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Nora should have taken the ring and thrown it into the tracks.
Instead, she stood in the tunnel with soot in her teeth, staring at the black-gold band in Caden Cross's palm while police radios screamed somewhere behind the smoke.
Her brother had said one thing clearly in that voicemail.
Don't let them put a ring on you.
Caden's hand didn't shake. Of course it didn't. The guy looked like he belonged in a glass office thirty floors above everyone else, not ankle-deep in filthy subway water with an explosion scene burning behind him.
"Where's Milo?" Nora asked.
His gray eyes stayed on hers. "Alive. For now."
That hit harder than it should have. Her knees nearly gave out.
She grabbed the front of his coat before she could stop herself. Expensive wool. Clean, somehow. It smelled faintly like cold metal and cedar instead of smoke.
"Don't do that," she said. "Don't give me half an answer like I'm supposed to thank you. Where is he?"
Two uniformed cops turned at the sound of her voice.
Caden caught her wrist. Not rough. Worse. Careful.
"Lower your voice."
"Screw that."
"Nora." His grip tightened by maybe half an inch. "They are looking for a reason to put you in cuffs. You want to hand them one?"
As if summoned, Detective Ruiz came through the haze with two officers behind him. His face was hard and pink from the heat. He'd questioned Nora after her mom died. He'd questioned her after every warehouse fire she investigated. He always looked at her like he was trying to decide whether she was stupid or dangerous.
Tonight, he'd made up his mind.
"Ms. Vale," Ruiz called. "Step away from Mr. Cross."
Nora let go of Caden's coat.
Her fingers were hot.
Not normal hot. Not adrenaline hot.
Heat crawled under her skin, up her arm, across her palm. She curled her hand into a fist before anyone could see the faint orange glow pushing between her knuckles.
Caden saw it.
His eyes dropped to her hand, then lifted again.
He didn't look surprised.
That was its own kind of nightmare.
"Detective," Caden said, turning just enough to put himself between Nora and Ruiz. "My legal team has been notified. Ms. Vale won't be answering questions without counsel."
Ruiz gave a short laugh. "Since when are you her lawyer?"
"I'm not."
"Then move."
Caden didn't.
Behind Ruiz, someone shoved a camera through the yellow tape. A reporter shouted Nora's name.
"Ms. Vale! Did you access the restricted platform before the blast?"
Another voice cut in. "Were you fired from the Fire Investigation Bureau last year?"
Her stomach twisted.
Fired wasn't the word. Suspended, technically. Then pushed out after she refused to sign off on a report she knew was wrong. A kitchen fire in Queens. Dead landlord. Bad wiring that had somehow become tenant negligence by the time the paperwork hit her desk.
Nobody cared about technically.
They cared about the headline already flashing on somebody's phone.
FORMER FIRE INVESTIGATOR QUESTIONED IN SUBWAY BOMBING.
Nora's phone buzzed in her pocket. Then again. Then again.
Her landlord. Three missed calls from a number she didn't know. A text from her old supervisor that only said, Call me. Now.
Caden leaned close enough that she felt his breath near her ear.
"Your apartment isn't safe," he said.
She jerked away. "You had somebody watching it?"
"I had somebody watching you."
"Wow. That is not better."
"No, it isn't."
At least he didn't bother lying.
Ruiz stepped closer. "Ms. Vale, I'm asking you one last time. Did you enter the maintenance passage before the explosion?"
Nora looked at him.
She could tell him the truth. That she'd gotten a text from Milo saying he'd found something. That he'd sounded scared. That she'd run down there because he was her little brother and she had spent her entire life running toward him when he was in trouble.
She could tell Ruiz the blast had started too fast, too clean. No normal gas ignition made that kind of white-hot burn pattern.
She could tell him the walls had glowed.
Yeah. Great plan.
"I came looking for my brother," she said.
"Your brother is missing?"
"Yes."
"And you didn't report that before entering an active transit station?"
"He called me from down there."
Ruiz's mouth tightened. "We'll need that phone."
Nora's hand closed over her pocket.
The voicemail.
Milo's voice. Their mom. The ring.
Caden spoke before she could.
"You can request it through counsel," he said.
Ruiz stared at him. "Cross, this isn't your problem."
Caden's expression barely changed. "It is now."
That got everybody's attention.
Nora hated the tiny stupid flutter in her chest. It wasn't gratitude. It was panic wearing a cheap coat.
Ruiz looked from Caden to Nora. "Ms. Vale, are you under Mr. Cross's protection?"
She almost laughed in his face.
Protection. Right.
Caden held out the ring again.
Not toward Ruiz. Toward her.
The black band caught the ugly emergency lights. Gold lines ran through it like veins. When it got near her hand, those lines warmed. A dull ember color glowed beneath the metal.
Her pulse kicked.
Milo's last words played in her skull.
Don't let them put a ring on you.
Nora shoved both hands into her jacket pockets. "No."
Caden's jaw flexed.
"No what?" Ruiz asked.
"No comment," Nora snapped.
Caden's phone vibrated. He glanced at the screen.
For the first time, something cracked through that polished, frozen face.
Not fear exactly.
Urgency.
He looked down the dark tunnel where the smoke had started thinning.
Then he looked back at Nora.
"We need to leave."
Ruiz stepped in front of them. "She's not going anywhere."
Caden pulled a business card from inside his coat and handed it over. "Call the number on the back."
Ruiz didn't take it.
"What is this?"
"The mayor's office. The transit authority general counsel. And your precinct commander. Pick one."
For three seconds, nobody moved.
Then Ruiz took the card.
Nora hated that it worked. Hated that Caden could wave a little square of paper and make cops who'd been ready to drag her out in cuffs suddenly reconsider their whole night.
Ruiz read the card. His face went flat.
"This isn't over," he said.
"No," Caden said. "It isn't."
He put one hand at Nora's elbow and walked her toward the exit.
She shook him off as soon as they passed the barricade.
"Don't touch me."
"Fine. Keep walking."
"You don't get to order me around."
"Then stop making choices that get you arrested."
"You were stalking me."
"Monitoring."
"Oh, well, sorry. Totally different creepy thing."
His mouth almost moved. Not quite a smile. More like his face had forgotten how.
They reached the street, and the night hit her all at once. Sirens. Wet pavement. News vans lined up at the curb like sharks. Her face was already on two giant camera monitors.
Nora pulled her hood up.
Too late.
"There! That's her!"
A reporter broke through the line of cops.
Caden opened the rear door of a black SUV.
Nora stopped. "I'm not getting in that car."
"Then wait here until Ruiz changes his mind."
"I don't know you."
"You know your brother called you because he found something connected to your mother. You know he mentioned a ring. And you know I showed up before the police had decided what story they wanted to tell about you."
His voice dropped.
"You know enough to understand this isn't random."
Another camera flash went off in her face.
Nora got in the SUV.
The door shut behind her with a thick, expensive thud.
Caden slid in beside her. The driver pulled away before Nora had even found the seat belt.
The city streaked past the tinted windows. Red lights. Storefronts. People out walking their dogs, holding takeout bags, living normal lives while Nora's brother was missing under a city that had just tried to bury her.
She turned toward Caden.
"Start talking."
"Put your seat belt on."
"Start. Talking."
He looked at her for a long second.
Then he reached across the seat and clicked her belt into place himself.
Nora slapped his hand away. "What the hell?"
"You weren't doing it."
"Because I was waiting for you to answer me."
"Your brother is being held by people who knew he would contact you."
All the fight went out of her so fast it made her dizzy.
"Held where?"
"I don't know yet."
"You said you could take me to him."
"I said I could get him back. Different thing."
"That's lawyer wording. I hate lawyer wording."
"So do I."
"Then stop using it."
Caden looked out the window. "Milo found records connected to the Vale house fire. The one that killed your mother."
Nora's breath caught.
The Vale house fire had happened fourteen years ago. She'd been sixteen. Milo was eight and had spent three weeks in a hospital bed coughing black stuff into a plastic bowl.
The official report said faulty wiring in the basement.
Nora had read that report so many times she could recite the stupid wording in her sleep.
Electrical failure. Rapid spread. Structural collapse.
Bullshit.
She remembered her mother pushing them through the back door. She remembered flames moving along the ceiling like they were alive. She remembered seeing her mother turn back toward the kitchen.
And then the whole room went white.
"What records?" Nora asked.
"I don't have them. Milo did."
"Did?"
Caden looked at her.
"He sent copies before they took him. Not to me. To a dead-drop server. My people are trying to access it."
"Your people."
"Yes."
"Who are your people, Caden?"
The SUV took a hard turn. Nora grabbed the door handle.
Caden didn't answer.
"No, seriously. You run Cross Industries. You build luxury towers and buy hospitals and somehow bosses around city cops. Why are you connected to my brother? Why do you have a ring that lights up when it gets close to me?"
His fingers closed around the ring.
The glow vanished under his fist.
"Because you need it."
Nora laughed once. Sharp. Mean. "That is not an answer."
"It's the answer that keeps you alive tonight."
"And Milo?"
"Milo too, if we move fast enough."
She leaned toward him. "If you know something, say it. Right now."
He met her eyes.
"You were in that tunnel when the blast went off. No burns. No shrapnel. No smoke damage in your lungs. The surveillance footage shows the fire pulling away from you."
Her blood went cold.
"You saw the footage?"
"I did."
"Delete it."
"Already done."
That should have helped.
It didn't.
Because if Caden had seen it, other people had too.
Nora rubbed at her forearm. The heat was back, a low ache under her skin. "It was a gas blast. Weird things happen in explosions."
"Nora."
"Don't."
"It wasn't a gas blast."
"You don't know that."
"I know exactly what it was."
The driver said nothing. The privacy glass between them stayed dark.
Nora stared at Caden. "Then tell me."
He exhaled through his nose, like the truth annoyed him.
"Not here."
"Oh, come on. You dragged me into your billionaire kidnapping van—"
"It's not kidnapping if you got in voluntarily."
"I got in because the cops were about to arrest me."
"Exactly."
"That does not make it better."
His gaze dropped to her mouth for half a second.
It was nothing. It was probably nothing.
Still, Nora's stomach did a weird little flip, and she hated herself for noticing.
She folded her arms. "What do you want from me?"
Caden went still.
There it was.
The real part.
The part he'd been circling since he held out that ring in the tunnel.
"Three months," he said.
Nora blinked. "What?"
"You come with me. You stay where I tell you to stay. You wear the ring. You don't take it off."
"Three months of what?"
His answer came too fast.
"Marriage."
For a second, she honestly thought she'd misheard him.
Then she laughed.
Not because it was funny. Because her brain had hit a wall and that was the noise it made.
"No." She looked out the window, then back at him. "No, we're not doing that. Try again."
"It's not a joke."
"You want me to marry you?"
"On paper, yes."
"For three months."
"Yes."
"And wear your creepy glowing ring."
"Yes."
"So you can help me find my brother."
"So I can keep you alive long enough to find him."
Nora pressed her palms against her jeans. Her hands were too warm. Her whole body felt wrong.
"Why marriage?"
"Because my protection only applies if you're under my name."
"That is the dumbest rich-person sentence I've ever heard."
"I know."
"No, you don't. You have no idea how insane this sounds."
"I do."
"You barely know me."
Caden's face changed then. Just a little.
Not softer.
Worse than soft. Regretful.
"I've known about you for a long time," he said.
Nora's throat went dry.
"How long?"
He didn't answer.
The SUV slowed in front of a tall private garage. Steel gates rolled open before the driver even tapped the brakes.
Nora turned toward the door.
Caden caught her wrist again.
This time, his skin was cold.
Her heat jumped under his fingers.
The ring in his hand lit up bright enough to paint gold across both their knuckles.
Nora froze.
Caden looked at the glow, then at her.
"You didn't cause that blast," he said quietly. "But you're not just some woman the police can pin it on, either."
She swallowed. "What am I, then?"
His thumb brushed the inside of her wrist, right over the racing pulse there.
"You're the kind of problem that makes explosions look small."
Nora yanked her hand free.
"Get me out of this car."
The door locks clicked.
Caden's expression didn't change, but his voice did. Lower now.
"I can open the door. You can walk out. By morning, every station in the city will have your face. Ruiz will have a warrant. Whoever took Milo will know you have nobody standing between you and them."
"And you do?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
He looked at the ring again.
"Because I owe your family more than you know."
The garage swallowed the SUV.
Nora sat there with her heart trying to punch through her ribs.
Her brother needed her. That was the only clean fact left.
Not the cops. Not the cameras. Not Caden's impossible ring or the fire under her skin that had been getting harder to hide every year.
Milo.
She thought of him at eight years old, coughing in that hospital bed and asking if Mom was coming back.
She thought of his voicemail.
Don't let them put a ring on you.
Maybe he knew Caden was dangerous.
Maybe that was exactly why Nora needed to get close enough to find out what he was hiding.
She looked at Caden.
"Three months," she said.
His eyes narrowed.
"You get Milo back. You clear my name. No touching me unless I say so. No lying if I ask you a direct question. And if I find out you had anything to do with him disappearing, I will burn your whole life down."
The corner of his mouth moved again. That almost-smile.
"Those are not legally clean terms."
"Cry about it."
For the first time, Caden actually looked amused.
It made him more dangerous somehow.
"Fine," he said. "Agreed."
Nora held out her hand.
Not for the ring.
"Phone. I want to call Milo."
Caden handed her his phone without arguing.
She dialed Milo's number.
It rang once.
Twice.
Then clicked into voicemail.
His voice came through thin and familiar.
"Hey, it's Milo. Leave it after the beep. Unless you're a debt collector. Then go step on a Lego."
Nora shut her eyes.
She hung up before the beep.
When she opened them, Caden was checking the slim black watch on his wrist.
His whole body had gone tight.
"What?" she asked.
He looked at the ring in his palm.
Then at her.
"We have less than two hours," he said. "That ring needs to be on your hand before midnight."
Nora stared at him.
"Or what?"
Caden reached for her hand as the garage lights overhead began to flicker orange.
"Or they find you first."