Page 31

Lark

I woke up to the sound of coffee brewing and something... heavier.

Axel was standing at the counter, scrolling through his phone with a look I hadn’t seen before—focused, tense, like the SEAL in him had quietly stepped back into the room.

“What’s going on?” I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

He turned. “Did Marley ever mention Frasier?”

I blinked. “No, but when he showed up the other night, she knew him. She went pale like she’d seen a ghost. Then she left.”

Axel handed me his phone.

Tell Fraiser he was right. They have Greg Bishop.

And be careful.

—M

I read it three times, each pass making my pulse tick up a notch.

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” Axel said quietly. “But she sent it at midnight from an encrypted number. That’s not casual. That’s intentional.”

I set the phone down, suddenly feeling like the cabin walls were a little closer than they’d been five minutes ago. “Do you think she’s in trouble?”

“I listened to her stories. She’s always in trouble. The question is—did she leave it behind, or drag it here?”

I stared out the window. A fine mist clung to the trees. The kind that made everything feel a little more uncertain.

“What does this Greg Bishop have to do with it?” I asked.

Axel hesitated. “He’s... not exactly a civilian. He used to work with a joint task force, off-books. Think black ops mixed with diplomatic immunity. The kind of guy who has a different passport depending on the day.”

“Of course she knows him,” I muttered. “Marley doesn’t date. She infiltrates.”

That got the faintest smirk from him.

“I’ll reach out to Fraiser,” Axel said. “See if he can make sense of this. In the meantime… we play it cool.”

“Cool is not my strong suit,” I admitted.

He walked over, wrapping his arms around my waist and kissing my temple. “You don’t need to be cool. You just need to be here.”

Something about the way he said it—like here meant more than geography—landed in my chest with a soft thud.

“Hey, Axel?”

“Yeah?”

“If this thing with Marley ends up being big—dangerous—are you going to try and shut me out of it?”

His expression flickered. “If I could keep you safe in a padded room with reinforced doors, I’d do it.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “That’s not very romantic.”

“I didn’t say I’d lock the door.”

I laughed. And then I reached up and touched his face, the stubble rough against my fingertips. “I’m not asking to go looking for trouble. But I don’t want you keeping secrets to protect me either. We’re in this together.”

His gaze held mine. “Together,” he said, and kissed me like a promise.