Page 34 of You, Only You

"You're done," I said. The words came out before I'd fully decided to say them, which should have been a warning sign. I didn't make unplanned statements. But my brain was running scenarios at full speed, threat vectors and exposure calculationsand the image of her car spinning toward concrete, and the conclusion was clear. Simple. Clean.

Get her out. Get her safe. End the exposure.

Lindsey's hand tightened on mine.

"Excuse me?"

"Off the case. Out of the city." I was already building the logistics in my head. Safe house locations. Transport routes. Cover stories. "I'll arrange secure transport. Somewhere Reeves can't reach. I'll finish this alone."

"No."

The word was quiet and it stopped me like a wall.

"Lindsey..."

"I said no." She pushed herself up against the pillows, wincing, her face going white. "I'm not hiding while you do something stupid and get yourself killed."

"They tried to murder you."

"Yeah. I was there. I remember." Her voice cracked on the word 'remember' and she took a breath through her teeth, and I could see what the breathing cost her, could see the pain in her ribs spike with every inhale. "I'm not letting them win by making me disappear."

"This isn't about winning..."

"It's about those kids in the photographs, Will. It's about your sister. It's about... " She gripped my hand, and her knuckles were white, and her eyes were wet, and she was angry and scared and in pain and she was not backing down. "I crossed lines for this case. I made choices I can't undo. I don't get to walk away because it got dangerous."

"You could die!"

"So could you!" Her voice rose, then broke. She closed her eyes, breathing hard. When she opened them, tears were tracking down her face, but her eyes were determined, and the tears and the stubbornness existed simultaneously in a way thatmade me understand, for the first time, that she wasn't being reckless. She was being brave. There was a difference, and I hadn't seen it until now.

"So could you," she said again, quieter. "And you've been doing this alone for seven years. Seven years. And I can't..."

She didn't finish. Her hand was shaking in mine. Or mine was shaking in hers. I couldn't tell anymore.

I looked at her. Bandages, bruises, determination burning beneath exhaustion. This woman. This impossible, stubborn, infuriating woman who followed the money and found the truth and refused to be managed and made me laugh about lo mein and called me out when I was wrong and was right now sitting in a hospital bed with broken ribs, telling me she wasn't going anywhere.

I'd tried this before. With Nicole. I'd tried to control everything, manage every variable, engineer safety through sheer force of will. It hadn't worked. She'd moved to Portland and stopped answering my calls for two years. The people you try to lock away don't stay. They just leave.

"Together," I said finally. "But you follow security protocols. Armed detail, check-ins, no solo movements. Can you live with that?"

"Yes."

"If something changes, if the threat escalates, we reassess. Both of us. Together."

"Agreed."

"One deviation. One risk you take without..."

"Will." She tugged my hand, hard enough that I had to lean forward. "I agreed. I'm agreeing. Stop negotiating and just... be here. Okay? Just be here for a minute."

The request was so simple. So small. Just be here. Not fix it, not solve it, not build a perimeter around it. Just exist in thesame room, holding her hand, while the monitors beeped and the hallway sounds drifted through the door.

It was the hardest thing anyone had ever asked me to do.

I sat back in the chair. I held her hand. I stopped talking.

After a while, Bates appeared in the doorway. He took in the scene, the blood on my clothes, Lindsey in the hospital bed, our joined hands, and had the decency not to comment on any of it.

"Forensics on the car," he said. "Rear brake lines were cut. Clean job, recent, probably done last night. Lucky it was amateur work. Professionals would've hit the front lines." He stepped inside, closing the door. "They've escalated. She's not a nuisance to them anymore. She's a target."