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He turns to me, eyes sharp and burning. "Get your laptop. We need to sweep every inch of this place. And then we need to plan our next move."

"Move? Where?"

He doesn’t answer. Just pins me with a stare so fierce it strips the air from my lungs—raw, blistering, and unrelenting. It’s not just fire. It’s a vow forged in steel and fury. A silent, feral oath that dares the world to come for me—because he’ll burn it down before he lets anyone get close. And for the first time, I believe him. Completely.

CHAPTER 11

DEACON

Istay by the front window, every sense tuned to the dark. Nothing stirs. No footsteps, no flicker of movement, no scent sharp enough to chase—just the heavy silence of a predator gone to ground. But I don’t relax. I can’t. Not when I know what’s circling her.

Eventually, I step away and rejoin her inside, masking the storm behind my eyes with a calm she doesn’t question. She’s already set the table. I recognize the effort. The offering.

Supper is quiet, but not in the way it used to be—back when silence meant distance, a kind of cold, polite detachment I carried like a second skin. This silence feels heavier, more intimate—like it’s full of words we’re not ready to say, the static of what’s been building between us humming just beneath the surface. Like something is building between us, waiting to be named. Sutton fills the space with small movements—the tap of her fork, the soft swish of her iced tea glass against the coaster, the click of her tongue when she disagrees with something I say. She’s trying not to look at me like I’m already halfway out the door. I pretend not to notice. Let her have her pride. We both need the armor tonight.

She made lemon pepper chicken and a salad laced with blackberries and goat cheese. It tastes like summer and defiance—bright lemon, cracked pepper, the tang of something that bites back. The heat of it lingers, like sun on bare skin or the echo of a well-thrown slap. Like a woman who might be scared but refuses to cower.

The kitchen smells faintly of roasted lemon and cracked pepper, the kind of comforting scent that lingers in the air like a memory—warm, stubborn, and unmistakably hers.

I eat every bite.

"So," she says, finally, leaning her elbow on the table, fork poised midair, "do you want to know why I think Freeport is the key to all this, or are you just here to make sure I don't choke on a crouton?"

"Both," I say. "But start with Freeport."

She rolls her eyes but pushes her plate aside and pulls a leather portfolio from under the bench. Of course she has a leather portfolio. The thing probably has color-coded tabs, backup copies, and an emergency flash drive hidden in the spine.

Sutton Blake doesn’t do anything halfway—and she sure as hell doesn’t come to the table unprepared.

"Okay," she begins, flipping it open. "When I started pulling the threads, most of the transactions tied to Hollister's shell companies circled around Houston, Austin, Galveston—your usual suspects. But then there's this offshore account that suddenly began feeding money to a series of seemingly unrelated LLCs that all made one-time equipment purchases from the same distribution hub—an old freight terminal in Freeport. Not suspicious on its own, but..."

"But?"

She glances up. Her hazel eyes spark, a wildfire of intellect and challenge, like she’s daring me to keep up with the storm she’s unraveling—one secret at a time.

"Two of those companies are now defunct. One disappeared, the other rebranded under a different name within six months. And the third? Still active. Just purchased a second warehouse... two weeks before Sookie was killed."

That gets my attention.

"You think they're hiding something in Freeport."

"No," she says, eyes narrowing. "I think they’re moving something. And I think Sookie found out."

I lean back, absorbing it. Her instincts are sharper than most analysts I've worked with—sharper than some operatives, even. She sees patterns others miss and connects them like threads pulled tight between pressure points.

She's not just playing detective. She's drawing blood—and the look in her eyes tells me she’ll keep going until someone bleeds for real. It guts me more than I want to admit because I know that kind of drive. It comes from losing something you can't get back.

"You show this to anyone else?"

"No. You're the first."

Trust. It clings to the edge of her voice like a loose thread, fragile and catching on something unspoken—hope, maybe. Or the fear that believing in someone again might cost her more than she’s willing to lose.

I nod. "Good. Keep it that way. I'll run it through Gage, see what shakes loose."

She packs everything away, not saying anything for a few moments. The silence isn’t awkward. It's taut, like a wire strung between us, humming with a charge neither of us wants to touch yet—thick with everything we’ve said and everything we haven’t.It thrums with the weight of what’s coming, and the things we don’t dare name but already feel shaping the space between us.

After she clears the dishes, she turns toward the hall. "I'm going to bed. Try not to rearrange the furniture or murder any intruders in the living room, okay?"