Page 89 of Carter
I looked down at my hands. He was right—they trembled like I was still pulling a trigger. “Adrenaline,” I muttered. “It’ll burn off.”
He reached forward, covering my hands with his. The tremor stilled, not because it was gone, but because he anchored it. Anchored me. “You did good, Harper. More than good.”
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to take the words andstitch them over the hollow parts Redwood had carved into me. But my chest was tight, my throat sore. “I almost killed him,” I whispered. “I wanted to.”
Carter’s eyes darkened, but not with judgment. “You didn’t.”
“I don’t know if that makes me strong or weak.”
“It makes you human,” he said. He squeezed my hands, his voice dropping lower. “And it makes you mine, because I’m not letting Redwood take one more piece of you. Not tonight. Not ever.”
Something inside me cracked at that. A tear slid free before I could stop it, hot against my cheek. Carter caught it with his thumb, his touch rough and tender all at once.
Outside the door, I heard Gideon arguing with Cyclone about stitches, River’s laugh sharp with relief, Faron humming some tune that didn’t belong in a place like this. Life was still happening. Somehow.
I leaned forward until my forehead touched Carter’s, the world shrinking down to just us. His breath was warm against my lips, steady, certain. For the first time since this mission began, I let my body sag, trusting him to hold me up.
Redwood was gone. The faces were free. And maybe—just maybe—I could start to feel free too.
Carter didn’t move when I sagged against him. He just stayed there, steady, his forehead pressed to mine, his breath slow and even like he meant for me to borrow it. The cot creaked beneath us when he shifted closer, his hands sliding up to cradle my face as if I might splinter without him.
“You’re safe,” he whispered. His voice wasn’t the hard command from the fight—it was softer, raw. “I’ve got you, Harper. Always.”
That word—always—undid me more than any bullet could. My lips trembled under the weight of everything I couldn’t say, so I said it the only way I could. I kissed him.
It wasn’t the frantic kind of kiss that came from fear or survival. It was slow, aching, like we had both been waiting too long to let ourselves breathe. Carter’s mouth moved against mine with a patience that burned hotter than desperation, a vow in every brush and press. His thumb traced the line of my jaw, grounding me, and I curled my hands into his vest like I’d never let go.
When he pulled back, his eyes searched mine, fierce and tender all at once. “You scare the hell out of me,” he admitted. “Not because of what you’ve been through… but because of how much I can’t lose you.”
A tear slid down my cheek, but this one wasn’t heavy—it was release. “You won’t,” I whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.”
For the first time in hours, his mouth tipped into something that almost resembled a smile. He leaned in again, kissing me softer this time, a promise stitched into the quiet.
The door banged open and Gideon’s voice carried in, gruff and annoyed. “If you two are done with your honeymoon moment, we’ve got intel to sort through before the brass storms this place.”
I laughed—shaky, but real. Carter sighed against my temple, pressing one last kiss there before standing. He shot Gideon a glare that could’ve leveled walls, but I caught the flicker of gratitude in it too.
I stayed seated a moment longer, touching my lips, letting the warmth of Carter’s words sink into the cracks Redwood had left behind. Then I rose, because there was still work to do. But I carried Carter’s promise with me like armor.
141
Harper
The safehouse war room smelled like burnt coffee and sweat, the kind of place where exhaustion and adrenaline made an uneasy truce. A folding table sagged under the weight of laptops, hard drives, and hastily stacked files ripped from Redwood’s fortress.
I slid into a chair beside Carter, his hand brushing the small of my back as if to remind me I wasn’t alone in this. Across the table, Gideon leaned on his good leg, stubbornly refusing the chair Cyclone shoved toward him. His face was pale, but his eyes burned sharp as ever.
Cyclone dumped a stack of files onto the table, flipping one open. “This is a spider’s nest,” he muttered, stabbing at the lines of numbers and names. “Shell companies. Offshore accounts. Laundering routes. He wasn’t just trafficking bodies—he was moving money for half the underworld.”
River cursed under his breath, leaning forward to scan the columns. “This isn’t just Redwood. This is a network.”
My stomach turned as I pulled one of the folders closer. Photos slid out—grainy surveillance shots of young women, dates scrawled underneath like inventory. My throat wenttight, the wordsnecessaryechoing from Redwood’s smug mouth.
Carter’s hand closed around mine under the table, firm, grounding. “We’ll get them out,” he said quietly, but loud enough for the others to hear. “Every single one. This doesn’t end with Redwood in cuffs. We finish the job.”
Faron tapped a screen where a map glowed red with blinking dots. “These are drop sites. Active ones. Which means…”
“Which means Redwood wasn’t exaggerating,” Gideon finished, his voice gravel. “There are others. A lot of others.”
