Page 51 of You, Only You

He said it simply. No subtext, no strategy, no layered meaning. Just gratitude, plain and undecorated, from a man who was learning how to mean what he said without building a fortress around it.

"Always," I said.

And I meant it.

12.Will

The lights died at 2:47 AM. Three seconds later, the locks disengaged, and my body was off the chair before my brain caught up.

I'd been at the dining table, reviewing the Mendez files. Lindsey had gone to bed an hour ago, and the penthouse had been quiet in that particular way it got late at night, the hum of climate control, the distant murmur of a city that never fully shut up. I'd allowed myself to relax into the work. Stupid. Comfortable. The kind of carelessness that got people killed.

Then: darkness. Total. The security panel went black. The climate control died mid-hum. And in the sudden ringing silence, the soft click of the primary locks releasing, one after another, like someone counting down.

Ninety seconds. The backup generator's delay. Someone had done their homework. Someone knew the gap.

The weighted flashlight was in the drawer before I'd finished the thought. Heavy. Balanced. I'd chosen it for exactly this. My feet found the hallway without sound, positioning me between the elevator vestibule and the corridor that led to the guest room.

To her room.

The door whispered open. Three shapes against the slightly less dark hallway, moving with the fluid economy of people who did this for money. No fumbling. No hesitation. The first one through the door was already scanning left when I hit him.

I came out of the shadow beside the bookshelf with everything I had. The flashlight connected with his kneecap and the sound it made was something between a crack and a wet snap. He went down hard, the noise he made not quite a scream, choked off, trained out of him. His weapon skittered across marble and disappeared under the console table.

"Contact left!" The second one. Already pivoting. Suppressed pistol, professional grip, stance too clean for street work. Military. Former, probably. Current problem, definitely.

I was inside his reach before the barrel found me. Elbow to the throat. Not elegant. Effective. He gagged, stumbled back, and the gun went off once into the ceiling. Plaster rained down like snow.

The third one had done the smart thing and hung back, waiting for a clean shot. Now he had one.

I moved as the muzzle flash lit the room. Heat scored across my bicep, a line of fire, and I registered it the way you register a paper cut when you're carrying something heavy: noted, filed, irrelevant. Two steps and my shoulder drove into his chest. We went down together in a tangle that was nothing like the choreographed fights in movies. It was ugly. Close. His elbow found my liver and the world went white for a half second. I gave him a knee that made him fold, and brought the flashlight down on the back of his skull before he could unfold.

The second man was up. Wheezing, one hand at his throat, the other scrabbling across the floor for his dropped weapon. I kicked the gun into darkness and he came at me anyway, which I respected in a distant, clinical way right up until his hands closed around my throat.

His fingers dug in. The pressure built, steady and professional, and black spots started eating the edges of my vision. The penthouse was very quiet except for his breathing and mine and the wet sound of someone choking, which was me.

One thought. Clear as a bell in all that static.

If I go down, there's nothing between them and her door.

I drove my thumb into his eye socket. He screamed. The grip loosened. I rolled, pinned him, and slammed his head against the marble. Once. Then again. He went limp under me with a sound like air leaving a tire.

I knelt over him, gasping. Blood in my mouth from my own bitten tongue. My arm burning where the bullet had grazed it, worse now that I had time to notice. My hands were shaking and I couldn't make them stop, which was a problem because there might be more of them, and shaking hands didn't shoot straight.

A click from down the hallway.

My head snapped up.

Lindsey stood in the doorway of the guest room, backlit by the dim emergency nightlight in the bathroom behind her. My old t-shirt hung to her thighs. Her hair was tangled from sleep. Her face was white.

Her hands were wrapped around the compact 9mm from the bedside table, and she held it exactly the way I'd shown her. Proper grip. Arms extended. Weight forward on the balls of her feet.

The first man, the one with the destroyed knee, was dragging himself across the marble toward his weapon, leaving a dark smear behind him like a slug trail.

"Don't." Lindsey's voice came out quiet and flat and completely steady, which was somehow worse than if she'd screamed. The gun didn't move.

He froze. Looked at her. Looked at me, bloodied and heaving on the floor. I watched the calculation in his eyes. Scared woman. Hurt man. Maybe.

He reached for the gun.