Page 56 of Beautiful Savage
Daphne braces herself, ready to bolt. "Let's go get her."
I raise a palm. "Not yet. If we grab her now, we alert Hallstein. If we can't convince her to come with us, he'll make her disappear. And either way, he'll know we're onto him. No, it has to be simultaneous. We grab him, we grab her."
She tilts her head, thinking fast. "So, Tuesday?"
"Yes. Twelve-thirty," I confirm. "The dossier fires to Erika at the Pentagon. I handle Hallstein at the warehouse. But Camille needs pulling at the exact same moment."
Daphne's shoulders tighten. "She'll need someone there that she can trust. Another woman. I'll do it."
"No," I bark. I take a deep breath to control my voice. "Wren will do it. She spent years running from place to place, running away from her feelings. She'll know how to talk to Camille."
Just when I think Daphne's about to argue, her eyes flick to me. "Logan might not like that."
"He can run the extraction and only use Wren when it's safe."
Daphne nods. "Camille will need somewhere safe to go. Somewhere Hallstein can't access even if things go wrong."
This is the piece I haven't told her. "There's a shelter in Hialeah. La Casa de Acogida. Spanish-speaking staff, secure intake, completely off-grid."
She narrows her eyes. "How do you know about a place like that?"
I meet her gaze. "I've been funding it. Guilt money, I guess. For the women I couldn't save."
She processes this silently. One nod, then she clambers into my lap and puts her arms around my neck. We totter on the small stool, and I widen my legs to steady us.
"Camille speaks Spanish?" she asks into my neck.
"Colombian. No work visa, so we need to keep it off the books."
Her fingers drum my shoulder. "She'll need someone with her the first day. Someone who speaks Spanish and won't push for information."
Another thing I hadn't considered. "The shelter director. I trust her."
Daphne slides off my lap, straightening her t-shirt. "Okay. Tuesday, twelve-thirty. The dossier fires, exposing Hallstein for the monster he is. Logan and Wren pull Camille from Coral Gables. You handle Hallstein at the warehouse. Camille goes to Casa de Acogida. That's the plan?"
I squeeze her knee. "That's the plan."
For the first time in nine years, I have someone who sees angles I miss, who thinks laterally where I think linear. If this goes wrong, if Hallstein gets wind of it, the whole Delgado family becomes a target. But with her reading the angles I can't see, maybe we'll pull this off.
"We're really doing this," she says. Not a question.
"Yes," I confirm.
We perch at the counter with forty-three photographs between us and Tuesday's violence four days away, and for the first time since this all started, I'm not alone.
Daphne wriggles off my lap and moves behind me. Her hand touches the back of my neck briefly. Then she leans down and presses her lips to my temple. Two seconds of contact. Simple. Devastating. Paint on her hands, coffee on her breath.
I close my eyes. Let it land. The partnership we just built needs physical ratification. She's mine, has been since that first night, but now she's mine in this too. In the violence, in the justice, in what comes next.
I turn on the stool, reach up, pull her around to face me. Her mouth opens under mine immediately. Heat and recognition and something beyond words. The kiss escalates fast.
I lift her onto the counter, shoving photographs aside. Papers scatter with a whisper of sliding images. The bruised-wrist photo lands face-down.
She's on the counter. I'm standing between her legs. Eye to eye. The cool formica under her, my hands burning where they touch her thighs.
"Now?" she asks against my mouth.
The rest of the world narrows to her lips and the heat of her thighs pressed to my hips, the cold edge of the kitchen counter biting into my palms. The photographs scatter further, a paper slide of memory and evidence, but the only record that matters is this: her, holding me in place, demanding proof.
