Page 51 of You Can Run

“Dante?” she said quietly.

He didn't look at her.

Her hand tightened on his arm. “Is it Ferrera?”

He shook his head once, already shifting so that he stood slightly in front of her. “Worse,” he said. “I think it's your boyfriend.”

Dante kept his hand at the small of Jessica's back as they moved toward the 'Cuda, guiding her, his eyes sweeping the rows of parked cars.

A car door slammed somewhere to their left.

“In the car,” Dante said. “Now.”

“Dante, wait?—”

“Get in.”

Jessica reached for the passenger door.

“Jessica!”

The voice bounced off the concrete. She knew it immediately.

Trent emerged from behind a parked police cruiser. He looked terrible. His uniform shirt was untucked, his face blotchy and flushed, and he was moving with the unsteady energy of a man who'd been driving for hours on no sleep and too much adrenaline. His hand hovered near the weapon on his hip in a way that looked less like training and more like a reflex he couldn't control.

He stopped about ten feet away, chest heaving, his eyes jumping between her and Dante.

“Trent?” Jessica's hand tightened on the edge of the car door. “What are you—how did you find us?”

“Come with me,” he said, ignoring the question. “Right now, and I can protect you. I'm a cop, Jess. I can make this go away.”

Dante hadn't moved. “You're a long way from Corpus,” he said. “And you're way out of your lane.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Trent snapped, his attention swinging to Dante with a heat that sounded like it had been building long before today. “I'm not talking to you, Castaño. I know who you are. I know what you did in Chicago. You're the reason she's in danger in the first place.”

He turned back to Jessica, and the shift was jarring, the anger dropping away, replaced by something softer and needier that made her skin crawl.

“Jess, honey, come with me. I can tell them he kidnapped you. We can go home. We can fix this.”

Jessica stood very still.

She should have felt nothing. She should have been past this—past him, past the duplex, past the version of herself who'd believed that Trent's presence was the same thing as safety. But hearing him say it, those words—we can fix this—she felt something pull at her. It wasn’t love, and it definitely wasn’t want. It was the gravitational drag of the familiar, the terrible comfort of a door you'd already walked through.

Her hand slipped off the car door.

She felt Dante register it beside her. He didn't grab her, didn't block her path. He just stepped slightly forward, not touching her, close enough that going to Trent would mean choosing to go around him.

“Don't,” he said softly.

The moment stretched. Jessica looked at Trent and made herself see what was actually there. The sweat, the desperation, the hand that wouldn't leave his sidearm. She'd seen that face across the kitchen table a hundred times. It was the face of a man who believed his love was the same thing as his ownership. Now he was standing in a parking garage in a city he had no business being in, offering to take her home like home was still something that existed.

She stepped back toward the car.

“Trent, you shouldn't be here,” she said. “You don't understand what's happening.”

“I understand enough.” His voice rose, the softness curdling. “I talked to them.”

The words landed in the concrete space and kept echoing.