Page 4 of Riggs (The Maddox BRAVO Team #2)

I look at Vanessa. She’s scrolling, eyes wide, cheeks pink, trying to keep up with a hurricane that decided she’s a coastline. Something in my chest makes a decision without me. “No,” I say, then clear my throat. “Negative. I’m invested.”

Dean hears everything. “Then Option B,” he says. “This cover makes you two an easier sell in public spaces. You can hold her hand without someone deciding you’re kidnapping her. Keep the narrative controlled. We’re not chasing denials for two weeks. You manage the boundaries. Copy?”

“Copy,” I say. “Any other assets in Seattle?”

“Local support standing by. I’ll have Rae coordinate with the hotel. You already booked the suite?”

“Under the alias. Corner, high floor. I’ll sweep on entry.”

“Good. And Riggs?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

The line clicks dead. I stare at the rain for a second. The thing about being told not to be an idiot is it only gets said when the terrain is prime for idiocy.

“What did your boss say?” Vanessa asks, cautious.

“That we use this,” I say. “We make it work for us. Publicly, you and I are…” I gesture between us.

She supplies, dry, “Dating.”

“Apparently,” I say. My mouth goes a little dry. “It’s cleaner. It gives me pretext to be close, to make calls on your behalf. People understand that shape better than ‘security asset.’”

“And privately?” she asks.

“Privately,” I say carefully, “we remember what this is.”

A silence settles, but it isn’t uncomfortable.

The Suburban hums along the freeway, downtown a smear of glass and steel ahead, the wheel spokes of the giant ferris off to the right through the rain.

I run the route in my head—exit, loop, check our six, approach the garage from the west so we don’t telegraph our entry.

A mundane ballet is what keeps people breathing.

“You’re good at this,” she says suddenly.

“The job?”

“The way you make it feel like I’m not drowning,” she says, softer. “Like there’s air even when it’s noisy.”

Something in my back loosens a notch. “That’s the whole point.”

Her hand moves, just a hair, on the seat between us. I could put mine over it and it would be the most natural thing in the world, a continuation of the cover we’re apparently married to now. I don’t. Not yet. Not when I can still taste her and my head hasn’t caught up.

“Ground rules,” I say, because structure is a handhold. “We’re going to need a few if we’re pulling this off without you hating me by Thursday.”

She huffs a laugh. “Okay. Lay them on me.”

“In public, I decide routes, entries, exits. If I say we go, we go. If I say we smile, we smile. If I say we’re making a scene, we’re making a scene.”

“Even if that scene involves…” She waggles her eyebrows. She’s teasing me and I deserve it.

“Even then,” I say. My ears are warm. “Second, you tell me when you’ve had enough. No stoic hero acts. I can’t mitigate for what I don’t know.”

“Deal,” she says.

“Third…” I hesitate. “Third, we keep a line between the cover and everything else.”

The tease fades. She studies me, and I feel like I’m under a microscope and she’s extremely good at science. “Okay,” she says finally, voice gentle. “We can do that.”

I nod once, a little too sharply, and pivot. “We’ll take the underground access to the hotel. Nolan will pull into the private garage. We go straight to the elevator. No lobby time. Once we’re in the room, I’ll do a sweep. You call your mother.”

Her mouth twists. “So she can tell me I’m irresponsible for dating someone I met this year?”

“So she can hear it from you and not a gossip site,” I say. “We’re going to choose what we can choose.”

She looks at me as if I’ve set something heavy down for her and she hadn’t realized she was holding it. “Okay,” she says again, and this time it sounds like relief.

We do the loop. I watch our mirrors. A sedan lingers too long a lane over, then peels off when it’s clear we aren’t interesting.

The drizzle graduates to rain and then back again, like Seattle is exhaling in stutters.

Nolan peels us into the hotel’s garage—concrete, painted numbers, the empty echo sound that always throws off a tail.

We roll into our slot, engine ticking, and I’m out first, scanning—the stairwell door, the elevator bank, the valet’s private entry.

No stray bodies, no trash can that moved since yesterday, no license plates I don’t like.

“Clear,” I say. I help her out because that’s the cover now and because I want to. My palm finds hers. It’s warm. We step into the elevator and it dings like a polite robot.

On the fifteenth floor, the hallway is thick carpet and tasteful art that looks expensive and means nothing.

I key us in, shoulder the door with the habit I can’t unlearn, and we enter the suite.

Floor-to-ceiling windows glow gray with rain, the skyline smudged like a watercolor left out in a storm.

There are two rooms—living area and bedroom—plus a bathroom big enough to do yoga in.

“Take five,” I tell her. “Shoes off, breathe. I’ll sweep.”

She abandons my hoodie like it’s too warm and pads into the living room, fingers pressed to her mouth.

I start with the obvious—door jams, peephole, the safe.

Then the less obvious—HVAC vents, behind the TV, baseboards, under the bed with the flashlight.

My hands work, my brain hums, and under it all that damn kiss keeps replaying, an unhelpful greatest hit.

When I finish, I wedge the door with the portable lock, set the alarm on the balcony slider, and finally allow myself to look at her properly. She’s on the sofa, knees tucked under, phone dark now. Watching me.

“All clear,” I say. “We’re good.”

“Good,” she echoes, and then: “Riggs?”

“Yeah.”

“That thing you did back there.” Her voice is soft but steady. “I know you did it to keep me safe. I’m grateful. And I also… liked it. Both things can be true.”

I’m not a guy who stumbles, but I feel it, the internal misstep. “Yeah,” I say honestly, because lying now is a bad precedent. “Me too.”

We sit in that for a beat. Rain drums on glass. Somewhere down on the street a siren flares and fades.

“So,” she says finally, brightening, shifting the subject without pretending she isn’t. “Since we’re pretending to date… what’s our first fake date in Seattle?”

“First order of business,” I say, grateful for the pivot, “is food you can eat without giving a tabloid a gif to dine on. Second order is checking in with your schedule. You’ve got a meeting tomorrow morning.

I’ll stage the route. We can do dinner tonight if you’re up for it—hotel restaurant, corner booth, in and out.

We’ll give them a picture and make sure it’s the one we like. ”

She grins, surprised. “You’re kind of devious.”

“It’s a living,” I say.

She stands, crosses to me with her bare feet whispering on the carpet. She stops within reach and, for a second, neither of us moves. I can smell rain in her hair and something warmer underneath it, something that makes it a little harder to breathe.

“Okay, Mr. Devious,” she says. “Let’s make a plan.”

“We’ve got one,” I tell her. “We’ll make it better.”

Her smile softens. “And the rules?”

“We’ll keep them,” I say, and I mean it even if a part of me already hates that I do.

“Even if you have to…” She lifts a brow, teasing again.

“Even then,” I say, and because it’s both cover and truth, I reach and tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. It’s nothing. It’s everything. Her breath catches, quick and quiet, and we stand there like a match held a millimeter from the striking surface.

The comm on the console chirps—Rae confirming our alias is registered, the hotel staff is briefed, the service elevator can be ours if we need it. The moment breaks into practical pieces.

“Time to work,” I say.

“Time to work,” she agrees.

But when we head downstairs later, my hand at the small of her back for anyone watching and for me, both, I know that what happened in the terminal wasn’t just a tactic.

It was a line we stepped over and then drew behind us.

And now my job is to make sure that line holds while we figure out what the hell to do with the heat we carried back with us in the rain.