Page 37 of Echo: Line

Her words hit different than they should. Make my pulse kick up in a way that has nothing to do with adrenaline or threat response.

"Delaney—"

"I'm not blind." Her fingers trace the damaged skin at my wrist, then move up my forearm where older scars crosshatch—operations, close calls, the accumulated damage of eight years in Delta Force. "I see a man who survived four days of torture and didn't break. Who keeps moving forward no matter what. That's not weakness. That's..."

She doesn't finish. Doesn't need to.

The cave suddenly feels smaller. The darkness more intimate. Her breath is close enough that I can feel it, warm against my face.

"This is a bad idea," I hear myself saying.

"I know."

"Terrible timing. Terrible situation."

"I know that too."

But neither of us moves away. My hand comes up—slow, deliberate, giving her time to pull back if she wants. My fingers find her face in the darkness. Her skin is smooth, warm, alive. She leans into the touch, and I feel her breath catch.

I should stop this. Should put distance between us before this becomes something neither of us can take back. The smart play is obvious—tomorrow Kane extracts us, Tommy sets her up with a new identity, she disappears somewhere the Committee can't find her. Clean. Safe. Final.

That's what I should want.

But sitting here in this cave with her hand on my scars and her breath warm against my face—I don't want her to disappear. Don't want to go back to Echo Ridge alone. Don't want this to be temporary.

Which makes me an idiot. Because wanting doesn't change reality.

"Alex..." My name on her lips does something to me. Something dangerous and complicated and absolutely wrong for this moment.

My thumb traces her cheekbone. Her jaw. The corner of her mouth. She makes a sound—soft, almost inaudible—that goes straight through me.

"Delaney." Warning in my voice. Last chance for one of us to be rational.

She doesn't take it. Instead, she shifts closer. Close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from her. Close enough that our breaths mingle in the small space between us.

"I'm not blind," she repeats, quieter now. More intimate. "And I'm not a coward."

Neither am I. But this—whatever this is building between us—requires a different kind of courage than facing enemy fire.

I lean in anyway. Because she's right here. Because we might die tomorrow. Because somewhere between survival and silence, I stopped seeing her as FBI and started seeing her as Delaney. Because?—

The radio crackles to life.

We both freeze. The moment shatters like glass.

Tommy's voice comes through, encrypted and distorted but unmistakable. "Shepherd to Wolf. Do you copy?"

I force myself to move, to reach for the radio, to put distance between Delaney and the pull of something I can't afford right now.

"Wolf copies. Go ahead."

"Extraction viable. LZ Delta, zero-eight-hundred tomorrow. Can you make it?"

I check my internal clock, calculate distance and terrain. "Affirmative. We'll be there."

"Good copy. Stay dark until pickup. Shepherd out."

The radio goes silent.