hours bled together until fatigue pressed behind Vivian’s eyes like sand.
The cabin was thick with stale coffee and damp air, the kind that made her muscles twitch even when she sat still.
She could feel the soft thumps of Blake pacing the narrow space, the quiet clink of metal when he checked his weapon for the fourth time.
“Stop,” she murmured without looking up.
The sound cut off. Silence followed, sharp enough to hear the sea breathe against the hull.
He entered the cabin and leaned against the bulkhead, shadow slicing across his face. “You trying to give orders now?”
“Trying to keep you from wearing a groove in the floor. You might sink us.”
Vivian sat up and poured herself another capful of bitter coffee. “We need to talk.”
He didn’t answer, which was an answer.
She exhaled through her nose, slow. “You’ve been circling Maddox since Christmas Cove. What really makes you not trust him specifically?”
Blake pushed off the wall, his movements fluid, too deliberate to be relaxed. “You ever get tired of baiting me?”
“Only when it doesn’t work.”
His mouth twitched, not quite a smile, something darker. “I don’t trust anyone who plays both sides of a mission.”
The words landed sharp enough to sting. Her pulse stumbled. “Meaning?”
“You know what I mean.” His gaze found her, steady, unflinching, the kind that stripped skin and left nerve. “You chose the order over me. Don’t act surprised that I have trust issues.”
Her breath caught before she could mask it. The air in the cabin felt thinner, pressing in. “That wasn’t a choice. That was a command.”
“Same thing when you follow it.” He said it quietly, but it hit harder than a shout.
Vivian turned away, focusing on the condensation streaking the porthole where dawn tried—and failed—to burn through. Her reflection in the glass looked pale and distant.
“You think I don’t regret it?” she asked. “I know I burned our last op, but it also let us walk out alive.
Blake’s silence said enough. He didn’t move closer, and the space between them carried heat.
“I think regret’s the one thing you don’t let yourself feel. Not when it costs you control.”
Her throat tightened. She laughed, the sound brittle. “Maybe control’s the only thing that’s kept me alive.”
“Or your partner. If you trusted him,” he said.
She turned then, her gaze locking on his. “You think following Maddox makes me weak? That I just salute and obey?”
Blake’s jaw flexed. “I think Maddox knows how to pull your strings. He’s using that shiny promotion to make you dance his tune, and you’re pretending it’s duty.”
Her stomach clenched. “You don’t know what he’s asking me to do.”
“I know a bully when I see one.” His tone sharpened, cutting through the fog between them. “And I don’t like bullies. Never did.”
Vivian swallowed hard. The faint tremor in her hand betrayed her, so she set the cup down before he saw too much. “Yes, I know all about your history.”
Blake’s jaw flexed, the muscle ticking as he crossed his arms and leaned against the bulkhead.
“You still think if you can beat them, maybe you can fix what happened that day on the ice.”
His shoulders stiffened. “Don’t.”
She stepped closer, the low hum of the storm filling the silence between them. “You were a kid, Blake. You didn’t make your friend walk out there. Those boys did.”
“I said stop.”
“You think if you’d fought harder, yelled louder, you could’ve saved him,” she pressed, the words trembling with emotion she didn’t expect to feel. “You’ve been chasing every monster since, trying to even the score.”
He turned on her so fast she flinched. His face was tight, controlled, but his eyes—those eyes—burned with something raw.
“You want to analyze me, Agent? Fine. You spend your whole career trying to prove you’re nothing like your father.
That you’ll never choose wrong. That you’ll follow orders, even when it costs someone else everything. ”
The words hit like a slap. Her throat constricted. “Don’t you dare—”
“You’ll sing whatever the higher-ups want,” he said, voice rough now, no teasing left. “Because deep down, you think that’s how you erase what he did. Your father chose love over duty, and you’ve been trying to make up for it ever since.”
Her nails dug into her palms. “Love?” she bit out. “He walked out on his post. Disobeyed a direct order. Walked out on us. That’s not love. That’s betrayal.”
Blake’s laugh was harsh, hollow. “Then maybe betrayal’s not as black and white as you make it. I disobeyed a direct order that saved your life and got me written up. Or did you forget that?”
“And if you hadn’t broken protocol, we wouldn’t have gotten ourselves in that mess,” she said, voice rising despite herself. “Protocol is there for a reason. It would’ve saved my father from ruining my family. My father lost everything because of his so-called choice. You’re exactly like he was.”
His jaw tightened, eyes darkening. “I didn’t do it to play hero or to be some rebel or to break a rule to prove I could.”
Her breath caught. “Then why?”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t have to. The silence between them pulsed with everything they’d never said—and everything they shouldn’t feel.
Vivian turned away first, her chest tight. She hated how he could still shake her, how his voice could cut through years of carefully built armor.
“You think I’m letting Maddox use me,” she said, quieter now, forcing her tone steady. “That’s what this is really about.”
“I think you’re smarter than this,” he said, softer but no less dangerous. “And I think you hate that I might be right.”
Something twisted deep in her chest, something she’d spent years locking away. “You ever think maybe I pulled you from that op because I was trying to save your life?”
He went still. The muscles in his shoulders tensed like he was holding something back.
“You didn’t save me. You ended the mission.
We were so close to blowing Laurel Tide open, and then you followed your command chain and shut it down.
You think they’ll promote you because you follow orders?
” His laugh was rough, humorless. “They dangle that promotion over you because you’ll do what they can’t make me do. ”
Her heartbeat thudded in her ears. “You think I wanted to burn the op? You think I haven’t replayed every second of that night?”
He didn’t answer. Didn’t have to. The silence said he’d replayed it too.
Dawn bled gray across the windows, catching the tired edges of his face.
Vivian pressed her palms to her knees, grounding herself against the trembling that wouldn’t stop. “We’re walking into the same mess that got Jenson killed. And you want to fight about the past?”
“I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Their eyes met—too much history, too much heat, too little air. It felt like the boat wasn’t the only thing in danger of sinking.
Outside, fog pressed against the windows, thick and restless. Then the hull shifted beneath them—slow, deliberate, a wake rolling underfoot.
Vivian’s head snapped toward the sound. Her hand went for the gun out of instinct, heartbeat slamming back to full alert.
Blake was already moving to the porthole, eyes narrowing. “Someone’s circling.”
The fatigue vanished, burned off by adrenaline. She crossed to his side, the argument still hanging between them, raw and unfinished—but for now, survival came first.
“Guess we’re not the only ones who can’t sleep,” she said, voice steady.
Blake’s mouth curved. “Told you. Nobody plays both sides for long.”
The hull groaned again, a low, hollow sound that vibrated through the soles. Not the slap of a passing wake. Heavier. Closer.
Vivian shoved her chilled toes into her boots. “That wasn’t the tide.”
Blake was already moving. He crossed to the cabin door, movements fluid and soundless. He threw open the door.
The cold hit her, sharp and briny, thick with mist. Every creak of the dock sounded amplified. The water lapped against the hull with uneven rhythm, like something brushing too close.
Blake crouched near the stern, scanning the dark surface. The water shimmered faintly from a nearby dock light, catching his profile in fractured gold. “You hear that?” he murmured.
She did. A faint metallic ping, like something tapping against the hull. “Could be debris,” she whispered.
“Could be a lot worse.”
He reached for the boathook hanging off the rail, dipping the end beneath the surface. The metal clicked against something solid. Not driftwood. Hard. Fixed.
Her pulse quickened. “What is it?”
He didn’t answer right away. His shoulders bunched, and he leaned farther over the side, hand plunged into the icy water.
“Small, round.” He blinked up at her. “A tracker puck.” It’s fresh,” Blake added. “There’s no growth or barnacles. Someone planted this after we boarded.
Their eyes met—wary, stubborn, and undeniably linked by something neither of them was ready to name.
Cold slid deeper than the wind. A tracker meant exposure. Failure. Another stain she’d never scrub from her record—one more reason for people to whisper that she’d only gotten this far because of who her father wasn’t anymore.
She masked the hit with a slow breath, but Blake’s eyes flicked to her face—sharp, too knowing.
“It’s bad,” he said quietly. Not accusatory. Not panicked. Just certain.
Vivian’s stomach dropped.
For a second, the air between them held still. The storm wind rattled the rigging overhead, but all she could hear was the steady beat of her pulse.
She forced herself to think. “We can’t pull it off now. If it’s transmitting, they’ll know it was found.”
He nodded once, the movement deliberate. “It’s a good sign.”
Vivian frowned, rain dripping from her lashes. “A good sign? Our boat’s dead, wired to explode, and we’re sitting in the dark. Why even bother with a tracker?”