Page 21

The cool marble floor beneath Bear’s sandals reflected the vaulted glass ceiling above like a mirage made of polished sea-light and dreams. Outside, the heat of Rio shimmered, a pulse of humidity rising from the stone like breath from the earth.

Inside, the hotel lobby thrummed with glossy elegance and too many voices.

He stood still amid it all, hands at his sides, spine straight, the black cotton of his shirt absorbing the ambient light.

The T-shirt was plain. Just the color of silence.

His khaki shorts reached just past the knee, simple, functional, paired with leather sandals worn from long miles and restless walking.

Flint sat at his side, ears pricked, eyes alert, coat gleaming like a shadow made flesh.

Bear didn’t speak. He rarely did when the air shifted.

A touch on his shoulder had him turning, and he froze.

Bailee Thunderhawk stood there. Not many people caught him off guard, but Bailee disrupted his equilibrium.

He didn’t know why, and that made her dangerous.

Not to his body but to his careful balance.

She uprooted him in ways he didn’t have words for.

Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was her.

Something in her seemed unsettled, eyes like tempered silver. The echo of her was quiet where it should have reverberated. That dissonance tugged at him.

Her beauty wasn’t what caught him. It was the stillness. The way her presence struck like a memory you’d forgotten to honor. Heavy and unmoving as a thundercloud.

There was a kind of silence between them that felt less like absence and more like pressure.

Her braid was thick, dark as a crow's wing, the same he’d seen every deployment, every briefing. Her body, all lean precision, radiated focus, power, the will to endure.

But it was her spirit that kept him on edge.

Something in her seemed to be missing .

Her clothes were simple, soft cargo pants and a sleeveless shell, but they framed her like armor trimmed in grace. Not a single piece of tactical gear on her, and yet she radiated danger. Fierce, relentless, no mercy for their enemies.

Those eyes held steady without hesitation. No smile. Just that deep, still recognition, the kind Bear only ever felt in ceremony.

There was a weight to her presence, not loud or commanding, but steady.

It pulled at something deep in Bear’s chest. She didn’t walk like someone looking for notice, but she carried silence like a second skin.

In that quiet, he saw a reflection of something he recognized in himself. Not brokenness. Dislocation.

Bear had always believed that people didn’t have to share blood to share spirit. Sometimes you saw someone, and something in you reached without asking permission.

He didn’t know her story. Not yet. But he knew the signs of a soul caught between here and somewhere else. Even if it wasn’t his to name, it still made his spirit shift.

It drove him crazy. She drove him crazy, but Bailee Thunderhawk was part of their team, and messing with dynamics was never a good idea.

She eyed his hair, the braids, the beads, the length, but said nothing.That silence landed harder than it should have. Lodged deep, sharp in a place still healing.

They’d had that conversation once before.

Quiet. Heavy. He’d told her about his brother.

About cutting his hair after the funeral.

About the burning of what was lost. She knew what it meant that he wore it long now.

That he braided it in ceremony. That the beads marked something older than language. Something earned.

But today, her eyes flicked over it, then shifted away, evasively. Like the honor he wore so plainly across his scalp unsettled her. Like it reminded her of something she no longer carried. Or never received.

Like it was a kind of inheritance she wasn’t given.

He didn’t press. He never did.

But the disappointment filtered through him all the same. The feeling didn’t hit like a punch. It came slowly. A quiet kind of weight, building in places he didn’t usually let anything touch.

“What brings you to Rio?” she asked, voice smooth and practiced.

He turned slightly, watching the way her arms crossed, a shield. She always had them in one form or another.

“BOPE and this conference,” he answered. “We’re here for training rotations. A few of us are sitting on panels.”

Her mouth quirked into something like a smile, but it didn’t reach those winter-storm eyes.

“The Sovereign Edge Summit,” she said, voice shifting into something official. “Global Forum on Tactical Leadership, Ethical Engagement, and Special Operations Diplomacy.”

He tilted his head, faintly amused. “That a mouthful or a threat?”

She smiled wider. “Diplomacy?” Her tone edged toward teasing now. “I thought the way special operators negotiated didn’t leave much room for talk.”

His chest expanded, a quiet pressure blooming there. That smile. It wasn’t much, but it was real. It had been too long since he’d seen it on her.

He rumbled a soft chuckle. “What are you saying?”

She stepped a little closer, arms still folded, head tilted. “You know. Shoot first, ask questions later. Are they teaching old dogs new tricks now?”

His lips twitched. “How long were you working on that one?”

She arched a brow. “My whole plane ride over here.”

His brows lifted, slow. “You knew I’d be here?”

“Of course I did.” Her voice dipped, silken now. “CIA, remember? I always know what my boys are doing.”

That last word caught at him. My boys. Damn, that sounded lonely and detached. Like she was too professional to claim them as her team.

He looked at her again, really looked at the way she held herself. The quiet steel in her spine, the measured cadence of her breath, the way her body stood easy but her heart…was withheld.

“You always watch from the edge,” he said quietly.

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” he murmured, stepping away half a pace, the moment too raw to name out loud. “I’m just glad you came.”

She nodded once, all professionalism again, like she hadn’t just missed what he hadn’t meant to say.

He turned back toward the team’s check-in table, Flint rising to heel beside him.

But the tension didn’t ease. She moved through the hotel like someone trained to disappear.

Most didn’t notice. But Bear couldn’t stop himself.

Something inside Bear told him…she hadn’t come to Rio for training or threat assessment.

She was looking for something. Something she couldn’t name.

Bear had the sinking feeling he might be the one who saw her truth before she was ready to face it.

He was about to ask something deeper, something he wasn’t sure had words, when she added, cool and professional now, “But I’m not here for you.”

He didn’t wince, but the words settled into his chest like frost on bone. “Didn’t think you were.” She said it like she meant it. He heard it like a lie.

She smiled faintly, but it didn’t touch the hollows of her eyes.

“There’s a gathering,” she said after a beat. “The Atlantic Coalition Security Forum. Private political roundtable. Off the books. Held here in the hotel.”

“That’s news to us,” he murmured.

“That’s good. It’s hush, hush, and invite-only,” she went on. “Brazilian Ministry of Defense, a few high-level European intel advisers, two US State Department liaisons. The kind of summit that doesn’t exist. Not officially. Not on paper.”

His jaw flexed. “Yet you’re here.”

“I monitor ghosts. It’s what I do.” She glanced down at Flint, whose sharp eyes had never left her. “The forum’s being hosted in a sealed executive suite. BOPE’s got perimeter security. Brazilian intelligence is overseeing the internal sweep. My job is simple: eyes and ears for our DSS guys.”

“You cheating on us with another agency?” he asked.

She looked away. “I watch where I’m told to watch.”

“You ever get tired of that?” he asked softly. “Of staying on the edge of things and calling it duty?”

That made her falter. Just a flicker. A shift in her balance. But she caught herself.

“I serve differently,” she said.

But it didn’t ring true. Not all the way.

Bear didn’t press.

Their eyes locked. A man approached, Brazilian, tall, with dark curly hair. “Bailee?”

She turned toward him. “Hello. It’s time?”

He nodded, sparing Bear a glance before extending his hand. Bear clasped it, the grip firm. “Carlos Braga.”

“Dakota Locklear.” The man studied him for a beat, then looked back to Bailee.

“I’ll be right there. Give me a minute.”

Braga nodded at Bear before looking over at Bailee. “See you up there.”

Bear watched him go. Most Brazilians were cordial and warm, but something about this one snagged at his instincts like barbed wire beneath silk. Not jealous—he didn’t entertain that emotion. This was tactical. A whisper of dissonance that hummed through his bones.

Bailee must have felt it too.

“Always thinking like a SEAL,” she murmured. “DSS is in force. Brazilian operatives, BOPE too. I’m covered.”

Still, Bear kept his gaze on the hallway. The hum hadn’t faded.

“Your real team is a call away,” he said quietly. “Don’t hesitate.”

She looked away, and something in her face softened. Vulnerability in profile. She took a breath, let it anchor her. When she met his eyes again, the armor was back.

He let her have it.

Then he inclined his head, quiet as dusk. “Dinner one night?”

She bit her lip, but didn’t look away. It was the only sign she wanted to say yes. That he wasn’t a fool for asking.

“I’m going to be tied up,” she said, low.

They both knew the truth. He knew better than to ask. They weren’t just two people in a hotel. They worked together, and she didn’t strike him as someone who did messy. But his training, his warrior instincts never went on vacation.

Watching the edges of her world satisfied a hunger in him he barely dared to name.

Though neither of them said it, they both knew he was way more than one of her boys.

The hallway outside her room was quiet, but his pulse wasn’t.