The cuffs were different.
Cuffs meant the road was over. Cuffs meant North Fork. Cuffs meant Crystal losing the few hours I’d bought her. Cuffs meant the people behind all this got another chance to make sure no one listened.
I moved before fear could set.
I drove my knee up.
Dex turned his hip, took the impact on his thigh, and made a sound under his breath that carried more patience than pain. His hand slid from my arm to my wrist. He turned me with one clean motion, my chest facing the truck, my cheek inches from sun-hot metal.
He didn’t slam me. He didn’t grind my face into the door. He didn’t grin or linger. He simply ended the argument.
That might’ve been worse.
“Do not do that again,” he said close to my ear.
His voice had dropped.
The sound moved down my spine before I could stop it.
I stared at the reflection in the pickup’s tinted window. Dust streaked my hair. Sweat shone on my throat. Dex stood behind me, dark and solid, his shoulders blocking the clearing. The crucifix had swung forward on its leather cord when he moved and rested against his shirt, old silver dull in the sun.
My breathing wasn’t as steady as I wanted it to be.
“Do all bounty hunters come with the judgmental silence package,” I asked, “or did I get upgraded?”
“Bail recovery agent.”
“That’s a lot of syllables for man with cuffs.”
“Put your hands behind your back.”
I almost told him no. I almost made him fight me for every inch of it. Then his hand tightened once around my wrist, and I saw Crystal at the edge of my mind, pale and hollow-eyed, gripping a plastic water bottle hard enough to dent it.
Crystal needed time.
I needed to be smart.
“Crystal,” Dex said.
Her name cut through the air.
I stopped moving for one stupid second.
Dex felt it. I knew he did because his hand paused on my wrist.
Dust drifted past us. Somewhere in the trees, a bird gave one sharp call and went quiet.
“Hands,” he said.
That was all.
He didn’t sound suspicious. He sounded like a man reading defiance in a pause because defiance made more sense than the truth.
I put my hands behind my back.
The cuffs closed around my wrists. Metal kissed skin, cool for a breath, then warming fast. He checked the fit with two fingers between steel and bone, careful enough not to pinch. The care irritated me because it didn’t give me anywhere clean to put my anger.
“You done running?” he asked.
