Page 16 of Riggs (The Maddox BRAVO Team #2)

Vanessa

By morning the storm has rinsed the sky clean.

Santa Fe smells like wet adobe and coffee, and for the first time in days I wake up without bracing for impact.

Riggs is at the tiny table by the window, sleeves pushed up, scribbling a little route sketch on a hotel notepad like a boy drawing racetracks.

There’s a brown paper sack between us with two breakfast burritos inside.

“Road,” he says, looking up with that quiet yes in his eyes, and it feels like the kind of invitation you don’t get on the internet—no RSVP, just come with me .

We’re back in the silver Outback by eight, phones zipped into the Faraday pouch between us like sleeping snakes.

When he starts the engine, Motown spills out—Rae’s revenge playlist, probably—and he doesn’t change it.

We hum through “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” while the town falls away in our rearview and the road unspools toward blue distance.

I tuck one foot under me and unwrap my burrito. “Confession,” I say around a blissful mouthful. “I love being off-grid. I didn’t know how loud everything was until it got quiet.”

He checks the mirror, then me. “Quiet’s underrated,” he says. “You hear what matters.”

“What do you hear?” I ask, because I want in.

“Your stomach being happy,” he deadpans. He waits a beat. “Also, the rear quarter-panel vibrating at sixty-eight. We’ll be fine.”

“Romance,” I say solemnly, and he huffs a laugh—the kind that’s mostly breath and still somehow hits me like a shot of espresso.

We climb out of town and into country that looks like Camille could have painted this.

Soft hills, cotton-candy clouds, and long fences with the occasional bored cow.

Riggs drives like he does everything—steady, aware, absolutely present.

His hand finds mine without either of us making a thing of it, and the simple fact of our fingers laced over the gear shift is… everything.

“I could get used to this,” I admit, watching a hawk fly high in the sky. “Windows down. No itinerary. Just—us.”

His thumb strokes the back of my hand once. “I already am,” he whispers.

My breath catches at his implication, and I don’t want to get too ahead of myself.

Breathe, Vanessa.

We stop at a roadside stand that sells pinon, turquoise bracelets, and pecans in brown paper bags scribbled with prices.

The woman behind the table calls me mija and calls Riggs handsome and I buy both a bracelet and a pound of sugared pecans because I’m weak.

Riggs picks jerky and a bottle of water with the label half-peeled, then asks the woman if the camera in the corner actually works.

“Sometimes,” she says. “When my grandson remembers.” Her eyes crinkle when she looks between us. “Honeymoon?”

“Recon,” Riggs says, too fast.

“Vacation,” I say, at the same time, and the woman laughs like we’re both cute and wrong.

Back on the road, we invent games. He teaches me Spot the Exit —counting egress points without looking like you’re counting—and I teach him Story Time —picking a passing car and inventing a life for the strangers inside it. He’s surprisingly good at mine.

“Two kids sleeping under those blankets,” he says, pointing with his chin at a minivan, “and a beagle named Sprocket. Parents haven’t talked about anything but snacks since Tucumcari. They’re happy.”

“You can tell happiness from this far?” I tease.

“Doesn’t lean as much,” he says, and glances at me like he’s not talking about driving anymore.

We cut past Clines Corners and open up into that flat expanse that makes the sky feel big enough to live in.

Amarillo arrives in a bright slap of billboards and wind.

We detour five minutes to a gas station with shady-looking shade and a grocery inside where the clerk calls everyone hon and squeegees flies off windows like it’s a sacrament.

Riggs fuels while I dance a little to a song I loved when I was fourteen. He comes around the pump with that half-smile that makes me want to misbehave and says, “You’re going to start a line dance if you keep that up.”

“Only if you join,” I say, and before I know it we’re slow-swaying in the rectangle of sun between pump twelve and the ice machine, ridiculous and perfect. He hums into my hair. No cameras, no metrics. Just us.

We make it back to the highway before our check-in window.

He pulls into a rest area with two trucks and a family picnic, checks mirrors, unlocks the pouch, and passes me my secure phone.

The screen lights our stillness. Even off-grid, we don’t disappear.

We just choose when to appear. He sends a single-line update to Rae.

Southbound. Clean.

She sends back a thumb-up and a peach because Rae is a menace.

When he tucks the phones away again, I put my bare feet on the dashboard and sigh.

“What would you want,” I ask, “after?” The word hangs there—heavy and fragile.

“After we catch…him. After I can stop pretending I’m not addicted to this”—I lift our hands—“and you can stop pretending you don’t want chili-stained Sunday afternoons. ”

He thinks a long time, not because he doesn’t know but because he wants to say it right. “A house that creaks the same way every night,” he says finally. “A garage that smells like cedar and oil and the dog.” He glances sideways. “You, laughing at me for how seriously I take coffee filters.”

“And me?” I press, greedy. “What do you see for me?”

“Light,” he says, and it’s so simple I feel my eyes sting. “A studio that owns the whole second floor. Kids from the neighborhood making messes on purpose. Me fixing every hinge in the building because I can’t not.”

“You’re good at this game,” I whisper.

“I’m incentivized,” he says, and lets me watch a rare, unguarded smile unravel across his face.

We cross into Texas and the sky changes again.

It’s bigger somehow, braver. The road slides under us like a moving sidewalk to a life we haven’t had time to design.

I sing harmonies badly and he doesn’t correct me.

He points out a hawk and a storm line and a truck with a tire I can now recognize as trouble because he taught me.

Near Childress we stop for iced tea so sweet it might be illegal and a paper bag of something fried the menu calls steak fingers .

Riggs does the usual—backs into a spot, angles the car so he can see both doors, touches the small of my back like it’s his to check in on—but the edge that thrummed in him all week is softened.

He’s still watchful, but he’s also…here. With me.

We trade bites like kids on a field trip.

We argue about whether he’ll let me take a picture of our hands on the console (no), then compromise on a picture of our shoes with a strip of sun slashing the floor mat (yes, delayed).

I tell him stories about the ugliest hotels I’ve slept in, and he tells me about a farmer in Poland who fixed his truck with wire and a prayer.

We go quiet when the road insists, soothed by the rhythm of mile markers and a playlist we don’t have to pretend to like for anyone else.

An hour outside Austin, the land turns to live oaks and long fences and the promise of water somewhere just out of sight.

I roll down my window and stick my hand out to surf the wind.

Riggs grabs my other hand and presses a kiss to my knuckles without moving his eyes off the road.

It’s such a small act of worship I almost cry.

“Hey, Beard Mountain?” I say, voice small with happiness.

“Yeah.”

“I like this version of us.”

“Me too,” he says. “It’s real.”

“Would you want this?” The question I’ve been dancing around steps out onto the center line. “When it’s over. The quiet. The groceries. The stupid fights about light bulbs.”

He doesn’t hesitate. “Yes,” he says. “With you.”

I look out at the blue spill of sky to get my breath back. I reach for the Faraday pouch, feel the phones sleeping inside, and realize I’ve almost forgotten someone out there wants to hurt me. Almost.

Riggs feels the shift in me the way he feels crosswinds. He squeezes my hand once, knuckles sure. “I’ve got you,” he says, like a reflex and a vow.

“I know,” I answer, and I do. I do. The fear slides off the day like dust.

We hit the city as the sun leans toward gold and the air turns to music.

Austin’s pulse is different—humid, alive, a little feral.

We’re not invisible anymore, and I’m okay with that.

I’ve got a man who can count exits without breaking a smile and a plan that includes tamales and movies and a dog named Sprocket some day, and for a stretch of highway today I was a woman in a car with her boyfriend, not a brand in a trap.

Lucas texts the rendezvous point for the last mile—side lane, service door—and Riggs slides us into the flow like a blade between pages.

He’ll brief me on tomorrow’s deliverables and make three new rules I’ll tease him for and obey anyway.

We’ll check in with Rae and Jaxson. We’ll lock our door and wedge it and argue over whether soup is a meal (it is) and maybe fall asleep to a storm that belongs to Texas.

For now, it’s wind and laughter and pecan sugar on my tongue, and the way he looks at me at a red light like I’m a road worth taking every time.

I lean my head back, close my eyes, and let the last miles carry us. For a few more heartbeats, there’s no camera, no crowd, no wolf pacing the internet. There’s a silver car and the man inside it who keeps finding ways to bring me home.

When we arrive at the hotel, my body buzzes with a new energy. Almost like coming home. Almost.

Sometimes home isn’t a place… it’s a person. A feeling.

Right now, with Riggs at my side, I feel like I’m home.

“You have such a pretty smile,” he whispers close to my ear as we cross over the threshold of our room.

The man is a pure charmer. Not in the showy way where every woman on the planet gets a piece of it, but in a private way. Only for me.