POV: Jake
I smelled her before I saw her.
That's the thing about coming back from an op — everything's still dialled up. Hearing, smell, the low-level threat assessment running like background code that doesn't switch off just because you walked through your own front door. The Den was quiet. I was tired in the specific, heavy way of a body that's been running at redline for too long and is now telling me about it in languages I'd rather not hear.
I wanted water. Or whiskey. I hadn't decided which.
I pushed open the kitchen door.
Her scent hit me a second before I registered what I was actually smelling underneath it.
Frank.
I stopped moving.
I stood there in the doorway and I breathed — slow, deliberate, the way you breathe when you need the information to be wrong and it isn't —
