Page 13 of The Captain
He chuckled, then said, low: “Had to take a cab back to the bar to retrieve it.”
I nodded.
I stepped past the line where our bodies might have reached for each other without permission. “Try not to drown today,” I added.
His gaze dipped—my mouth, my throat, the place where my pulse had jumped for him—and came back steady. “Breathe,” he murmured, almost not sound at all. “You’re better when you do.”
A flash, low and traitorous, twisted between my legs. “I always do,” I lied.
Ryker’s phone buzzed again. Atlas’s attention slid toward the door, where Pincense was just now emerging with McGuire at his shoulder, a glance at his watch that said 0600 exactly. The moment snapped clean.
Jacob’s eyes held mine a beat longer—as if he were pinning something there for later—then he straightened into his public body, the one that could saunter into any room and learn it by touch.
I turned to leave. The two unmarked men peeled out of the shadow, ten paces back, exactly as promised. Atlas’s detail had the kind of weightlessness that gets earned, not bought. My chest, despite myself, loosened.
At my SUV, I paused, keys already in my hand. The harbor threw back the early light in broken plates. The world smelled like lemon oil and water just beginning to heat.
Behind me, voices met—measured, male, neutral. Pincense’s polite tenor. McGuire’s cool alto. Atlas’s low thunder. Ryker’s dry blade. Jacob’s gravel—darker than all of them—cutting under and through.
I didn’t look.
I lifted my right hand to push a strand of hair off my forehead. In the side mirror, two shadows stepped back one pace. Choreography. Control.
“Dr. Allard?” The voice was McGuire’s, closer than I expected. I half-turned. She jogged the last steps, a slim folder in her hand. “Our current mitigation packet. We’ll send the rest electronically. My direct number is inside. If you need me—not the chain—call.”
I took it. “Thank you,” I said, meaning it, and her shoulders eased by a millimeter, telling me exactly how many rooms like this one she’d survived to earn that ease.
“And Doctor?” she added, voice lower, flicking a glance to the men. “For what it’s worth, I hope you get your forty-eight.”
“For what it’s worth,” I returned, pocketing the number, “so do I.”
She nodded, then turned back, absorbed by the gathering tide of suits and meanings.
I slid into the driver’s seat, the vinyl cool against my thighs, the steering wheel tacky with humidity.
My phone buzzed.
Two messages. Becca with numbers:lactate down by a sliver, not enough but not nothing. And an unknown address:Permits inbound by 1800. —A.
No signature, didn’t need one. Atlas could have been a mountain long before he learned how to type like one.
I exhaled. I should have felt triumphant or furious. I felt awake the way you do right after a wave dumps you—sand in your mouth, salt in your nose, alive despite the tumble. Of course, the hangover from last night didn’t help.
As I backed out, I let my gaze slide once more across the group of men. Jacob stood half-turned toward the others, head bowed in that deceptive posture of deference that said he was listening in order to decide what to ignore. As if he felt me, he looked over his shoulder. The smallest lift of his chin. The kind of acknowledgment you could pretend you’d imagined, if you needed to.
I didn’t need to.
I pulled away. The gate opened with that smooth inevitability, and the city took me back—palms, heat, a sky lightening into day. The detail’s car ghosted into place two lengths behind me, quiet as a thought I could almost forget.
At the first red light, I rubbed a thumb across my lower lip as if it ached. Maybe it did. I told myself it was from salt and wind. I told myself a lot of things. Some of them were even true.
My phone buzzed again.
Becca:He’s holding. You coming?
On my way, I typed back.
The light turned green. I hit the gas. The harbor flashed in my peripheral vision. Somewhere behind those walls, men would argue about boxes and schedules and whethermercy could be mapped. Somewhere in the water, something enormous would sing and wait for an answer.
