Page 8 of Ranger’s Oath (Lone Star Wolf Rangers #5)

For the next hour I collect checks with my tongue and kindness.

I boost the energy near the auction tables, plot a bidding war between two oil families who hate each other, and turn a banker’s complaint about valet parking into a networking win by seating him with the CFO of a conservation trust. I'm not just good at this.

I'm a force of nature in heels, and the money comes with it.

Gage tolerates the parade of handshakes until he stops. The mayor kisses my cheek a second too long. Gage edges closer, and the mayor finds a reason to greet the person behind me. I should be offended at the interference, but I'm not. Well, not entirely.

“Relax,” I murmur. “He's harmless. Wife is two steps behind him and has eyes like a falcon.”

“I'm not worried about him,” Gage says. “I'm worried about you being polite to a threat.”

“I'm polite to everyone. It confuses my enemies.”

His mouth curves. “You're trouble.”

“Only for people who deserve it.”

The program begins. We move to a table near the aisle where he has a clean line to every exit.

I deliver my welcome, crisp and heartfelt, and don't shake even when a dozen iPhones light up to capture the moment.

As I step down, the chairman presses a flute of champagne into my hand. “To you,” he says.

“To the Gulf,” I answer, and lift the glass.

A different tray appears at my elbow, held by a waiter whose profile could be carved from calm. The bubbles in the flute catch the light like stars. I reach for it, distracted by the director of development whispering an update on the pledge tally. My fingers close on the stem.

Gage’s hand closes over mine. He eases the flute away, no fuss, only quiet authority that makes my pulse jump.

“Swap,” he tells the waiter, and takes a second glass from the tray for himself. He tips both at an angle where the chandelier’s glare rakes the rims.

Something on the glass flashes for a fraction of a second.

Not liquid. A film laid in precise squares.

For a heartbeat I think of the sprinkler controller back at the penthouse, how Deacon found a relay with bespoke firmware buried inside it.

Too sophisticated for street thugs. Too careful. A bigger backer’s hand is in this.

My pulse stutters. First bugs in the penthouse, now doctored glassware in a ballroom. Not random. Not sloppy. It’s a pattern—deliberate, mapped, and tightening like a net.

I feel my stomach drop in a clean, hard line.

“Kitchen,” Gage says. His voice is calm in a way that means danger. He passes the questionable flute to Deacon’s runner, who has appeared so quickly I suspect he has been watching us all along. The runner vanishes with it.

The waiter starts to turn. Gage catches his wrist with two fingers and doesn't appear to grip. The tray tilts, rights, doesn't spill.

“Hold,” Gage says.

“I'm needed at the back,” the waiter answers, and the cadence is wrong. Not island wrong, not local wrong. Practiced wrong.

“Your manager can wait,” I say with ice in my voice, and a smile for the guests within earshot. “We have a service question.”

The waiter shoots a quick glance over my shoulder. A man near the doors tenses. Dalton materializes like smoke behind him. The waiter sees that too, because his eyes flatten.

Gage moves first. He doesn't throw or twist. He redirects.

One moment the waiter is a statue with a tray, the next he's bowed over a linen-draped table without breaking a glass. It looks like help, like a gentleman preventing a spill. Only the waiter’s breath comes fast and high and his free hand goes for his pocket.

“Hands where I can see them,” Gage says, soft and lethal.

Cameras turn in our direction. Conversations dim. The chairman says my name, confused. I keep smiling like this is a small hiccup we will all laugh about later.

The waiter’s hand stops halfway to his jacket. Security arrives, hotel badges polished, faces tight. I meet the head of security’s eye and tilt my head toward the service corridor. His team closes in with the smoothness of rehearsed choreography.

“We'll take it from here, Ms. Marlow,” he says.

“Quietly,” I say. “My donors are here to be generous, not frightened.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

For a second it looks like we'll slip the problem out the back and keep the night intact. Then a guest, tipsy and eager for drama, lifts his phone and says far too loudly, “Is this a sting?”

Phones rise like a field of metal flowers. The murmur feeds on itself. The ripple becomes a wave. The moment is done.

Gage’s fingers lace with mine, firm and unarguable. “Time to go,” he says.

I want to argue. I want to tear the phones from their hands and press play on the video montage and add another hundred thousand to the tally by sheer will. I want to stay because staying means control. But I also want to live, and his grip is the only thing in the room that feels real.

He steers me through cameras and questions and the cold blaze of curiosity. He doesn't hide me. He doesn't let me look small. He walks me out like I'm a queen and he's the soldier who decided the world doesn't get to touch me.

The doors close on the noise. Night air hits my face. My hands shake and I hide it by smoothing my wrap.

“You just made a scene at my event,” I say, voice low.

“I removed you from a threat,” he says.

“Both things can be true.”

He stops beside the car, still holding my hand. The city lights paint his cheekbones in pale gold. “You did your job in there,” he says. “You were good. Now let me do mine.”

The words shouldn't soften me, but they do.

He helps me into the vehicle, then circles to the other side. Dalton speaks into his mic. Deacon pings that the lab strip he keeps in his pocket reacted on contact with the glass. It's not proof in court, but it's enough for us. Rush texts two words.

Get gone.

Gage threads the SUV through traffic without raising his voice or his speed. Calm. Precise. Dangerous.

I stare out the window and try not to think about how close I came to swallowing a chemical that would have turned me into a headline.

I try not to think about the waiter’s eyes, flat and cold.

I try to think about the projects that will still be funded because the board knows how to spin a crisis and because I've built a machine that runs even when I step away.

The tally will dip. It won't crash. I did that. Me.

Gage’s thumb rubs once over my knuckles. I don't jerk away. The touch burns a trail that has nothing to do with danger and everything to do with the fact that I like it when he touches me. I hate that I like it, but I like it anyway.

“Say it,” he murmurs, eyes on the road.

“Say what?”

“That I was right to pull you.”

“I'll say you weren't wrong,” I answer, and he huffs out something that might be a laugh if he allowed himself the luxury.

“Progress,” he says.

“Don't let it go to your head.”

He glances over, and the look he gives me is heat wrapped in steel. “Too late.”

I swallow. The SUV is too small for this much awareness. I crack the window and pretend I need air.

Back at the penthouse, Dalton takes the vehicle to the garage and starts a sweep.

Gage walks me inside with his hand at my waist, not letting go until the deadbolt slides.

The room feels different now, taller and thinner at the same time.

I kick off my heels and sink into a chair, then spring up again because stillness makes the adrenaline shake worse.

“Pace if you need to,” Gage says. He loosens his tie and watches me like movement itself is a threat he can intercept.

I pace. I rant a little. I catalogue what I'll have PR do in the morning, the calls I'll make, the language I'll offer the board to keep donors warm.

He lets me wind down without interrupting, which surprises me.

When I finally stop, he steps close enough that I have to tilt my head to meet his eyes.

“You did well,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say, simple and sincere because for once I don't have the energy for a quip.

His hand lifts as if he'll touch my cheek. He stops a breath away and curls his fingers into his palm. “Go change. I'll debrief with Deacon. Then we'll talk contingencies.”

For a second the restraint costs him. His fist clenches, then slowly unclenches again, the motion small but jagged. It is the kind of slip a man like him should never show.

I nod and turn away before I do something foolish like lean into the hand he didn't give me.

In the bedroom I peel out of silver and into a robe. I carry the cuff bracelet to the dresser and set it down. Something gleams where the hinge meets the band, a dot no bigger than a pinhead. At first I think it's just a flaw in the metal, but the longer I stare, the more wrong it feels.

A chill creeps down my arms as I realize it's not part of the design at all.

It's a tracker, and someone planted it on me.

The thought makes my pulse stutter, and in the silence of the penthouse, I swear I hear the faintest scrape against the balcony glass, as if whoever planted it is close enough to be listening right now.