Page 52 of The Shield
He nodded, a flicker of something—acceptance, maybe—crossing his face. “I can see that. Didn’t think much of you at first, riding in like some damn cowboy, but you’ve got grit. Keep it.”
He stood, patting my shoulder with a hand that trembled slightly, then left without another word, the door clicking shut behind him.
As Natalie slept, her chest rising and falling with a rhythm that reassured me, I knew what I had to do next. The gray-suited man’s note, the chase, the test—it all pointed to something bigger, something tied to my family, to the Danes.
Hours later, Natalie stirred, her eyes fluttering open, a faint smile curving her lips as she saw me. “Hey,” she murmured, her voice hoarse but warm.
“Hey,” I replied, squeezing her hand. “How you feeling?”
“Like I got hit by a Jeep,” she said, a weak laugh escaping her. “But I’ll live. Thanks to you.”
We chatted for a bit, her words slow but steady, asking about the rescue, the crowd, the city’s response. I filled her in, keeping my tone light, though the weight of my decision pressed against my chest. Finally, I took a breath, meeting her gaze. “I have to go.”
She frowned, her hand tightening on mine. “For a bit? You need rest, too, you know.”
I shook my head, the truth spilling out. “Might be a day, or three, maybe more. I need to handle something.” Her eyes widened, alarm flickering in them, and I pressed on, needing her to understand. I told her about the man in the gray suit. All of it—the note, the chase, the duplicates. “Someone’s watching, testing me, maybe us. I have to find out who, why.”
She listened, her expression shifting from shock to concern, but I could see her mind working, dissecting the problem like she did with every flood map. To her credit, she didn’t falter, her worry tempered by a quiet resolve. “Who do you think he is?” she asked, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hand.
I leaned back, the honesty raw on my tongue. “I have no idea. But deep down, I feel it’s about my father. Everything in my life—his absences, his lessons, his disappearance—has circled back to Byron Dane. This has to be tied to him.”
She nodded, processing, then asked, “How will the Danes at Dominion Hall help?”
“They won’t,” I said, my voice firm. “I’m not telling them. If that man knows everything—my name, my brothers, where I’vebeen—he’s got eyes everywhere. I need to vanish, move in the shadows where he can’t find me.”
Her eyes searched mine, alarm deepening. “Why do you have to do this alone?”
I paused, the weight of my identity settling over me. “Because that’s who I am, Natalie. The Shield—protecting my family, my brothers, you. It’s what I was made for, a duty forged in the fire of every loss I’ve carried. I’ll track this threat, unravel it, and keep you all safe. That’s my purpose. That’s my strength.”
Her lips parted, but she didn’t argue, her gaze holding mine with a mix of fear and understanding. Neither of us knew what lay ahead.
23
NATALIE
The hospital room dimmed the rain to a polite tapping, like it had been told to use its indoor voice. Machines breathed their small, important breaths. My IV beeped every time it wanted attention. Ethan’s hand wrapped mine like he was afraid I’d float away again if he let go.
“I’m not going to be dramatic about you leaving,” I said, which was a lie on its face and made his mouth twitch.
“Really?” he murmured.
He was still waterlogged—hair pushed back from his forehead in wet waves, T-shirt clinging in places my eyes couldn’t help charting. The bear claw lay cold and dark against his chest. His dog tags made that tiny, secret music when he moved. It should have been impossible to keep sex anywhere near the top of my mind with a cannula in my nose and tape on my wrist, and yet my body had learned a new language recently and refused to forget its favorite verbs.
“I love you,” I blurted.
He stilled. Not like a man startled. Like a man receiving coordinates he’d been hoping would come through on a clean channel.
I hadn’t meant to say it like that, bare and plain. I hadn’t meant to say it today. I hadn’t meant to say it this early in any story. But after you swallow a river and come back up, the old rules don’t apply. “I barely know you,” I added. “But it feels like I’ve known you forever. You’re the best thing to happen to me.”
He could have broken it with a joke. He did, because humor is, apparently, one of our love languages. “Is that because I make you come like a freight train?” he asked, deadpan, and I snorted oxygen the wrong way and had to cough into my shoulder.
“You’re an idiot,” I said, eyes watering.
He squeezed my hand, and the joke dissolved between us, its laughter still warm. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and for a second he was all mouth and collarbone and the smell of rain on a cotton shirt, and the monitor tattled on me with a jump. He glanced at it, that tiny grin in his eyes. “There she is.”
“I’m serious,” I said, and the room agreed, the rain flattening into a steady wash. “I thought I was gone. In the water. I thought I’d—” I met his gaze. “I saw things.”
His face didn’t change much when I said that, but I felt the shift in him, the way a horse flicks one ear toward a sound and then the other, listening with all its skin.
