The truth is simpler. I am a coward who wanted one moment of proximity before returning to my screens and my distance and my delusion that watching her from afar keeps either of us safe.
On the monitor I see her legs shift, bare skin catching the lamplight through the window. Something hot and hungry claws at my chest. The bedroom gaps eat at me. Knowing she is up there at night, knowing what she probably sleeps in, remembering what she looked like in college when she thought no one was watching.
She doesn't know I've been her shadow. Doesn't know I've identified and eliminated three distinct threats without her even becoming aware the danger existed. Doesn't know I've memorized every detail of her face, every expression, every—
There's movement on the secondary monitor.
My hand stills. The arousal does not fade, but sharpens into something else.Focus.
A sedan sits three houses down from hers, tucked against the curb beneath a broken streetlight. Dark color, late modelAmerican make. It was not there an hour ago when I ran my standard perimeter check.
I sit up straighter, hand leaving my lap entirely.That is not my vehicle. That is not anyone I recognize.
Someone else is watching her.
I toggle the camera, zoom in as far as the resolution allows. The streetlight catches the shape. Four doors, tinted windows, engine off. Someone is sitting in the driver's seat. The glow of a phone screen illuminates a jaw, a shoulder. Nothing more.
I track the plates, but the angle is wrong. Cannot get a clear read from this camera position.
New variable. Unidentified. Possibly threat, possibly coincidence.
My mind sifts through the possibilities even as my body remains coiled with frustrated want. It could be nothing, a visitor to a neighbor's house, someone answering emails before heading inside. It could be surveillance. It could be the first move in a game I have not yet identified.
I reach for my secondary laptop, fingers flying across keys to pull traffic camera footage from the intersection nearest her street. If the sedan drove in from the main road, I will find it. I will trace it backward. I will know.
The phone buzzes again. Third ring.
Blood pounds in my ears, my cock still straining as I reach for the phone without looking away from the sedan on the screen.
"I'm listening."
"You available for immediate assignment?" Kade's voice is steady and professional. "High-priority protection detail."
I begin cross-referencing the sedan's shape against vehicle databases, phone pressed between ear and shoulder. On the primary monitor, Angelina turns another page, completelyunaware of the man in the car outside her home or the man watching her from across the city.
"Tell me what we're dealing with."
"Possible pattern Vanessa flagged. Four federal judges dead over six weeks, moving west toward California. All had trafficking cases on their dockets. Could be coincidence." A pause weighted with the thing he is not saying. "Vanessa doesn't think so."
My fingers still on the keyboard. Four judges. Six weeks. Trafficking cases.
Angelina has trafficking cases.
"Natural causes?" I keep my voice level, analytical. The question of a strategist, not a man whose heart just stopped.
"On paper. That's what concerns us. Too clean, too convenient. Vanessa's running a deeper analysis, but the pattern seems to be moving in this direction."
On the monitor, Angelina sets down her book and stretches her neck, rolling her shoulders as if they ache. I've watched her do this a thousand times. The small gesture of a woman carrying too much weight alone.
The sedan has not moved.
"Who is the client?"
"Salvatore Castellano." Kade lets the name sit for a moment. "I gave him a heads-up as a professional courtesy, since his niece is a federal judge with trafficking cases on her docket. He hired us before I finished the sentence."
Everything stops.
Salvatore.The uncle. The one whose name appears in my research files flagged with connections I have never fully untangled. His niece. Federal judge. Trafficking cases.