Sirens started to stack. People shouted. Phones went up.
Zoe shoved the courier’s messenger bag into my chest. “Got it.”
“You okay?” I scanned her, hands hovering because the urge to check her for injuries with my mouth was wildly inappropriate.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you dare triage me in public. Or anything else in public,” she said in a hot whisper.
Then she winced. I caught it. “Shoulder.”
“Grazed,” she said, jaw set. “He had a knife. My favorite jacket’s annoyed.”
Sirens grew teeth. We needed to vanish before our night turned into a paperwork musical.
I grabbed her hand. “This way.”
We ducked into the arcade, weaving through teenagers and a dinosaur that swallowed quarters. I yanked open the curtain on a photo booth and pulled her inside. It was either that or the janitor’s closet, and we had rules about closets now.
She stumbled against me, breath hot, heartbeat punching my chest. The booth was small enough to make breathing a team sport. Outside, security thundered past.
“Are we really hiding in a—”
The booth flashed, and the first photo printed: Zoe, wide-eyed, me looking like a man who’d just found oxygen after a month underwater.
Her laugh was soft and breathless. “We’re a cliché.”
“Not yet,” I said, the word a scrape because her palm had found my ribs and my brain had left the chat. “You got the courier?”
“Yep.” She lifted the napkin—the one the lawyer had passed. A sloppy pine tree doodled on it, same as the woman’s palm. Beneath: SWITCHBACK. TIMBERLINE. TONIGHT.
My stomach did a slow, certain drop. Timberline was a ridge on the way up Frasier Mountain, a turn locals used to bypass snow closures. Switchback was a specific one. I knew exactly which.
Her eyes flicked to mine, reading the tell. “You recognize it.”
I nodded.
The booth flashed again. Second photo: both of us looking at each other like a cliff we were about to jump.
“Of course this drags us up your mountain,” she said, wry and a little resigned. “Do I have to wear flannel?”
“You don’t have to wear anything,” I said, and her mouth did that curve that hit me like a match to dry tinder.
The third flash went off. This time she leaned in, foreheads almost touching, laughter dying into a silence full of wrong timing and perfect right now.
“Forest,” she whispered, like my name was a secret she wanted to keep and couldn’t.
“Zoe,” I said, and then I kissed her—quick, fierce, the kind of kiss that isn’t a promise, it’s a decision.
The fourth photo caught it. We both froze at the whir of paper. Outside, the sirens receded.
She pulled back, eyes bright and pupils blown. “That was—”
“Research,” I said.
“Uh-huh,” she said, voice low. “We should do more… fieldwork.”
“Later,” I said, because if we didn’t stop now, we weren’t leaving the booth, and the city didn’t need a strip of evidence with my career choices on it.
She slid the photo strip into her pocket, cheeks pink, professional mask snapping back into place with admirable speed. “Okay. We log the bag, hand the unlogged phone with a bow, and pretend we don’t know what sauerkraut means.”
