Chapter 3

"Give it back." My voice doesn't shake. I make sure of that. Knox turns chip 114 between two fingers like it's nothing. Like it isn't my whole life sitting on a disc of clay and cork. "Come get it." "That's evidence tampering. You know that, right? You touch chain of custody, you go down with me." "I'm not touching chain of custody." He steps in, and the vault steel is already cold against my shoulder blades, and now there's no room left between the shelf and him. "I'm touching you." "Don't." "You said that already." His hand comes up slow, and I flinch back into the rack, metal biting through my jacket. "Didn't stop me last time either." Outside, in the wash corridor, somebody's fist hits the door hard enough to rattle the frame. "Hale! Open up, man, the override's not supposed to hold past ten!" Knox doesn't even turn his head. "Give it a minute, Dev." "We got protocol—" "I said give it a minute." The banging stops. Not because Dev's satisfied. Because Dev's scared of him. That tells me everything about the math in this room. Four walls, one door, one man who owns the code and the crew and, apparently, my fingerprint on a piece of casino clay from a fire I didn't set. "You think I burned Riverside." I make myself say it flat, not a question, because questions sound like begging. "I think your print's on the one chip that never should've left that building. I think that's a problem for you, not for me." He leans in another inch. His breath smells like scotch and smoke, and under that, something colder — steel, maybe, or the vault itself, like he's been breathing this room longer than I have. "You want to explain that to ATF? Or you want to explain it to me?" "There's no difference. You'll hand me over either way." "There's a huge difference." His hand finally lands — not on my throat, not where I flinched for, but flat against the shelf beside my head, caging me without a single point of contact. "I don't hand things over. I keep them." My pulse is doing something stupid in my ears. "Keep the chip. I don't care." "Liar." "I'm not—" "You've been staring at my fist for two minutes straight." His mouth curls, not a smile, something meaner. "That's not a lawyer's face, Rhea. That's a woman watching her whole life sit in somebody else's hand." I hate that he's right. I hate it more that he can see it on me, that whatever face I'm making right now is giving him something he can use. "Move," I say. "No." He closes the last inch. His coat is open, and the front of him is warm in a way the vault air isn't, and for one horrible second my whole body forgets it's supposed to be furious. His jaw dips lower, past my ear, and I feel it before I hear it — his voice dropped to almost nothing. "You smell like the tray still. Cordite and match residue." His nose skims my hairline, my temple, down along my jaw, like he's cataloguing me the way I catalog evidence, slow and thorough and completely without permission. "You washed your hands and it's still on you." "That's called doing my job." "That's called being marked by a scene you didn't set." His hand moves off the shelf and finds my wrist instead, thumb pressing hard enough to leave a print, a bruise I'll find tomorrow shaped exactly like him. "Just like you're about to be marked by a case you didn't start." "Let go of my wrist." "Say you want me to." "I want you to." "Say it again. Slower." His thumb drags up the inside of my arm, and my breath catches — actually catches, audibly, and I hate my own body for doing that where he can hear it. "There. That's the sound I wanted." "That wasn't— that doesn't mean anything." "Sure it does." He's close enough now that his knee finds the space between mine, pressing my legs apart just enough that I feel the seam of his slacks against my thigh, and the shelf digs into my spine, and there is nowhere in this vault that isn't him. "Your mouth says stop. Your pulse is doing the opposite math." "You're an ass." "You're not wrong. Doesn't change the math." His free hand finds the collar of my jacket and just — pulls, one hard tug, and I hear the seam give at the shoulder, fabric tearing just enough to bare skin at my collarbone, and the cold air of the vault hits it like a slap. I gasp before I can stop myself. "Knox." "That's the first time you've used my name since the tray." His mouth is right at my ear now, close enough that I feel the words more than hear them. "Say it again." "Get off me." "Wrong words. Try again." His palm slides flat against my exposed collarbone, hot against skin gone cold from the vault, and I feel my whole body arch toward that heat before my brain can veto it, hips tilting a half inch into him like it's asking a question my mouth refuses to. He feels it. Of course he feels it — he's pressed against every inch of me that matters. "There she is," he says, low, almost gentle, which is worse than cruel. "That's the truth of you, Rhea Voss. Not the badge. Not the tray. This." Outside, the pounding starts again, three fists this time, and someone's shouting his name through the steel like it's an alarm. Knox doesn't move. His thumb finds the edge of my torn collar and pulls it another inch wider, and his mouth drops to the curve of my throat, not biting, not yet, just resting there like a threat he hasn't decided to keep. "Say stop," he murmurs against my skin, "and mean it. I'll let you go." My hands are fisted in his shirt. I don't remember grabbing it. My whole body is answering a question I never agreed to be asked, and outside that door the crew is one shoulder-slam from breaking the seal, and Knox Hale's mouth is still on my throat, waiting. "Stop," I say. I don't let go of his shirt. The seal held on count 1; steel stayed wet; they did not leave the room. The seal held on count 2; steel stayed wet; they did not leave the room. The seal held on count 3; steel stayed wet; they did not leave the room.