Page 18 of Riggs (The Maddox BRAVO Team #2)

Riggs

Austin feels like a stage that forgot to build a backstage.

Music in the air, heat on the pavement, cameras already waiting when we roll up.

The hotel’s side lane does its job—clean approach, keyed door—but by the time we clear the elevator and step into the lobby to make it look like we’re normal, the phones bloom like night flowers.

“Eyes up,” I murmur. Vanessa’s fingers find mine. We move.

The lobby’s a show: neon reflection off polished stone, a bachelorette troop in matching boots, two paparazzi with long glass pretending they’re just dudes with souvenirs.

We give them twenty seconds. That’s the currency: not access, a sliver of proximity.

Vanessa turns her head just enough, and I do the thing I said we would—hand at her waist, angle my body to block half the frame, then tip her chin and kiss her like it’s for them, but really it’s for us.

The crowd inhales, then breaks into cheers so loud the concierge claps. Flash. Flash. Rae in my ear: “Riggs + V is trending with thirteen heart emojis and a lasso.”

I don’t even pretend to know what that means.

Upstairs, I wedge the door, run the lock, test the slider, sweep the bathroom, glance at the closet, notch the chair under the handle. Vanessa leans on the window and watches the city hum. I’m about to move toward her, wrap her in my arms, but there’s a knock on the door.

Brice. He slips in with a breeze of cologne and urgency. “Dinner,” he announces. “There’s a chef who wants to host, and the brand wants five minutes of ‘see you in the wild’—photo op, tiny meet and greet, candids. Nothing crazy.”

“No,” I say.

“Absolutely,” Vanessa says, at the same time.

Brice looks between us.

I cross my arms over my chest. “Anyone who was waiting at the airport is annoyed. Annoyed men get inventive. If we go out, we do it in a box I built.”

“Define your box?” Vanessa asks.

“Private room with two exits and a kitchen door I can own. Cap headcount at twenty-five. No live posts. We control the angle to the street. Driver at the service lane only.” I look at Brice. “And forty minutes, hard out.”

Brice pretends to think and immediately nods. “Done.” He’s already texting.

I sharpen the plan. Lucas hands off to a local driver he trusts—Lalo, former Army MP, eyes like flint. Rae scrubs the restaurant network. Jaxson sets a geofence around the block. Hayes texts:

Hayes: no device chatter near you.

Which means if anything pops, it’ll be feet and faces, not radios.

At 7:10, we take the service elevator down into the warm thrum of Austin night. Lalo rolls us two blocks shy, then tucks into a slot that lets him see both ends of the alley without turning his head. Vanessa smooths her skirt and looks at me like she wants to be good and terrible at the same time.

“Forty minutes,” I remind her.

“Forty-five if you smile,” she says.

“Forty,” I repeat.

Inside, the restaurant gives off expensive wood and lime.

The private room is perfect—long table, frosted glass, a pocket door to the kitchen, a hall to the restrooms that doubles as an exit.

The manager flips from brittle to useful the second I speak his language: “line of sight, staff list, who’s allowed back here, who isn’t.

” He gives me a lowdown so fast and clean, I give him two extra points of trust.

Fans filter in—invited, pre-cleared, wrists banded by Lina. The energy is good: Austin friendly, not LA hungry. Vanessa does what she does—bright without blinding, generous without bleeding. I stand in a corner and watch.

“Riggs,” a woman says, twenty-five, calm, wristband on. “Can I get a picture of you both?”

“Two seconds,” I say, because I want the room to see me say yes and because I like watching Vanessa like this.

We step together. I set my hand at the small of her back.

She tilts up. I kiss her present-tense and brief.

The shutter clicks. The woman mouths, thank you.

My job is to make that real and keep it safe.

Also my job is to not think about how kissing her feels like a home you didn’t know you were searching for until you walk in and smell dinner.

Food arrives in small plates that go untouched because cameras beat chips.

Brice hovers on a cloud of metrics. Lina hands me water first, then Vanessa.

She drinks, gives me the bottle back without looking.

We run a rhythm: smile, step, pivot, reset—and it’s smooth enough that I start to consider calling the night an honest win.

Then the air shifts.

It’s tiny. A thread pulled in the corner of the room where the frosted glass throws fuzzy shadows. A shape lingers just a hair too long at the hall’s mouth. You learn to see these things so well they interrupt your blood.

I tap my ear. “Rae?”

“Copy,” she says. “ Got you with three cams. Hall traffic light, one static. Street side picking up a guy in a cap who keeps finding line of sight.”

“Describe.”

“Five-ten. Black cap, gray tee, messenger bag backside. He’s filming low. Hasn’t crossed your door. He’s hunting angles, not making contact—yet.”

“Jax?”

“Plate capture two cars down—a white Challenger that followed you for four blocks then kept circling. Same one from Denver? Body style matches, plate different. I’m grabbing a frame off street cam now.”

I give the manager a nod. “Hold the hall,” I tell him. “Staff only.”

He posts two servers like sentries and suddenly they’re a security team. I dislike improvising with civilians. I like it when it works.

“Everything okay?” Vanessa’s near my elbow, voice at the just-us frequency.

“Someone’s shopping for a story,” I say. “We’re not selling.”

She nods. “Use the cover?”

“We’ll give them something to chew on.” Then, because the room doesn’t need fear and because we built this box, I lift her hand to my mouth and kiss her knuckles. A small, private gesture that explodes into a thousand quiet squeals. The energy shifts back. We let it stay there.

Forty minutes lands fast. I signal Lalo. “Two minutes.”

We run the exit like a drill. Kitchen door, line by twos, staff door to the alley. Lalo pulls up on cue, right rear door facing the wall to shield the first step. We’re half in when the man in the cap from the sidewalk drifts into the mouth of the alley like he’s wondering how he got there.

He doesn’t get a step closer. Lalo steps out of the driver’s seat and looks at him the way you’d look at a dog considering your steak. The man’s phone droops two inches, then three, then disappears into a pocket because instincts trump entitlement.

We slide in. Doors close. Lalo rolls. Rae hums: “ Nice and tidy. Challenger peeled off on Sixth. I’ve got the plate. It’s as real as a wish.”

We’re three blocks out when Vanessa exhales all at once and tips her head back on the seat. The city streaks neon across the glass. I watch it in the mirror, then watch her instead.

“You okay?” I ask .

“I am,” she says, surprising me with how certain she sounds. “Because you are.”

It lands somewhere I don’t have armor. I let it. “We’ll lap the block once,” I tell Lalo. “Then in through the service lane.”

We do. The hotel eats us without a ripple. Upstairs, the hall is soft carpet and nothing. Inside, I run the sweep with muscle memory and add one more wedge because redundancy is romance.

Vanessa toes off her shoes and stands in the middle of the room like she’s waiting to decide what to do.

The window throws city light up her arms. I take off my jacket and holster, set both with careful hands, and don’t pretend I’m not looking at her like she’s the first thing I’ve wanted in a long time that didn’t leave a mark.

“Was it stupid?” she asks. “The dinner?”

“No,” I say honestly. “It was controlled. It bent the story toward ours. And it reminded whoever’s watching that we decide what they get.”

She smiles, tired and bright. “You really don’t regret this?” she asks. “Me. Us. Crossing the line.”

“Vanessa.” I step in, taking her face in my hands. “I don’t regret a second. I just won’t trade your safety for easy.”

She huffs a laughing breath. “Who said anything about easy?”

“Fair point.” I brush my thumbs over her cheekbones and feel the way her body checks in, breath syncing without us asking it to.

My secure vibrates on the table.

Rae: Challenger’s plate is fresh-printed. Pulled the store camera where it was made—guy in a cap with a messenger bag paid cash. Turner ID’d him as a friend of Kellan’s from way back. We’re stacking dominos.

“Copy,” I text back, then flip the phone facedown and let the window go to war with its own reflection.

She tilts her mouth to mine. The kiss starts like a thank-you and picks up on a curve into want.

It’s not for the cameras. It’s not to sell a brand.

It’s the kind you give because your hands will ache if you don’t.

I angle her back a half-step, and she goes with me, fingers sliding up my arms, finding purchase like she’s memorized where the strength is.

My palm settles at her lower back, pulling her close, all the worry burned off the edges.

“Riggs,” she whispers against my lips, and it’s not a warning this time. It’s a promise disguised as my name.

“Yeah?”

“What happens when this is all over?” Her eyes slay me with the need written so deeply in them.

I shake my head once. “I’m not sure.” I’d like to tell her I have all the answers, that I can predict the future, but I’m just a man. A man who wants to give this woman the happily ever after she deserves.

We end up on the couch, sideways, her tucked under my arm, the city doing its neon heartbeat beyond the glass. We don’t turn on a movie. We don’t need noise. We just need each other.

“I can change a tire in a dress,” she confesses.

“I can braid hair under fire,” I tell her.

“I hate when people open potato chip bags upside down.”

“I wedge doors with actual wedges.”

She laughs into my shoulder, and I feel it through bone. “We’re ridiculous.”

“We’re alive,” I say, and pull a blanket over her legs because the AC’s always freezing in hotel rooms. “And we’re winning.”

The room falls silent, and then she runs her finger over my chest.

“I’m falling for you,” she says into my shirt, too soft for the world, perfect for this distance.

It hits like stepping into shade after hours of sun. “Yeah,” I say, because I can't not fall for her. “Me too.”

We sit in it. Not the danger. The ease after. And I realize the thing that’s been threading through all the operations and counter-surveillance and wedges. The chemistry isn’t a threat to the mission. It’s fuel. It makes me sharper, not softer. It makes the picture of after a map instead of a wish.

My secure vibrates once more.

Dean: Saw the clips. Keep using the cover. Turner’s close. Give me your restaurant cam pulls when you have them.

I send the packet, set an alarm for 3 a.m., and kiss the crown of Vanessa’s head because there’s no camera to see me do it and I want to anyway.

“Sleep,” I tell her.

“Order me around again,” she murmurs, teasing.

“Sleep, Vanessa,” I say, and feel her smile.

She does. Eventually, so do I, with one arm around her and the city pressed against the glass like a hand.

Tomorrow will be noise and planning and maybe a plate falling just right somewhere we don’t want it to.

Tonight is a couch, a vow, and a woman who tastes like lime and laughter and the promise I’ve been careful enough to keep.

We made it back unscathed. We’ll do it again. And when someone says closer, I’ll be the line he can’t cross, and she’ll be the light that doesn’t dim.