Chapter 13
Ethan
I don’t move.
Jenna’s breath is warm against my throat, her arm still wrapped around me, trusting in a way that lands heavier now.
The phone glows in my hand.
I know where you are, Jenna. We should talk about what you took.
Unknown number. No name. But there’s only one person who’d know about her actions and care enough to track her here.
The chill seeps into my fingers first, as it always does. The body’s instinctive response to a live threat. Identify. Assess. Neutralize. The ordnance specialist doesn’t detonate; he plans.
Carefully, I slide out from under her, replacing myself with a pillow the way I’ve learned she needs—something solid against her chest or she wakes reaching. She shifts, murmurs, settles. Her hand curls around the pillow, the wire ring nestled beside the gold band catching the low light.
My wife. Those two words rearrange every threat matrix I’ve ever built. Every scenario now includes her.
I press my mouth to her hair. Brief. Firm. A promise she doesn’t hear.
Then I take the phone and step into the hallway.
Daniel picks up on the first ring.
“Someone texted Jenna’s phone. Direct. They know she’s here, and they know about the files.”
Silence. Then: “Vance.”
“That’s where my money is.”
“Beckett?”
“Next call.”
“Make it.” The line goes dead.
Beckett answers on the second ring. I can hear the wind, and I know he’s already outside, running the east perimeter like he does every morning.
“We’ve got direct contact,” I tell him. “Text to Jenna’s personal phone, unknown number.”
“Read it to me.”
I do, pacing slowly down the hallway as I repeat the message.
“Burner,” he says after a beat. “Probably already ditched, but I’ll run it anyway.” A pause, then, more serious, “He’s escalating. Reaching out to her directly means he’s working on a timeline.”
“We’re on a faster one.”
“Copy that.”
The line goes dead.
I stay where I am for a moment, the phone still in my hand, the quiet of the house pressing in around me. The fear feels different now. Before, it was controlled and professional, something I could assess and contain. Now it’s tangled up with her. It tastes like her skin, like the quiet weight of this morning, like the sounds she makes when she dreams.
I know how to compartmentalize a threat.
I don’t know how to compartmentalize my wife.
