Buried Vows

Chapter Four: Gate 22

Wren’s Pov

"Family" is not a word anyone has used about me in five years, and hearing it come out of Priya's mouth felt like a hand closing around my throat.

"What does he look like?" My voice came out steady. That's the only trick I've ever really mastered.

"Older. Grey suit. Very polished." She was still staring at her phone. "Security's stalling him at the desk but he's not leaving, Wren. He asked for you by your actual last name. Hale. How does a stranger know your last name?"

I didn't answer. I was already moving, not toward the elevator, not toward Damian's office, but toward the stairwell at the far end of the floor, because I have spent five years mapping every exit in every building I've ever worked in and I was not about to test whether this one still worked.

It worked. Twelve flights down, into the loading dock, out through a service door that dumped me into an alley two blocks from the front entrance, and I didn't stop moving until I was three streets away with my heart going so hard I could feel it in my teeth.

I gave myself two hours. I have run before. I know exactly how fast a life can be dismantled when it has to be cash that wouldn't trigger a flag, a bus ticket under a name that isn't Wren Hale either, because Wren Hale was compromised the second someone left a photograph under her keyboard. You never run under a burned name.

By six I was in the security line at the airport, boarding pass in hand, eleven feet from the metal detector, close enough to read Gate 22 glowing on the departures board, boarding in forty minutes. I almost believed it. You've done this before. You know how to do this. You'll be someone else by morning.

A hand closed around my elbow. Gentle enough not to draw attention. Firm enough that I understood immediately I wasn't getting free of it without a scene I couldn't afford.

"Let go of the bag," Damian said, close to my ear, "and walk with me, before airport security decides two people arguing in line is worth their afternoon."

I didn't scream. Five years of training held, the way it always holds, and instead I turned with my best imitation of confusion. "Mr. Kade. Strange coincidence."

"It isn't a coincidence at all." His voice stayed low, level. "I've had someone watching your apartment since this morning. When you cleared it out in under an hour and bought a ticket under a name that doesn't exist in any database before five years ago, I made calls."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Aveline." Soft. Precise. Not said to expose me, said to prove he could. "Walk with me to the parking structure. Calmly. Whatever you're picturing happens next if you run from me in a public airport is considerably worse than whatever happens if you come with me quietly."

My mind was already four steps ahead, cataloguing exits, calculating whether the security line was close enough to disappear into. I've run from worse men than Damian Kade. But there was something in the surgical calm of him, no raised voice, no security called, nothing that turned this into a scene instead of a conversation that told me this wasn't a man planning to hand me over to anyone. Not yet. Which meant whatever he wanted from me required me alive, cooperative, and quiet.

"Who was downstairs?" I said, not moving yet. "The man in the grey suit. Was that you?"

Something flickered across his face, surprise, quickly buried. "No. Describe him."

"Older. Polished. Knew my last name."

His jaw tightened. "That wasn't mine." He glanced past me, once, toward the terminal doors, the way you check a mirror before you say something you'd rather not say out loud in a crowd. "That's a problem for the car. Not for here."

That scared me more than anything he'd said yet, the fact that a man this controlled hadn't already known.

"Fine," I said, and let him lead me away from Gate 22, away from the boarding pass in my hand and the last clean exit I might get. A black car idled at the curb, engine running, rear door already open, like he'd known exactly how this would end before I'd sat down across from him.

I was three feet from the car when I heard it, low, familiar, a growl I'd heard once already, two nights ago, on a street I'd been trying not to think about since. I turned, and half a block down the pickup lane, engine idling, one boot on the ground, sat a rider in black leather with a patch on his shoulder I'd only glimpsed once before.

Ashen Kings.

He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at Damian, a long, unreadable look, rider to CEO, across a hundred feet of airport curb and Damian, for exactly one second, went as still as I'd ever seen him.

Then the rider gave a single, small nod, gunned the engine, and was gone before I could ask Damian the question already forming in my mouth.

"Who," I said slowly, "was that?"

Damian didn't answer. He just opened the car door wider and said, "Get in," in a voice that told me the real answer was going to cost us both more than either of us wanted to pay tonight.