Chapter 18 Lines We Cross
Sloane’s POV
The little bell sounded like it was miles away and right in my ear at the same time. A faint jingle threaded through the trees, followed by Eli’s voice from the doorway, low and hard.
“Stay here.”
Then his footsteps were gone, swallowed by the night and the cabin walls, leaving me in a square of silence that felt suddenly too big.
My heart took off. Not the fast, angry beat I knew from boardrooms and headlines, but the tight staccato that came when something could hit you from any angle and you would not see it coming.
Stay away from the windows, the sensible part of me said. Let the man with the gun do the gun things.
The other part of me, the one that had been twelve and locked out of decisions while my father and his friends decided my future over brandy, bristled. Sitting in the dark waiting was what prey did.
I grabbed his field tablet and the RF scanner off the table.
I stayed just inside the curtain, not stupid enough to put my body in a glass frame, and flicked the scanner on. Numbers and tiny graphs bloomed on the screen. I swept the antenna slowly across the walls, the ceiling, out toward the trees.
No new strong signals. A couple of background blips. One faint spike near the edge of the property that flashed and vanished before I could lock onto it. Could have been a car on a distant road. Could have been a probe.
I hated not knowing.
The door opened behind me a few minutes later, boots thudding softly. The RF scanner still hummed in my hand when I turned.
“Deer,” Eli said. Shoulders relaxed, gun lowered. “Got itself tangled in the line, freaked out, ran.”
He took in my position by the curtain, the tablet under my arm, the scanner still on. His mouth tightened.
“We talked about staying back from the windows,” he said.
“We talked about not being passive,” I shot back. “I did not fling the door open and run into the trees. I used tools. I did what I know how to do.”
He looked at me for a second, conflict written all over his face. Annoyance, yes. Under it, something that looked suspiciously like respect.
“Next time,” he said, “you tell me before you go grabbing gear.”
“Next time,” I said, “we will have more than fishing line and bells.”
He huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh in another life.
In the kitchen my hands shook badly enough that the water in the glass sloshed. I tried to pretend it was just the cold. Then Eli’s hand closed over mine, large and warm, steadying the glass before it tipped.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “You are allowed to be rattled.”
“I am not rattled,” I snapped automatically.
His eyebrow went up.
I stared at the trembling line of water and let out a breath. “Fine. I hate being stuck reacting. Sitting and listening to bells ring while you disappear into the dark. It feels like someone else pulling the strings again.”
“Better reactive than dead,” he said. Then softer, “But I get it.”
He leaned back against the counter, arms braced, giving me space. The cheap overhead light turned the angles of his face into shadows.
“My father decided everything in the name of safety,” I heard myself say. The words were like a faucet I had not meant to turn. “What schools I could attend, when I could leave the house, who I could talk to. When Mercer started making money, he held the accounts I had built as leverage. If I wanted to go to a conference, he made sure it was on his terms. He told me I was impulsive, that people like me needed rules set by people like him.”
I laughed, short and sharp. “Noah was not much better. He talked about how someone had to steer, how my genius would go to waste strapped to ethics. They called it protection. It was control. I told myself I would never again let anyone decide for me what was safe. And now I have you putting bells on my trees and telling me when I can open my email.”
He was quiet a long moment. “If I start to feel like a cage instead of armor, you tell me,” he said finally. “I step back.”
That sounded like it hurt him to say more than he let on.
“You will not like that,” I said.
“No,” he agreed. “I will not. But I will do it.”
Something eased in my chest that had nothing to do with protocols.
We stood there and sketched new lines on the fly. I got defined input on all major moves. No more decisions about my life made on calls I was not part of. He still had final say in immediate physical danger, because bullets did not care about consensus, but he would explain his calls, not bark orders and walk away. I promised full disclosure about any contact from the ghost watching us, no more deletes without telling him what had been there.
“Deal?” he asked.
“Deal,” I said. The word tasted strange and risky.
The lights flickered again. Once, twice, then went out completely. Darkness slammed around us, sudden and total, the hum of the fridge cutting off. My throat closed.
Before my brain could conjure cameras and red letters, my hand shot out. It collided with his at the same time his reached for me.
We stood there, fingers gripping harder than necessary, listening to the silence. The generator kicked in a few seconds later, lights blinking back to life, hum returning. We did not let go right away. When we finally did, it was slower, almost reluctant.
Later, in the narrow bed, I fluffed my pillow and my fingers brushed paper. My heart lurched, cold adrenaline racing back through my veins. Not again.
I sat up, snapped on the tiny bedside lamp, and unfolded it with more force than paper deserved.
Front door locked. Tripwires set. I am awake until 0200. If you cannot sleep, I am in the chair.
His handwriting. Small joke in the loop of the I, like he knew I would check.
I sagged back against the headboard, the stupid little note fluttering in my hand. For once, an unexpected thing was not an attack, not a taunt, not proof that someone else was five moves ahead. It was just a man in the next room promising to watch the door while I tried to close my eyes.
I slipped the note under my pillow and lay down. The cabin creaked, the lake lapped quietly, one of the bells tinkled faintly in the breeze.
Not every line we crossed tonight was a breach.
That, more than anything, terrified me.