Page 63 of Malice

Trixie’s hand finds mine across the table. Her fingers are cold, trembling slightly despite how steady she’s been holding herself. The bandages on her palms are stark white against the dark wood, and I can see the dark shadows of fingerprints bruised into her forearm where that animal grabbed her yesterday. Red bleeds into the edges of my vision.

“I don’t like this,” she says quietly. “Going into hiding while you…” She trails off.

“While I find him.” I turn to face her fully, cupping her jaw with my free hand, careful of the raw spot on her scalp where hair was ripped free. Her eyes are warm and dark and so goddamn brave it tears something inside me. “This isn’t a negotiation, sweetheart. The contract is active. Someone out there is already being paid to put a bullet in you.”

“I know what a contract means, Carter.” She doesn’t flinch. She never flinches, not even now, not even after everything. “I’m saying I don’t like you going after him alone.”

“He won’t be alone.” Greyson pushes off the table. “We’ll run this like a hunt. Intel first. Carter, you don’t move until we have Caldwell’s location pinned down. Then you go in, hard and fast, and you end this.”

End this. The words hit somewhere below my sternum and stay there. My jaw clenches so hard I feel the molars grind.

Trixie’s fingers tighten around mine.

I study her, really seeing her, and the expression on her face cuts deeper than any blade. She understands. I can see it in the way her jaw sets, the way her eyes go glassy but don’t spill over. She already knows where this ends. I can see it settle over her: she goes to the cabin; I go hunting.

We don’t say it. In a room charged with tactical planning and Matthew’s low murmurs into his phone, the silence between us is a crushing weight. We fought for every second together, and now we have to choose to be apart.

“Trixie.” My voice comes out rougher than I intend. I pull her closer, until her forehead is pressed against my chest and I can feel the warmth of her breath through my shirt. “I need you to listen to me.”

“I’m listening.”

“I’m not sending you away because I want to.” My hand finds the back of her head, fingers threading carefully through her hair, avoiding the tender spot. “This is the only play. You’re visible here. Caldwell knows the hospital, the apartment, the bookstore. He’s mapped your patterns. Nobody knows about that cabin except the people in this room.”

She nods against my chest. I feel the movement more than see it, a small, tight jerk of her chin that tells me she’s fighting to keep it together.

“How long?” she asks. Her voice is muffled against my shirt, barely audible.

“As long as it takes.” I press my lips to the top of her head. “I’ll find him, Trix. I’ll end this. And then I’m coming to get you.”

She pulls back just enough to look up at me, and what I see in her eyes hits me somewhere I can’t defend, not fear, not anger, but a deep, aching sadness that’s worse than both. She knows what this means. She knows what I’m going to do, what I’ll become in order to keep her safe, and she’s already grieving the version of me that will walk out of this room and not come back the same.

“Okay,” she whispers.

The word costs her something. I can see it in the tension of her throat, how her bandaged hands fist in the fabric of my shirt like she’s trying to memorize the feel of it.

The convoy forms fast. Greyson handles the logistics with the efficiency of a man who’s orchestrated tactical retreats more times than he’d care to count. Two vehicles: a black SUV for Trixie, her mother, my parents, and Tiana, and a pickup truck for Ryan and Matthew’s supplies. Rotating drivers. No fixed schedule. They’ll use burner phones—single use. Route mapped through back roads, avoiding highways, toll cameras, anything that leaves a digital fingerprint.

I watch it all happen from my peripheral vision, my body vibrating with the need to move, to act, to put my hands on something that bleeds. Trixie sits at the kitchen table while her mother changes her bandages, and I can see her wince when the antiseptic hits the raw skin of her palms. She doesn’t make a sound. She just watches me with those steady, warm eyes, cataloging every movement I make like she’s storing them for later.

The parking lot of the clubhouse is bathed in the harsh white light of security lamps. The vehicles are already idling, exhaust curling into the cold morning air, and the perimeter watch has doubled with four prospects now, positioned at the cardinal points, their postures rigid with the raw alertness of men who understand exactly what’s at stake.

Trixie now stands beside the black SUV, wrapped in my jacket that swallows her frame, her bandaged hands tucked into the sleeves. Her mother is in the back seat, leaning forward to talk low and fast to Ryan through the open window. Mia hovers near the SUV, her arms crossed, her face pale beneath the hood of Ashton’s sweatshirt.

I walk her to the car.

Every step feels like it takes an hour. Every muscle in me pulls toward her like something physical, like a reflex I have to consciously override—grab her, drag her back inside, bolt every door, and plant myself between her and anything that breathes until I’ve burned every trace of Caldwell from the earth. But the rational part of my brain, the part that sounds like Dad, like Greyson, like every tactical lesson I’ve ever absorbed, knows that hiding her here is a death sentence. The contract is active. Eyes are watching. The moment I leave this building to hunt, she becomes vulnerable.

“Here.” I pull the burner phone from my back pocket and press it into her bandaged hands. “My number is already programmed in it. The first one. If anything, anything at all, feels wrong, you call. Immediately. Don’t think. Don’t wait. Call.”

She looks down at the phone, then back up at me. Her eyes are bright with unshed tears, but her jaw is set, her spine straight. This is the woman who swung a plunger at a man twice her size, who bit through latex and fought like hell and lived.

“I’ll call,” she says.

“Every night. I want to hear your voice every night.”

“I know.”

The distance between us is short, but it feels like a fault line. I can see the bruises on her arm darkening beneath the jacket sleeve, the raw spot on her scalp where hair used to be, the careful way she’s holding herself to keep from wincing. She looks like someone who’s been to war and come back, and she’s standing in a parking lot at six in the morning, about to drive away from me because I told her to.