Right now, Mack found it profoundly inconvenient.
“I see,” Garrett said finally. That was it. Two words.
But Mack knew he did see. Mack had told him the whole story—Blake, the mission, the black mark on his record, Alyssa. Nearly nine months ago, Garrett had shown up at his door with a bottle of whiskey and the specific expression of a man who wasn’t leaving until he understood what he’d gotten himself into by hiring Mack Callan. Claire was consulting with SPS, and she’d wanted Garrett’s best operator for a possible UC assignment. She’d wanted Mack.
So now, Garrett knew exactly what Alyssa Bennett meant. So did Claire.
“Is she safe?” Garrett asked.
“For now.”
“The evaluation for your promotion is on the line.”
“I know.”
“I’m not pulling it. Yet.” A pause. “But going off-protocol for a personal connection is exactly the kind of judgment call that?—”
“It wasn’t personal.” The words came out flat. Automatic. The kind of statement that would have been more convincing if the cutting edge in his voice hadn’t betrayed him.
Garrett let that sit for a moment with the patience of a man who’d heard a lot of soldiers say things they needed to believe.
“Keep her safe,” he said finally. “Check in every six hours. And Mack?” A beat. “Whatever this is—figure it out. One way or another.”
The line went quiet.
Mack stood with the phone in his hand for a moment. Figure it out. Garrett meant the tactical situation—the FBI relationship, the witness protection timeline, getting Alyssa to a safe house without anyone getting killed.
He also meant the rest, because Garrett Cross didn’t waste words, and he’d chosen those deliberately. Mack set the phone down and went back to watching the window.
Lynx, SPS’s tech guru, checked in shortly afterward. The update was short and professional with no additional commentary, which was one of the things Mack valued about working with him. “Cartel operatives confirmed in Missoula, grounded by the weather,” Lynx said. “The apartment fire is being reported to the public as accidental, and the cause is under investigation. There are no credible leads on Alyssa’s location in any of the channels I’m monitoring. Blake Bennett’s vehicle was spotted heading north out of Missoula twenty minutes ago.”
Mack filed that after they disconnected. Thought about it. The problem wasn’t physical danger from Blake. The problem was that Blake might convince Alyssa that this was all a misunderstanding. She’d been letting him get away with stuff their entire lives, and that pattern had roots deep enough that no single night of evidence was guaranteed to pull those roots out.
She’s different, the inner voice said again.
He made fresh coffee, and did his hand exercises at the kitchen counter with deliberate focus—full range of motion, working against the scar tissue’s resistance, stretching until it ached and then past it. It was the one thing he’d never fully made peace with, the physical evidence of a day he couldn’t tactically optimize his way past, no matter how many times he’d tried.
The bedroom door creaked open. She stood there in his clothes, hair loose around her shoulders, with the expression of someone who’d been lying in the dark for hours trying to make sleep happen through sheer determination and had finally admitted defeat.
She glanced at his hand. He waited for a comment—the concern, the question, the careful navigation around the topic that people usually performed when they encountered it for the first time. He’d had that conversation more times than he wanted to count.
She glanced away, yawned, and then crossed to the coffee maker and poured herself a cup.
That was all.
The tight ball in his chest loosened.
She sat at the kitchen table—the same chair as before, like they’d established a seating arrangement now—and wrapped both hands around the mug.
Outside the window, the snow fell gently, flakes drifting instead of driving, and the gray beginning of dawn was barely distinguishable from the night at the eastern edge of the tree line.
He grabbed a cup, poured himself coffee, and sat across from her.
The silence was different from the previous one. The earlier silence had been structural—two years of history pressing down on them.
This was different, and he was aware in a way he hadn’t been prepared for that sitting across from Alyssa Bennett at this time of the morning felt dangerously close to familiar.
“What are you reading?” she asked.