Page 66 of Hunted in the Silence

He found Carson and told him they were leaving, and as soon as Carson noticed their joined hands, it was clear he understood the underlying message. He nodded once and went back to his work.

They drove across Blackridge in Cole’s car, away from every location that had been part of the past three weeks, and Brynn sat in the passenger seat with her head back and her eyes open, watching the city move past the window. He drove without a destination in mind for a few minutes, until he found the thing he was looking for.

A park on the east side he’d driven past a dozen times the past few weeks. There was a bench overlooking a small reservoir, the water dark and still, the city lights catching it in broken pieces. He pulled into the lot and cut the engine, and they sat for a moment before getting out and walking to the bench where they sat.

The cold was sharp and clean, and the park was empty and quiet, and the water in front of them was still.

“This is good,” Brynn said, her breath puffing in front of her face.

“I thought so.”

They sat for a while, absorbing the gentleness of the quiet. Long enough that the adrenaline had started to wear off, leaving behind something simpler and clearer and truer than anything that had been in his head for the past two hours.

“I need to tell you something,” Cole finally said.

Brynn turned to look at him, a mix of curiosity and apprehension in her eyes.

“When Finn’s radio cut out and your wire went dead…” He looked at the water. “In the time it took me to find you, I understood something I’d been dancing around for three weeks.” He paused. “I’m not going to dance around it anymore.”

“What did you understand?” she asked, her voice quiet.

He looked at her. “That the job has been my whole life, and I thought that was the only way to do it right. That anything else was a compromise. That caring about a person more than the case was the thing that made you weak and slow and dangerous to everyone around you.” He held her gaze. “I was wrong. Not about the risk. That’s real. But I was wrong about what it meant.” He breathed deeply and pressed on. “Caring about you doesn’t make me less. It makes me more. More careful. More honest about what I’m doing and why. More clear about what actually matters.”

Brynn watched him steadily. The park and water still, the city a low glow above the tree line.

“I love you,” he said. Simple and direct. A leap he had to take because not saying it would be worse somehow. “I know that’s a big thing to say, especially since we’ve only known each other a few weeks. And it’s okay if you don’t feel the same. But I’m saying it anyway because I’ve spent my life not saying the things that needed saying and I’m done with that.”

She just stared at him for a long moment. He watched her take in what he’d said, mull it over completely before she responded.

“I love you too,” she said finally. “I’ve known it for longer than I was ready to say it.” A soft smile grew on her face. “I kept waiting to be afraid of it. I’ve been afraid of things like this my whole adult life. And I kept waiting for the fear to show up and it didn’t.” She looked at the dark water. “I think because you never felt like a risk I was taking. You felt like something I was building. And I know how to build things.”

He studied her profile, the auburn of her hair catching the distant light, the set of her jaw and her steadiness and everything she’d made of herself out of what had been done to her.

He reached out and took her hand, marveled at the smallness of it in his.

She turned it over and laced her fingers through his, and they sat on the bench by the dark water in the cold, and the city moved in the distance, while they sat in the quiet fact of there being a them now.

After a while, she leaned her head against his shoulder.

“The inquiry,” she said. “It’ll be okay.”

“Yes, it will be,” he agreed, his thumb drifting over her knuckles.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she assured him.

“Neither am I,” he assured her in return.

They stayed until the cold seeped too deep into them, until shivers began to vibrate through them, and then they walked back to the car and he drove them to the safe house for the last time. As soon as they stepped inside the door, she turned and kissed him, and he kissed her back, and the night finished quietly, warmly, and with a resolve that hadn’t existed before.

For the first time in seven years, Cole Maddox went to sleep without the job being the last thing in his head.

The only thing on his mind was Brynn.

And that was better than any dream he could have imagined.

Chapter 21

The nine a.m. meeting with Pearson ran two hours and forty minutes, which Brynn knew because she sat in the field office break room for the entirety of it with a coffee she stopped tasting after the first twenty minutes and Olivia across the table from her not pretending to work.