Malone and Garner had been sending me daily updates on the plans for the awards ceremony. It had included the floor plans to the theater where the ceremony was taking place and the five-star hotel next door where we would be staying. I’d memorized every possible detail of the terrain, and every time I’d found another possible opening for Fiona, I’d sent it to them.
Malone, Garner, and Tanner had started protesting, stating there was no way Fiona was going to get the equipment required to scale the hotel from the outside, but I’d insisted on snipers being placed on adjacent rooftops anyway. The cost of the operation had quickly spun out of control in a way that had me handing over my credit card, because neither the government nor Garner were willing to foot the bill for some of my outrageous ideas. The sane part of me knew the ideas were outlandish, but the part that was tangled with Dani didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was her safety.
I went through the document stored in my brain on Fiona Ross. Malone’s team had done a deeper dive than Garner’s group had been able to do. When the FBI had talked to some of the employees at the other companies she’d worked for, there’d been some mumblings about things which had gone missing, but nothing had been proven. She’d supposedly gone on a drunken rant one night about the inordinate wealth of the people she worked for, but that was from an unreliable ex-boyfriend. She’d obviously wanted Brady’s money but had also been romantically attached to him if she’d ended up in his bed. It meant she saw gorgeous, confident Dani as a threat in more than one way.
Because the incident in Tallahassee still reeked of someone inside, I’d asked Malone to investigate everyone in the restaurant with us. He’d insisted that there was nothing that tied any of them to Fiona before she’d worked with Brady’s team, but if there was someone involved, it put every plan we made at risk. That was why I’d made sure each person only knew their part and not the whole. Garner, Lee, Tanner, Malone, and I were the only ones with the entire picture.
My brain flipped through the layout, the plans, and our strategies on the flight while Dani worked on speeches and press releases assuming Brady won or lost in the five categories he’d been nominated. As we started our descent, Dani put everything away and curled into me, head resting on my shoulder, hand rubbing my arm.
“It feels weird,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“Returning to normal life.”
My heart thudded at her words. The normal life she’d said she wanted the day we’d first met with Malone. What was normal for us? We hadn’t discussed it. We’d just barely acknowledged what was happening between us was something we both wanted to continue. She’d said she loved me, and I hadn’t had the ability to say it back. Not yet.
I just needed this entire event to be over, with Fiona behind bars, before I could completely turn my brain to what I wanted for myself and Dani. For us. Then, I’d be able to find the right words. The words she deserved.
“I’m not sure this can be considered normal,” I said dryly. She stilled, and I kissed the top of her head in case she’d taken my words the wrong way. I continued, “Living with a threat directed at you isn’t normal, Dani.”
She nodded, tilting her head to look up into my face. “I keep forgetting she might be gunning for me instead of Brady. I keep forgetting her entirely.”
This only built the wariness inside me. “You can’t do that. You have to stay alert.”
“I have you hovering around me. I feel completely safe.”
While I was glad I brought her comfort, I needed her to be on her toes as well. My voice was gruffer and harder than I intended when I said, “I’m not enough. You have to be continually looking and thinking about where the threat can come from. Promise me.”
Dani met my stare with her own, looking inside me in a way only she had ever done, seeing the pieces of me I’d held behind a wall for so long I hadn’t been sure I’d be able to come out from behind it. And yet, she was slowly guiding me over and around it, back to being a person and not just a SEAL. Being more than the Trident that had been pounded into me.
“I promise,” she said, and I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.
LAX was a mess of humanity. Babies and toddlers crying, people arguing, excitement and boredom and trepidation filling the air. I texted Tanner that we’d landed and was glad to see Marco when he greeted us at the baggage claim. He handed me an earpiece and microphone that I put in place. The driver’s chatter immediately filled my head as he radioed his status at the SUV to Malone and Tanner back at the control center the FBI had established at the hotel.
The looks Dani naturally drew began to attract even more attention when it appeared to the world that she had two bodyguards standing over her. Dani was aware of it, trying to take it in stride but also appearing uncomfortable with it. It was a relief when I finally held the door open on the vehicle for her. She climbed in, and I followed her while Marco took the front passenger seat.
“You checked the undercarriage?” I asked.
The driver nodded. “But I was watching the entire time.”
When we arrived at the hotel, we pulled into a delivery entrance, per the plan. Marco and I left the SUV first, scanning the limited rooftop views and the docking bay where trucks usually loaded and unloaded products.
“Owl on the move,” I said quietly into the microphone.
Dani snorted. “Owl?”
I’d known using the goddess Athena’s little sidekick for her code name would get a reaction out of her, but I didn’t smile. I wasn’t getting into it while we were on the move. I held my hand out to her, and she left the vehicle while I sheltered her from the alley and the sky above us. Then, we were inside a wide corridor used to haul the laundry down to the private machines in the basement.
Marco trailed us to the service elevator, and when the doors opened, he remained behind.
We hadn’t been in an elevator since the day Dani had been poisoned. The day she’d bravely faced her fear of the contraption. Unfortunately, we were staying on the twenty-ninth floor, which meant enough stairs to make it unreasonable for her to be traveling that route. Brady was staying in the huge presidential suite a floor above us. We had rented the entirety of both floors—one of the moves Malone and Garner had protested about and for which I’d paid for out of my pocket. The hotel security was used to Secret Service requests from presidential stays, and I’d pretty much put every measure which was normally used for our country’s leader in place for a country music star and his PR manager. It had caused a lot of grumbling and eye-rolling.
I didn’t give a damn.
When the elevator started to move, I pulled Dani into my arms and rubbed soothing circles on her back. “You okay?”
She nodded. She held onto me tightly, inhaling and exhaling in long, slow breaths. But she wasn’t shaking like she had that first night in Florida. She wasn’t dropping her bag and losing her shit. It was progress.
