Page 50 of Hunted in the Silence

She held his gaze for a long moment, as if trying to read something in his eyes. The afternoon had gone gray around them, the light flat and thin, the street quiet.

“He’s going to come for me,” she nearly whispered.

His frown grew deeper. “Yes.”

“And you’re going to be between him and me when he does.”

“Every single time,” Cole vowed. As long as he drew breath, he wouldn’t let a single hair on her head get out of place.

Something shifted in her expression, and he knew without her saying anything that she was putting her trust in him again, but this time, it felt deeper than that. Like she was putting her life into his hands and trusting that he would protect it at all costs.

She was right.

“Harper said you should stop being so careful,” she said quietly, moving a step closer.

He nodded once. “She did.”

“Are you going to?”

He stood there with her in the cold, a threat still out there and everything still unresolved, and held her penetrative gaze, wondering how far he could go. How far she would let him. If he should make that move.

“Working on it,” he said, his voice deep and rough.

The corner of her mouth moved into a ghost of a smile. Something warm and real and that hit him square in the center of his chest.

“That’s fair,” she conceded.

They continued standing on that sidewalk, close enough that the cold air swirling around them faded in the warmth pulsing between them. For the first time since they’d met, neither of them was pretending anymore, and for the first time, neither of them moved away.

Cole felt Harper’s words move through him, felt the urge so deeply, he couldn’t stop himself. His hand found the side of her face without him consciously deciding to, his thumb brushing her cheekbone once. She didn’t pull back. Instead, she leaned into it, just slightly, and closed her eyes for one second.

“We need to move you,” he said quietly. “A safe house, different location, better cover. Tonight.”

“I know.” She opened her eyes, and the pained resignation gutted him. “Cole?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t let him win this one,” she said, her hand coming up to cover his. “Whatever it costs.”

He held her gaze and said fiercely, “He won’t.”

She nodded once, a kind of commitment, then turned her face and pressed her lips to his palm before stepping back. The loss of her warmth was acute, but the heat that had flared to life inside him provided all the warmth he needed. Without a word, they walked to his car, and as Cole opened the door and Brynn slipped inside, one thought circled his mind.

Devlin was out there.

The case wasn’t done.

But four girls were safe and a network was in custody and the ledger holding Devlin’s most closely guarded secrets was in an evidence bag in Olivia’s capable hands.

And somewhere in Blackridge, a man who thought he was hunting had no idea that the woman he was after—the woman who was imprinting herself on Cole’s heart—had spent the last eleven years becoming exactly the kind of person he should have been afraid of.

He would figure that out soon enough.

Chapter 16

The new safe house was on the east side of Blackridge, a narrow two-bedroom rental on a residential street that the Bureau kept on a rolling lease for exactly this kind of situation. It looked like every other house on the block. That was the point. A covered porch with two molding plastic chairs nobody sat in, a mailbox with no name on it, a single light on a timer in the front window that came on at dusk and went off at ten. The neighbors had learned over the years not to notice who came and went, because the people who came and went changed often enough that noticing had stopped being worth the effort.

Cole had used it twice before. Both times for witness situations that had resolved without incident, which he took as a sign of the location’s reliability, though not as a guarantee of anything.