Blake passes me a tactical flashlight. Another distinction. Marco would have anticipated it.
We move swiftly through the gardens, mud sucking at our shoes. What will she do with what she knows? Run to the authorities? Her editor? Or will her journalistic instincts drive her to dig deeper? The latter possibility intrigues me, even as I recognize its danger. She has proven herself exceptionally resourceful, her mind sharp, her body…
The memory of her legs wrapped around my waist as I took her against the wall, flood my senses. Then again on the desk, papers scattered to the floor as I spread her thighs and devoured her until she begged. The shower, her back pressed against the cold tile, hot water streaming between our bodies as I took her from behind, my hand tangled in her wet hair. Most dangerous of all is the memory of her eyes when I was fevered and weak—not pity,but with a tenderness that was foreign to me as she rode me, her hands splayed across my chest.
I force the thoughts away as we reach the tree line.
“Team Alpha reports movement near the eastern ridge,” Blake informs me, one hand pressed to his earpiece. “Possible thermal signature, but the rain is interfering with the sensors.”
I adjust our course immediately, veering east. The ground slopes upward here, becoming rockier, more treacherous. Each step sends fresh pain radiating from my injured ribs, but I maintain my pace, refusing to show weakness.
The rain has lessened slightly, though water still drips steadily from the leaf canopy above.
“There,” Blake hisses, pointing.
My flashlight beam catches it: a scrap of white cotton snagged on a thorny bush, muddy and torn. My shirt. The one she was wearing. A curl of satisfaction, sharp and possessive, winds through me. She’s close. Slower now, leaving traces.
I straighten to press forward, but a wave of dizziness washes over me. The forest floor tilts, and I brace myself against the wet bark of an oak, my vision swimming with black spots. I grit my teeth and shove away from the trunk.
“Team Bravo is repositioning to cut off the eastern perimeter,” Blake says, his voice low. “Five minutes.”
I nod, calculating. The ground slopes sharply downward ahead, into a gully. A natural path to follow if one were desperate. But the muddy bank tells a different story: the clear signs of a fall. Disturbed earth, broken ferns, the deeper impression of an impact. She tumbled.
I make my way carefully down the incline. At the bottom, the evidence is clearer. A distinct footprint showing she’s favoring her right leg. A single droplet of blood on a leaf. The thought of her hurt, bleeding and alone, stirs something dangerously close to concern. I push it aside. An injured target moves slower, makes more mistakes.
I follow her trail. She moved away from the stream, deeper into the woods, seeking denser cover. Smart, but futile. The direction takes her straight toward Team Charlie.
“Have Charlie hold their advance,” I instruct Blake quietly. “Maintain a perimeter. Do not approach.”
He nods, falling back slightly. The forest opens onto a small clearing. My flashlight beam sweeps the space. A subtle disturbance near the base of the largest tree. She stopped here. She’s very close. And she’s trapped.
Time to end this.
The Alpha team has caught up. “Spread out!” I order loudly, my voice carrying through the clearing. “Check every hollow, every thicket! She’s close. Find her!”
I join Blake near a fallen log. “Anything?” I ask, pitching my voice for our hidden audience.
Blake grunts. “Hard to say, sir. The ground’s too disturbed…” His voice trails off as his flashlight sweeps the base of the log. The beam catches it. More blood, bright against the dark earth, and beside it, a delicate footprint.
My eyes track the subtle signs of disturbance to a dense tangle of ferns and brambles.Found you, piccola.
Carefully, deliberately, I move closer. I can practically feel her terror now, her exhaustion, and the defiance still burning underneath.
CHAPTER TWO
LEA
“...She’s close. Find her!”
Nico’s command cuts through the clearing, just feet from where I hide. I press myself deeper into the hollow beneath a large, rotting log—not the one he’s examining so intently. My heart hammers as I watch his powerful silhouette move through the trees.
My flight from the mansion was blind terror, the forest a blur of lashing branches and suffocating darkness as sobs tore from my throat.My mother, the spy. Nico, the manipulator.I wasn’t just running from them; I was running from the ruins of my life.
Huddled behind the massive trunk of a fallen oak, I forced my mind to work. I can’t outrun him, not with his resources, his men. But I don’t have to outrun him. I just have to out-think him. Nico isn’t huntingme; he’s hunting the version of me he has constructed in his mind. And that is his weakness.
So I gave him the scene he expected. A trail that screamed of a woman too broken to think. I used his perception of my weakness as my greatest weapon, tailoring a narrative for an audience of one. I remember my hands, numb and clumsy, tearing another strip from the hem of Nico’s ruined shirt. I remember finding the sharpest edge of a quartz rock and, without hesitation, dragging it across my palm. The pain was clean and searing as I squeezed my fist, letting my own blood fall beside the fabricated footprints. With agonizing care, I laid the rest of the trap before doubling back to this hollow.
A desperate gambit. And impossibly, it’s working.
