Page 225 of Operation: Defiance

Every few minutes, my mind drifts without my permission. Asher’s self-imposed deadline. The comforting sound of something sizzling in the pan. Quiet domesticity so predictable, my heart aches from it.

I start drafting the narrative thread that ties the memos together, laying out the timeline of how OSI became Coherent Path, how language shifted before policy. Ellen’s retirement date, not long after the program changed.

Then…everything stalls. I blink, and when the text resolves itself, I notice I’ve repeated the same line three times.

My jaw tightens.

I try again. Move to the incident report. Highlight the clause that redefines “terminal intervention.” My vision blurs slightly at the edges and I blink, forcing the words back into focus.

But…I can’t. Every time my fingers settle over the keyboard, the screen disappears, replaced by an image of Asher cuffed to a chair, harsh light beating down on him, a faceless, nameless GSD interrogator berating him. Demanding answers.

In the kitchen, the refrigerator door opens, then closes. Water runs. Then the dishwasher.

“I’m not…seeing it.” Even I can hear the exhaustion in my voice. “Any of it. I’m…done for the night.”

Asher wipes his hands on a dishtowel, then folds it carefully. “All right. Can I join you?”

The way he asks, like he still needs permission for closeness, clogs my throat. I nod. He sits a foot away on the couch, giving me space I don’t want between us.

“I should have done more. What if I can’t finish it all in time? What if⁠—”

Asher closes the distance in a heartbeat, cups the back of my neck, and seals his mouth to mine. The kiss is desperate, almost feral, and it should frighten me, but instead, all I feel is him. The shape of his lips, the strength in his arms, the quiet way my body answers his without hesitation—like it’s known him longer than the rest of me.

I’m almost in his lap when he finally breaks off the kiss, his chest heaving, and touches his forehead to mine.

“You see all of it, Raine. Every angle. Every possibility.” His voice is strained. His hands tighten at my waist, shaking like he’s holding something precious and breakable. “You’ll put everything together in the morning. When you’re fresh.”

My eyes prick with tears. “You mean when you’re gone.”

“Fuck me.” His arms come around me, and he buries his face in my hair.

I curl my fingers into his shirt, right over his heart. The steady beat thrums against my hand. Impossibly strong. Alive. Here. If I press hard enough, could I anchor him to me?

We’re running out of time.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you.” I shift so I can curl against his side, resting my head on his shoulder and linking our free hands tightly together.

He makes a low, contemplative sound, then sighs.

“There was a winter in Montreal.” His voice is quieter now. Almost…unsure. “Before I started taking contracts on my own.”

“You used to work with a team?” I ask.

He chuckles. “Everyone starts somewhere. I ran support for a group of black ops guys tracking a domestic terror cell. Surveillance. Logistics. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it paid the bills.” His thumb traces patterns along my hip. “One of the guys we were watching had a daughter. She was eight or nine. Used to wait for him at the bus stop every afternoon.”

He takes a deep breath, but it stalls halfway in.

“She’d stand on the bench so she could see over the crowd,” he continues. “Had this red scarf that would drag in the snow.”

The room feels smaller now. I can’t see anything outside the floor-to-ceiling window. Just the two of us reflected back at me.

“Then, one night, he never showed. We knew why. She didn’t.” His gaze trails across the room to the wall with the electric fireplace flickering softly. “The kid waited until it got dark. Someone who worked at the bus station eventually walked her home.”

I lace our fingers even tighter together. “You didn’t take her father from her.”

“No. I didn’t. None of us did. The government handled that.”

“What did you do?” Tipping my head back, I wait for him to look at me.