Page 14 of Riggs (The Maddox BRAVO Team #2)

Riggs

Denver is a blur of clean hits and quiet damage control.

We give the pop-up its show, feed the algorithm on our terms, bag another note— YOU MAKE IT TOO EASY —and hand it to Turner with a chain-of-custody document that would make a judge purr.

Rae ties Kellan Stevens to a craft store and a burner.

Jaxson maps his digital scent to our sponsor rep, Caleb. Dean says tighten the circle . I do.

By day three, Denver’s staring at our gate before we’ve even left the hotel. Everyone expects the photo. Everyone expects the kiss. Everyone expects us.

So I change the picture.

We’re supposed to head to the airport after breakfast. Lucas lines up the SUV under the canopy.

Brice rehearses “organic content opportunities” in the rearview like a man practicing his vows.

I watch the flow of people in the lobby.

The phones. The ring lights you can buy at a kiosk now. The way attention bends space.

“New plan,” I say.

Vanessa’s head tips. She’s curious. “Hit me.”

“We don’t fly,” I tell her. “We drive to Austin.”

Brice chokes on a word that sounds like metrics . “Absolutely not. The itinerary?—”

“Is now wrong on purpose,” I say. “We’ve posted our boarding times for a week. It’s not safe. We need to change things up.”

She studies my face. The thing I’m not saying sits plain between us: I want her off the grid—and I want a stretch of road where the world is background and this… isn’t.

“Dean?” she asks, not doubting, just checking.

I call him. He answers on the first ring like he’s already in the room. “ Talk to me. ”

“We’re dark-routing,” I say. “Rent a car, south on 25, cut across New Mexico, down through Amarillo. Overnight in Santa Fe or Trinidad. Decoys at the airport. Check-ins on a schedule. Phones in the bag between.”

A beat where I can hear him flipping the board in his head. “ Kellan’s in motion, ” he says. “ Turner almost has him, but almost isn’t custody. Use the fake cover. Use the quiet. You’ve got discretion. ”

“Copy.”

Dean adds, softer: “ Keep her head up. ”

“I got it,” I say, and hang up.

I turn to Lucas. “Can you stage a drop at Departures. Maybe some doubles walking to security?”

He grins without teeth. “Already have a couple in hats, same height spread, ready to earn a steak. I’ll make sure the cameras love them.”

Rae slides into my ear. “ I’ll flood the feed with geotagged noise. Decoy boarding pass is live. If Stevens is watching the gate manifest, he’ll think you’re Group A.”

Jaxson: “I’ll nudge a “Find My” on a burner in a suitcase to ping near C concourse. Watch Twitter pretend it’s gospel.”

“Good,” I say. To Vanessa: “We go out the loading dock. Rental facility on York. Alias. Cash for gas. We check in at set windows only.”

She smiles like I just promised her a vacation, not a run between wolves. “Road trip with my boyfriend,” she murmurs. “Scandalous.”

Brice groans. “Fine. But I want a car-aesthetic reel. Dusty sun, wind in hair, Americana, the whole thing.”

“You’ll get it,” I say. “On delay.”

Lucas takes us down the back spine of the hotel, the kind of corridor that runs on cardboard and secrets.

At the rental lot, a woman in a denim jacket with competence in her eyes meets us at a side door and passes me a key fob and a clipboard.

“Marta,” she says. “Friend of brAVO. Outback, silver, two dings. It blends everywhere. Full tank. No paperwork.”

“Appreciate it.” The Outback sits three cars down, humble and invisible, the way I like my tools. I pop the hatch, toss in our bags, and hand Vanessa a ball cap and a pair of not-pink sunglasses. She tucks her hair up under the cap without looking away from me.

“You sure?” she asks, and it’s not about the car.

“Yes,” I say. It is about the car. It’s also about the road where no one else is watching us.

We slide out into noon light and I-25 south. The SUV lanes thicken, and then it evens out. Mountains hold steady on the west like elders. I set the cruise two under the limit, drift a lane when a mirror makes me suspicious, watch for the same car more than two hours in my world.

Vanessa props one bare foot on the dash and cracks the window. “What’s first on a Riggs-approved road trip?” she asks.

“Rules.” I hand her a small Faraday pouch.

“Your secure goes in this unless I tell you. We check in every ninety minutes on the dot. We fuel at crowded places, park under cameras, and don’t pull over on shoulders unless we blow a tire.

Food comes from counters I can see. Bathrooms are in and out, safety first.”

“Sexy,” she says, grin unabashed. “What’s second?”

“Music,” I say.

She laughs and cues up a playlist. Motown, because the universe likes jokes. We hum along. I catch her harmonizing under her breath, eyes closed, shoulders finally down from her ears. I didn’t realize how much I wanted to see that on her face until I do.

We clear the line of Pueblo. Steel skeletons. A river that looks tired. She falls quiet for a stretch, watching tumbleweed fail at being a cliché.

“You were quiet this morning,” she says, finally. “I thought you might have regretted last night.”

“I don’t regret a second,” I say, and mean it. “I regret not living in two timelines at once.”

“Which two?”

“The one where I kiss you until the car runs out of gas,” I say, deadpan, “and the one where I keep you safe.”

She laughs so bright it makes the wind look at her. “We’ll get to the first one,” she says. “When your map says so.”

I look at her. “Soon,” I say, and I’m not joking.

We climb Raton Pass under a ceiling of storm—pewter clouds stacked like far-off cities.

New Mexico smells different the second we drop in—pinon and dust and a hint of rain that hasn’t committed yet.

We pull into a diner that was last remodeled when vinyl went to prom.

I take the end booth with my back to the wall and a view of the pumps.

The waitress calls me “hon,” calls Vanessa “darlin’,” and drops green-chile cheeseburgers that taste like decisions you make on purpose.

“This feels normal,” Vanessa says around a fry, her eyes soft. “Is this what normal feels like? The good kind?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s also the most dangerous part.”

“How so?”

“You forget to look left.” I nod past her shoulder to the door. A man in a trucker cap with a phone at low chest height pretends to scroll. He’s not looking at us. He’s looking at anything that will make a story. “People want to be narrators. We make sure they don’t get to write.”

“Roger that,” she says, then steals a bite of my burger and licks her thumb slow on purpose. My composure hiccups and she knows it. The smile she gives me should come with a warning label.

We make Santa Fe by late afternoon—blue doors, adobe shoulders, the light a religion. I decide to stop. Partly because the storm behind us wants to make a point over the plains, partly because every plan that runs perfectly dies of thirst.

I book an inn with interior corridors and a parking court I can control.

The manager sees my face and the cash and decides to save his questions for later.

The room smells like old wood and clean sheets.

I wedge the door, lock the slider, set the chair under the handle, run the bathroom fan because white noise helps people sleep through their own hearts.

Vanessa drops her bag, crosses to the window, and stares at a sky made of paint. She’s quiet in the particular way she gets before she makes something. “I want to capture this,” she says.

“Do it,” I say, and I take her phone from her, opening up her camera.

She perches on the sill, tosses her hair until it's spilling loose. I snap the first picture with the sky as her backdrop, and it’s breathtaking.

She was made to be on film. I take more pictures.

One of her laughing. Her smile is gorgeous.

Another of her looking just over my shoulder like she has a secret to tell the world.

The last photo I snap, her eyes are pinned on me in a way that makes my whole body come alive.

My secure phone buzzes, interrupting the moment and I curse under my breath. It’s a text from Rae that reads:

Rae: Decoys worked. Twitter has “you two” boarding in C. Shots of your doubles are already a meme. Turner picked up Kellan leaving the concourse with a bag from the craft store and a smug face. They’re following him.

Jaxson: No geo on your devices. Good boys and girls.

Dean: Stay dark. Enjoy the road.

I show Vanessa the enjoy the road and she smiles like we did something right in a world that doesn’t love giving out those ribbons.

We put on a movie that doesn’t ask for blood. Vanessa tucks in under my arm like a word that learned where to fit. The storm finally commits somewhere over the Sangre de Cristos, a slow drum we can feel through the window.

Halfway through a scene where two idiots make a poor choice in a grocery store, she pauses the movie and turns. “Tell me something true,” she says, the quiet kind, not the banter kind.

“I was sure by twenty-one I’d forget how to feel anything but adrenaline,” I say. “I didn’t.”

She traces a line over the vein at my wrist with one finger. “I was sure by twenty-five I’d forget how to exist without a camera telling me I was real.” She lifts a shoulder. “I haven’t.”

“Good,” I say, and lean in.

The kiss is slow because we aren’t hiding. It tastes like lime and corn and the kind of rain you only get at altitude. She slides a hand into my hair as I press my palm to the small of her back. The world shortens to the exact distance between us.

I keep kissing her because I can. And that thought right there… wrecks me. I’m hers. Completely.

I tug her closer, letting her straddle my lap as I kiss her. I create a path from the base of her neck, across the column of her throat, to the back of her ear. She thrusts her hips, humping me, making my cock hard.

“You have too many damn clothes on,” I tell her and she laughs.