“You hold the line,” Calder confirmed. “Be the calm she doesn’t have yet.”
He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“For what it’s worth,” Calder added, softening, “she asked who you were. She didn’t assume you were him. Right now, that’s more trust than most victims in her position can manage.”
Luke wasn’t sure it felt like a win.
Calder slipped back into the room.
Luke returned to his chair, eyes on the window.
“Nobody’s getting past that door,” he murmured.
Not while he was breathing.
41
Tessa – Writer’s Room
The duvet was crisp, faintly lavender.
Tessa stared at the cream ceiling until the molding blurred. The clock ticked in the corner, loud in the silence. Somewhere in these walls, her captor waited for her to write. She hadn’t.
Her hand slid across the sheet beside her—cool, untouched. No one had warmed that space. No one had slept in this bed but her.
The last time she’d woken in a strange bed, there’d been heat at her back and woodsmoke in her hair.
Scout had been behind her—solid, alive, real.
She shut her eyes.
And went there instead.
The fire at the Grady cabin had burned down to a low, steady glow by the time she drifted off. The storm’s rage dulled to a muffled hiss against flannel curtains. It was quiet now, but it didn’t feel calm.
She’d fallen asleep on her side, facing the wall, quilt tucked up under her chin. Sometime between one heartbeat and the next, the mattress dipped behind her, warm weight settling in.
She woke to the warmth of him on the back of her neck.
For a few long seconds, she lay perfectly still, body and brain on a delay. The quilt was heavy over her hips. Her bare legs were tangled with his. His chest pressed along her spine—solid, anchoring heat. A big, callused hand rested at her waist, fingers hooked just under the hem of her T-shirt, palm wide and sure on the skin of her stomach.
They’d already burned through the worst of it—fear and adrenaline and the wild need to prove they were still alive. She’d told herself that was all it was. A storm thing. Heat and relief and poor impulse control.
Then his mouth brushed the nape of her neck.
Not an accident.
A slow, deliberate press of lips over the place where her pulse beat too fast.
She sucked in a breath.
“Didn’t mean to wake you,” Scout murmured, voice rough with sleep and something darker. His words warmed the fine hairs along her skin. “Was trying to behave.”
His thumb slid over the raised scar on her shoulder. She went still for a second.
He didn’t ask. He didn’t say anything. His touch just moved on, drawing a lazy line that made her toes curl under the quilt.
“You’re doing a terrible job,” she whispered.
