Page 125 of Zorro

Bailee.

He thought of her suddenly, fiercely. Her hands bloody from battle. Her eyes blazing with rage and fear when she found him. The heat of her palm against his chest. She had held him in the fire and refused to let go.

She was probably still here. Somewhere nearby. Ancestors help him, he wasn’t sure what would hurt more, seeing her, or not seeing her.

But that reckoning would come.

For now, there were girls to comfort, a partner at his feet, and a woman beside him who had reminded him, in the quietest way, what it meant to be seen.

18

Hospital Copa D'Or, Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Three Days Later

Bailee slipped into the room like smoke, quiet, sharp, carrying intel instead of flowers. Her braid was pulled tight, her stance military-clean, but her eyes…her eyes lingered.

Bailee Thunderhawk stopped just inside the doorway, one hand resting lightly on the edge of the curtain as if gauging whether she should have come at all.

Bear didn’t speak. Just watched her.

“I brought an update,” she said, crisp but softer than usual. “Figured you’d want it unfiltered.”

Bear nodded. His throat worked around something that wasn’t pain.

She stepped closer, boots whispering over tile. “You fought like hell, Locklear,” she said, but her voice was quieter now, rougher. “No mercy and you were never out of the fight.”

She didn’t move closer but her eyes did. They traveled the length of him, from the bruises on his neck to the bandage peeking out beneath his gown, then back to his face, his mouth and lingered there like a secret she wasn’t ready to speak aloud.

Bear didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. He could feel it, that low, burning electricity pulsing between them, her words meant to be clinical but dragged through too much heat.

“You didn’t hesitate,” she went on, softer now, her eyes caressing his lips with an aching hunger he felt it all the way to his dick. Getting hard in the hospital after being shot. Only she could do that to him.

“You put three men down in under thirty seconds.” Her eyes didn’t move, and he was caught in her crucible. “The precision…I’ve seen Tier One operators that don’t move like that.”

There was something in her expression, tight, vulnerable, something she was trying hard to mask beneath that CIA-cool exterior.

“You saved me,” she added. “You saved Zorro’s family.” She leaned in, her body close, the heat of her scorching his arm. Her lips parted like she was going to kiss him, like she wanted it more than air. Her words wounded him like a confession. Like maybe it had cost her something to say it.

He met her eyes, letting the silence stretch.

She shifted, arms folding like she was trying to cage something in.

“I’m so very thankful you listen well,” she murmured.

“Yup,” he said. “Not dead.”

“Thank the ancestors.” Her voice caught slightly on that last word. She looked away too fast.

Bear’s pulse thudded, slow, steady, intoxicated. His hand clenched in the sheet to keep from reaching for her.

He didn’t speak. Just watched her. The tension between them coiled tighter.

Bailee cleared her throat, but it didn’t help. Her next words came out too fast, too formal. “Anyway. You neutralized Leandro Batiste. Confirmed ID. He bled out before the breach. You did what no one else could.”

Bear blinked slow. “I didn’t know it was him.”

“I figured you didn’t.”

She turned as if to pace but didn’t. Her hands were restless, her shoulders tense. Like maybe she hadn’t slept since that hallway either. Like maybe watching him fall had gutted her in a way she hadn’t had time to process.