“It’s not nothing.” Her voice is muffled against my shirt. “You wouldn’t have called Beckett for nothing.”
She’s right. I’m not going to lie to her. She survived the foster system and a corrupt corporation by reading the room better than anyone in it. Feeding her false comfort would insult both of us.
“No,” I say. “It’s probably not nothing.”
Her fingers curl into the front of my flannel, finding the same spot she held in the hallway. I’m starting to understand her grip. It’s not clinging. It’s anchoring. Because she’s been untethered her whole life and holds on when she finds something stable.
“Are we safe?” she asks.
“This ranch has cameras on every access road, motion sensors on the perimeter, and in about thirty minutes, a man who could kill someone with a zip tie but cries at foaling season.” I press my mouth to the top of her head. “You’re safe.”
“That’s not what I asked.” She lifts her face to look at me. Brown eyes, steady and clear, her glasses slightly crooked from being pressed against my chest. “I saidwe.”
My throat tightens. She’s not asking me to protect her. She’s asking if I’m protected too. If the man building the fortress remembered to put himself inside it.
No one has ever asked me that. Not once. I’m the one who holds things, who monitors and fortifies and stays awake so others don’t have to. Nobody checks whether the man on watch is okay because the man on watch isn’t supposed to need checking.
“Yeah, Jen,” I say roughly. “We’re safe.”
She studies me for a long moment, running her diagnostics the way she does, the data analyst who reads people the way she reads spreadsheets. Whatever she finds must satisfy her because she nods and puts her head back against my shoulder.
I hold her in the glow of three monitors, Crowley snoring on the router, Pixel guarding the armrest, and the encrypted feed cycling through camera views of a ranch I’d burn to the ground before I let anyone touch this woman.
I reach around her to type one-handed, pulling up the perimeter grid. She watches the screen with half-closed eyes, her analyst brain quietly cataloging even when the rest of her is soft.
“Your system is elegant,” she murmurs.
“My system is held together with duct tape and stubbornness.”
“Elegant stubbornness.” Her mouth curves against my collarbone. “My favorite kind.”
Beckett arrives while Jenna is in the shower; his phone is pressed to his ear as he bursts into the study. Beckett doesn’t just arrive; he deploys.
He fills the doorway like Daniel, but in a distinct way. Daniel occupies space effortlessly, as if he were made for it.
Beckett, on the other hand, has carefully assessed every angle of the room and positioned himself strategically to see both the door and the window at once. It's an old habit—one that's hard to unlearn.
He ends the call without saying goodbye—Beckett doesn’t waste words on pleasantries, even with people he likes—and pockets the phone.
“Perimeter’s soft on the east side,” he says by way of greeting. “Blind spot between the second cattle gate and the creek crossing. I clocked it on the drive in.”
“I know. Camera three has a fifteen-degree gap. I’ve been meaning to?—”
“I brought a spare unit. It’s in the truck.” He pulls a chair to the desk, the same way he’d pull a seat in a briefing room, and scans my screens with the practiced eye of a man who’s spent more time in surveillance operations than most people spend sleeping. “Talk me through it.”
I do.
Beckett’s expression doesn't change at any point during the briefing, including the part about the goat eating the drive. “The drive is recoverable?”
“Casing’s durable. Should survive transit.”
He nods and files it away the way he files everything, without judgment or wasted reaction. Beckett doesn’t have opinions about how intelligence is acquired. He has opinions about what you do with it once you have it.
“Did some digging before I left.”
The look on his face sends a frisson of unease down my spine. I recognize that look. I’ve worn it myself. It’s the expression of a man holding bad news, waiting for the right moment to deliver it.
Knowing him, he’s already run three scenarios, checked satellite imagery of the county road, and mentally mapped every vulnerable access point between here and the highway.
