The fluorescent lights of the Safeway hummed a dull, monotonous tune, and I was entirely absorbed in the critical task of selecting the perfect avocado. My cart held the sad, bacheloresque essentials: coffee, frozen pizza, a six-pack of local IPA, and now, hopefully, this one piece of produce that wouldn't turn to mush by morning. My world was one of numbers, of tracing digital footprints through ledgers and bank accounts, not of guacamole readiness. It was a quiet, ordered life, and I liked it that way.
The cold press of steel against my lower back, right through my thin cashmere sweater, was a decimal point in the wrong place. It was an error that froze the blood in my veins.
A voice, low and gravelly, hissed in my ear. "Don't turn around. Don't make a sound. Just start walking toward the exit. Nice and easy, accountant."
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, panicked rhythm. Accountant. They knew what I was. They knew who I was.
"You need to be quiet," the voice continued, the knife pressing insistently. "You should've left well enough alone. If you weren't so damn good at your job, tracing all those pretty numbers, we wouldn't be here. My boss doesn't like loose ends, and you, Mr. Nash, are a very loose end."
He was herding me toward the rear exit, past the dairy section. My mind raced, a whirlwind of panic and cold, hard calculation. Odds of survival if I screamed? Low. Odds of survival if I went with him? Zero. I'd seen the books. I knew what these people did to liabilities.
And then, everything shifted.
A man stopped at the end of the aisle, his sheer size and presence effectively blocking it. He wasn't just tall; he was a mountain, towering over my own six-two frame by a good three inches. But it wasn't a gym-bunny bulk, all showy pectorals and curated biceps. This was a different kind of architecture. His shoulders were broad and solid, his chest thick, his arms heavy with muscle earned from real work, from hauling gear and bearing weight and pure, raw life. He was carved from oak and granite, not pumped up in some mirrored room.
He wore faded, well-worn cargo pants and a dark green long-sleeved henley that stretched across his chest and biceps, the fabric soft and lived-in. His hands were large, the knuckles scarred, resting loosely at his sides. He had a strong, clean jawline shadowed with a day's growth of beard, a straight nose, and eyes the color of a winter sky—a pale, piercing blue that missed nothing. His hair was cropped short, military-short, dark blond and practical. He was brutally, starkly handsome in a way that was almost intimidating.
But more than that, he carried a dangerous aura, a stillness that was more threatening than any bluster. This was a man who knew violence, who was comfortable in its space. He was a soldier. He had to be.
His winter-blue eyes flicked from my face, which I knew was pale and terrified, down to the side, where my assailant was hidden behind me. His gaze didn't widen in alarm; it simply narrowed, assessing, calculating. The temperature in the aisle seemed to drop ten degrees.
The man's voice, when he spoke, was a low, calm rumble that vibrated right through me. "You alright there?"
My captor dug the knife in harder. "Keep walking," he whispered, a new edge of anxiety in his voice.
But I was done. The sight of that man, that solid, unmovable force, broke the paralysis. I locked eyes with him, a silent, desperate plea. I let a fraction of the sheer terror show on my face.
The soldier's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes did. They went from winter-cool to arctic-cold. It was the only warning any of us got.
It happened faster than my brain could process. One second he was standing at the end of the aisle, the next he was a blur of controlled motion. He didn't shout, didn't make a scene. He simply stepped forward, his left arm shooting out to clamp like a vice around my shoulders, yanking me backward and away from the knife in one devastatingly smooth motion.
As he pulled me into the safety of his hard body, his right hand snapped forward. I heard a sickening crack of bone and a choked gurgle as he disarmed the man with a brutal efficiency that stole my breath. The knife clattered to the linoleum. The would-be kidnapper crumpled to the ground, clutching his shattered wrist, his whimpers lost in the muzak.
The soldier didn't even look winded. He held me firmly against him, his arm a steel band across my chest, my back pressed against the solid wall of his torso. I could feel the powerful thud of his heart against my spine, steady and relentless, a stark contrast to my own frantic pounding.
He looked down at the man at our feet, his expression one of cold disdain. "He's not going anywhere," he murmured, his voice a low vibration against my ear.
Then he tilted his head down, his breath warm on my temple. "You're safe now." His voice had changed, the coldness replaced by a rough, startling gentleness that unspooled something tight and terrified inside me.
Security arrived then, voices loud and alarmed, but they all faded into a distant hum. All I was aware of was the unshakable strength of the man holding me, the scent of soap, leather, and cold air that clung to him, and the devastatingly simple truth in his words.
He finally loosened his grip, letting me turn in the circle of his arms. I looked up into those pale blue eyes, my own wide with shock and a dawning, inexplicable sense of awe.
"Who are you?" I breathed, my voice shaky.
The ghost of a smile touched his lips, a faint crinkling at the corners of his eyes that transformed his face from merely handsome to utterly breathtaking.
"Clyde Adams," he said, his voice still that low, calming rumble. "And you must be Troy Nash. I've been sent to make sure nothing like this ever happens to you again."
And just like that, standing amidst the spilled avocados and the stunned supermarket crowd, my quiet, ordered life of numbers was irrevocably, overwhelmingly, turned upside down.
The world snapped back into focus with the jarring clarity of a camera lens. The hum of the fluorescents was now a deafening buzz, the cheerful Muzak a grotesque parody of the violence that had just transpired. The scent of bleach and fresh bread mixed with the coppery tang of fear—my fear—and the faint, acrid smell of the man now sobbing on the floor, cradling his ruined wrist.
But all of that was background noise. The only thing in sharp, hyper-detailed focus was the man holding me. Clyde Adams.
His arm was still around me, a solid, immovable band of muscle and heat across my chest. I could feel the hard ridge of his pectoral muscle against my shoulder blade, the steady, powerful rhythm of his heart a stark counterpoint to the frantic, bird-like flutter of my own. My back was pressed flush against his torso, and I could feel the defined planes of his abdomen, the strength in him that was so absolute it felt less like a physical attribute and more like a force of nature. He wasn't just holding me; he was a bulwark. A fortress. And I, a man who built walls out of spreadsheets and firewalls, had never felt so protected.
Security guards swarmed the aisle, their voices overlapping in a clamor of questions and radio static. A store manager, pale and wringing his hands, hovered at the periphery. The world was erupting into chaos, but Clyde Adams was an island of utter calm in the center of it all.
"I've got him," Clyde said, his voice that low, authoritative rumble that cut through the noise without him having to raise it. He wasn't talking to me. He was stating a fact to the universe. "The assailant is on the ground, disarmed. One of you, secure the knife. It's there, by the organic lemons."
His directions were clean, precise. He was used to command. Used to being the one who managed the crisis, not panicked in it. He finally loosened his arm, allowing me to turn within the circle of it. The movement was intimate, my body sliding against his as I shifted to face him. My heart, which had been hammering with terror, did a completely different, more complicated stutter.
Looking up into his face was like looking at a cliff face—daunting, formidable, but breathtaking. From this proximity, I could see the faint white line of a scar bisecting his left eyebrow, the surprising thickness of his dark blond lashes framing those pale, assessing eyes. He was scanning the scene, but his primary attention was on me. His gaze swept over my face, checking for injury, for shock.
"You're shaking," he observed, his voice gentler now, though no less intense.
I was. A fine, uncontrollable tremor had taken hold of my hands. I clenched them into fists, but it was useless. "Adrenaline," I managed to say, my voice embarrassingly thin. "I think."
A ghost of that smile touched his lips again. It was a startling transformation, a fleeting glimpse of warmth in a winter landscape. "Yeah. That'll happen."
The police arrived then, their presence adding a new layer of official tension to the air. Questions were directed at me, but Clyde intercepted them seamlessly, his body subtly positioned between me and the officers, a silent, physical buffer.
"Mr. Nash has had a severe shock," he stated, his tone leaving no room for argument. "He'll give a full statement, but he needs a minute. I witnessed the entire event. The individual on the floor attempted to abduct Mr. Nash at knifepoint. I intervened."
One of the officers, younger, looked Clyde up and down, taking in the cargo pants, the boots, the sheer, quiet lethality of him. "And you are?"
"Clyde Adams. Naval Special Warfare. I'm currently on leave, assigned as a civilian consultant to the Treasury Department on an ongoing financial investigation. Mr. Nash is a material witness in that investigation." He delivered the lines with a flawless, easy authority. It was mostly truth, I sensed, woven with just enough classified obfuscation to get everyone to back off without further questions. It was brilliantly done.
The officer simply nodded, suitably impressed and deferential. "Of course, Mr. Adams. We'll need to speak with him eventually."
"You will," Clyde agreed. "After medical clearance."
"I'm fine," I protested, the words automatic. My profession was one of control, of presenting a calm, unflappable facade. I hated this feeling of being the victim, the one who needed looking after.
Clyde's eyes locked back on mine. The pale blue was mesmerizing, capable of such cold command and, now, such unsettling perception. "You're not fine," he said, his voice so low only I could hear it. It wasn't harsh. It was a simple, undeniable fact, stated with a intimacy that curled in my stomach. "Your pupils are dilated, your skin is clammy, and you're still shaking. You're in shock. So let me handle this."
It should have chafed, this takeover. But it didn't. It felt like a lifeline. For a man who handled everything himself, the relief of letting go, of handing the reins to someone so obviously capable, was dizzying.
He guided me to a small plastic chair near the customer service desk, his large hand a warm, steady pressure on the small of my back. He didn't hover. He stood nearby, a silent sentinel, his presence a tangible thing that kept the curious stares of employees and shoppers at bay. He pulled out a phone—a heavy, secure-looking model—and made a brief, quiet call. "Situation contained. Nash is secure. We'll be debriefing at his residence. Send a team to sanitize the scene and liaise with local PD."
Sanitize the scene. The words were so cold, so professional, so far removed from my world of audit trails and tax codes. This was real. The knife had been real. The threat had been real. And this man, this soldier, was real.
After what felt like both an eternity and no time at all, the police had my preliminary statement, the assailant was hauled away in cuffs, and the store was slowly returning to its mundane rhythm. Clyde turned to me. "Where's your car?"
I pointed a still-trembling hand toward the lot. "Silver Lexus. IS 300. Over there."
He nodded. "Keys?"
I fumbled in my pocket, my fingers numb and clumsy. He waited, patient, until I produced them. Without a word, he plucked them from my hand. "I'll drive."
"You don't have to—"
"I do," he interrupted, his tone leaving no room for debate. He started walking toward the exit, and I fell into step beside him, my legs feeling strangely weak. He moved with a predator's grace, a relaxed readiness that made the everyday act of crossing a parking lot feel like a tactical maneuver. He was scanning, always scanning—the cars, the shadows, the rooftops. His entire being was dedicated to threat assessment. And, I realized with another jolt, the primary asset he was assessing threats against was me.
He found my car, unlocked it, and did a quick, efficient visual sweep of the interior before holding the passenger door open for me. I slid in, the familiar leather scent of my own car now feeling strange and foreign. He got in the driver's side, adjusting the seat with a quiet grunt to accommodate his long legs. His hands on the steering wheel were immense, capable. I watched, mesmerized, as he started the car and pulled out of the lot with smooth, confident precision.
The silence in the car was thick, charged with everything that had happened and everything that remained unsaid. I stared out the window at the passing lights of my sleepy D.C. suburb, trying to reconcile the normalcy of the scene with the abnormality of the man sitting beside me and the event that had brought him there.
"You said you were sent," I finally said, my voice sounding too loud in the quiet cabin. "Sent by who?"
"Your boss at the FBI's financial crimes unit, Dennis O'Malley, in coordination with my CO," he said, his eyes never leaving the road. "The case you're working on, the Meridian Fund… you dug too deep, too fast. You tripped a wire you didn't see. The people you're tracking, they're not white-collar criminals who hide behind lawyers, Nash. They're paramilitary financiers. They don't send cease-and-desist letters. They send guys with knives."
I swallowed, my mouth dry. I'd known it was serious. The numbers were too clean, the trails too expertly obscured, the flow of capital too sinister in its destination. But knowing it intellectually was different from feeling the cold steel of the proof against your spine.
"So you're my… what? Bodyguard?" The word felt absurd coming out of my mouth.
He glanced over at me, a quick, penetrating look. "I'm the man who's going to make sure you live to testify. My team and I are embedded in the investigative unit now. Your analysis is the key to unraveling their entire network. That makes you the single most valuable—and vulnerable—asset in this operation."
Asset. The term was dehumanizing, but the way he looked at me wasn't. His gaze was intense, all-consuming. It felt like he was seeing past the shock, past the fear, past the title of 'forensic accountant,' and straight down to the core of me.
He pulled into the driveway of my tidy townhouse, killing the engine. The sudden silence was profound. He turned in his seat to face me fully, his big body angled toward me, one arm draped over the steering wheel. The interior of the car seemed to shrink, filled with his presence, his scent, the raw energy of him.
"Here's how this is going to work, Troy," he said, and the use of my first name, in that rough, gentle rumble, did something to my equilibrium. "You do your job. You follow the money. You be the genius you are. And I do mine. I keep you safe. That means you listen to me. No arguments, no solo trips to the grocery store, no deviations. Your life is different now. Understood?"
I should have been annoyed. I was an independent man, successful, used to being in charge of my own destiny. But looking into those winter-blue eyes, seeing the absolute certainty there, the unwavering dedication to a duty that was now me, I felt none of that. I felt something else entirely—a surge of trust so profound it bypassed my intellect entirely and went straight to my gut.
He was danger and safety all wrapped into one devastating package. He was the storm and the shelter.
I held his gaze, the tremor in my hands finally stilling. "Understood," I said, and my voice was my own again.
A slow, approving nod. "Good."
He got out of the car, coming around to open my door before I could even reach for the handle. He walked me to my front door, his hand again on my back, a warm, guiding weight. As I fumbled with my keys, he stood close, his body shielding mine from the street, his eyes scanning the darkness.
I pushed the door open, stepping into the familiar comfort of my home. But it didn't feel the same. Nothing felt the same.
Clyde Adams followed me in, filling the doorway, then closing and locking the door behind him. He did a swift, professional sweep of the downstairs living room and kitchen, his gaze missing nothing.
He turned back to me, standing in the center of my orderly living room, a wolf in a world of beige carpets and abstract art. "I'll be on the couch tonight," he stated.
"You don't have to—" I began again, the automatic protest.
"I do," he repeated, his voice final. He looked at me, and in the soft light of my home, he looked less like a soldier and more like just a man. A devastatingly handsome, impossibly capable man who had just irrevocably crashed into my life. "Get some sleep, Troy. You're safe now."
And for the first time since I'd felt that knife in my back, I truly, deeply believed it.
The first thing I was aware of was the scent. Not the usual faint, sterile smell of my air purifier, but something rich, savory, and utterly alien in my home: frying bacon. Then came the sounds. The low, steady hum of my expensive coffee maker, a machine I mostly used for show. The soft sizzle from the stove. The quiet, efficient clink of a plate being set on the granite countertop.
My eyes flew open. I didn't move, my body tensed under the high-thread-count sheets. The events of last night crashed into my consciousness not as a blur, but in high-definition, brutal clarity. The cold press of the knife. The gravelly threat in my ear. The sheer, paralyzing terror. And then… him. The mountain of a man who moved like lightning. The feel of being wrenched backward into the solid, unyielding wall of his chest. The way he'd simply… handled it. Handled everything.
Clyde Adams.
The name echoed in the quiet of my room, a talisman and a promise. He was here. In my house.
I jackknifed out of bed, my heart doing that frantic bird-thing again. The open, industrial layout of my townhouse meant the sounds from downstairs were unobstructed, a constant reminder that my solitary, meticulously ordered existence had been violently breached.Up here, the second floor held only two rooms: my sanctuary of a bedroom, all cool grays and minimalist furniture, and across the catwalk, my office—a world of dual monitors, whiteboards covered in financial algorithms, and the comforting chaos of case files.
Right now, neither room felt like a sanctuary. They felt like a perch overlooking a new and unpredictable world.
I moved on autopilot to the en suite bathroom, the polished concrete floor cool under my bare feet. The shower was a blast of near-scalding water, and I stood under it, trying to wash away the lingering tremors of fear, the ghost of the knife's point against my spine. I scrubbed my skin until it felt raw, trying to reclaim my own space, my own body.
Stepping out, I toweled off and dressed with deliberate care, pulling on dark jeans and a soft, charcoal-colored V-neck sweater. Armor. I ran a hand through my damp hair and stared at my reflection. I looked like myself. Troy Nash, forensic accountant. The man who could find a multi-million-dollar fraud in a misplaced decimal point. But the eyes staring back at me were wider, darker. They'd seen something.
I took a steadying breath and opened my bedroom door. The catwalk looked down over the entire first floor: the living area with its low-slung, modern sofa and single piece of abstract art, the dining table I never used, and the gleaming, professional-grade kitchen. And there he was.
Clyde Adams was in my kitchen.
He wasn't just in it; he'd commandeered it. He moved with the same efficient, economical grace he'd used to disarm a killer, but now it was directed at a package of bacon and a carton of eggs. He was wearing a fresh grey henley today, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, revealing powerful forearms corded with muscle and traced with a few faint, white scars. The cargo pants were gone, replaced by well-worn, soft-looking jeans that hugged his powerful thighs and—
I stopped that thought cold, gripping the railing of the catwalk.
He was humming. A low, tuneless sound that was somehow more intimate than anything I'd heard last night. The morning sun streamed through the large windows, catching the dust motes dancing in the air around him, gilding the short strands of his dark blond hair. He was utterly at ease, a predator comfortable in its temporary den. A cast-iron skillet sat on my stove—my stove—which I was pretty sure I'd used twice, and it was full of perfectly crisped bacon. Another pan held scrambled eggs, fluffy and golden. Toast was stacked on a plate.
The scene was so domestic, so wildly incongruous with the man and the circumstances, that I could only stand there, frozen, and watch.
He must have sensed me. He stilled, the spatula in his hand pausing mid-air. He didn't startle. He just slowly turned his head and looked up.
Those winter-blue eyes found me immediately, pinning me to the spot as effectively as they had the would-be kidnapper. The early morning light made them seem even paler, more piercing. His gaze swept over me, from my damp hair to my bare feet on the cool wood of the catwalk, and something in his expression shifted, softened at the edges. It wasn't the cold assessment of an asset. It was… something else. Something that made a flush of heat travel up my neck that had nothing to do with the shower.
"Morning," he said, his voice that same low, calm rumble, but it was softer now, meant for the quiet of the morning and not the chaos of a crisis.
"You're cooking," I said, and immediately winced. It was the dumbest possible thing to say. Of course he was cooking. I could see it. Smell it. The evidence was overwhelming.
One corner of his mouth quirked up. "Observant." He turned fully, leaning back against the counter and crossing those massive arms over his chest. The movement stretched the fabric of his henley across his shoulders. "Figured you'd need something solid after last night. Coffee's ready."
He'd figured. He'd not only saved my life, neutralized a threat, and managed the police, but he'd also figured I'd need breakfast. The sheer, effortless competence of it was staggering.
I finally found the will to move, descending the open-tread staircase, my hand trailing on the steel railing. The scent of coffee and bacon grew stronger, wrapping around me. It felt… good. It felt lived-in. My house never smelled like this. It usually smelled of lemon polish and silence.
I reached the bottom step and just stood there, in the space between the living area and the kitchen, feeling awkward and out of place in my own home. "You didn't have to do all this."
"I know," he said simply. He pushed off the counter and grabbed two mugs from my cupboard—the good ones I saved for guests I never had. He filled them both, his movements sure and practiced. "How do you take it?"
"Black is fine," I said, my voice a little hoarse.
He nodded, as if filing that piece of information away, and handed me a mug. Our fingers brushed during the exchange. His were warm, slightly calloused. A jolt, sharp and electric, went straight up my arm. Based on the slight, almost imperceptible pause in his movement, he felt it too.
He held my gaze for a beat longer than necessary, the air between us thickening. Then he turned back to the stove. "Sit. Eat."
It wasn't a suggestion. It was that same calm command, but it was layered now with a new texture, a rough kindness that was utterly disarming. I pulled out a stool at the kitchen island and sat, watching him plate the food. He served me a generous portion of eggs, several strips of bacon, and two slices of toast, then set the plate in front of me with a quiet finality.
He came around the island and took the stool next to me, his own plate in hand. He didn't sit opposite me; he sat beside me, his thigh a solid, denim-clad presence mere inches from mine. It was a bodyguard's positioning, allowing him to see the room and the front door, putting himself between me and any potential threat. But it felt intensely personal.
I took a bite of the eggs. They were perfect. "You're a good cook," I said, because it was true, and because I needed to say something to break the silence that was filled with the sound of his proximity.
"Necessary skill," he said between bites. "You spend enough time in places where the MREs'll kill you faster than the enemy, you learn to make do with what you have."
He said it so matter-of-factly, a glimpse into a life I could barely comprehend. I looked at his hands, at the scars on his knuckles, and tried to imagine what they'd seen, what they'd done. Those hands had held a weapon, had shattered a man's wrist, and were now competently holding a fork.
"Thank you," I said, the words inadequate for the magnitude of what had happened. "For last night. For… all of this."
He stopped eating and turned his head to look at me. His gaze was direct, unwavering. "It's my job, Troy."
But in that moment, with the morning light warming the room and the taste of his cooking in my mouth, with his body a solid, protective presence beside me, it didn't feel like just a job. It felt like the beginning of something. Something that had already, irrevocably, changed everything.
The silence that settled between us as we ate was unlike any I'd ever known. It wasn't the empty quiet of my own company, the kind filled with the hum of electronics and the distant, muffled sounds of a neighborhood I'd never really become a part of. This silence was… alive. It was charged with the memory of violence and the startling, domestic reality of shared bacon. It was filled with the sheer, overwhelming presence of the man beside me.
Every sense felt heightened, dialed up to eleven. I could taste the perfect amount of pepper he'd put in the eggs. I could smell the clean, soap-and-skin scent of him cutting through the aroma of food, something stark and masculine that was already starting to feel familiar. I could feel the heat radiating from his body, a tangible force next to me on the stool.
I kept my eyes on my plate, but my entire awareness was focused on my periphery. On the way his throat worked as he took a sip of coffee. On the casual, relaxed drape of his powerful arm on the countertop, the henley sleeve pulled tight over his bicep. On the quiet, even sound of his breathing.
This was a man who had walked into a storm of chaos last night and had calmly, efficiently, reshaped it to his will. And now he was in my kitchen, washing my dishes.
I finally pushed my empty plate away, the ceramic scraping softly against the granite. "I should… I should probably get to work." My voice sounded too thin, too reedy in the spacious room. Work was my anchor, my fortress. It was where I was in control.
Clyde nodded, rinsing the last plate and placing it in the dishwasher with a quiet click. He dried his hands on a towel, a gesture so normal it was surreal. "Your office is up there?" he asked, tilting his head toward the catwalk and the second floor.
"Yes. The room across from the bedroom."
"I'll need to sweep it. And we'll need to set up a secure terminal for you. Your current internet connection is a backdoor waiting to happen." He said it all with a calm certainty, as if discussing the weather.
A prickle of defensiveness, the last vestige of my ordered life, rose up. "My firewalls are state-of-the-art. I've triple-encrypted everything."
He turned to face me fully, leaning back against the sink and crossing his arms again. The pose should have looked casual. On him, it looked like a statement of fact. "The people who sent that guy last night aren't trying to hack your encryptions, Troy. They're trying to put a bullet in your head. Or a knife in your back. A secure terminal isn't a suggestion. It's a requirement."
The blunt, brutal truth of it stole my breath. He wasn't trying to undermine my competence; he was operating on a completely different playing field where the stakes weren't financial penalties, but life and death. My world of numbers and codes had just collided with his world of bullets and blood, and mine had come out the loser.
"Right," I said, the word a soft exhale. I stood up, needing to move, to do something. "Okay."
I led the way up the stairs, hyper-aware of him following behind me. I could feel his gaze on me, a physical weight between my shoulder blades. It wasn't a threatening feeling. It was… proprietary. Protective. It made the fine hairs on my arms stand up.
I pushed open the door to my office. To anyone else, it might have looked like chaos—the two massive monitors, the whiteboards covered in a spiderweb of financial connections, names, and question marks, the stacks of files and legal pads. But to me, it was a map. A beautiful, intricate map of lies and theft, and I was the cartographer.
Clyde stepped past me, his shoulder brushing mine in the doorway. The brief contact sent a jolt through me. He didn't seem to notice. His eyes were already scanning the room with a professional, tactical precision that was entirely different from my own analytical gaze.
"This window," he said, pointing to the large one overlooking the quiet street below. "It's a vulnerability. The blinds need to be kept closed. And this," he walked over to the router and modem tucked away on a shelf, "is a problem." He glanced back at me. "You have a landline?"
"In the kitchen. I never use it."
"Good. Don't." He began a slow circuit of the room, his fingers gently moving aside curtains, checking the lock on the window, peering behind my desk. He was a storm cloud in my orderly sky, and yet, instead of feeling violated, I felt… secured. He was looking for all the things I'd never known to look for.
He stopped in front of the largest whiteboard, his eyes tracking the connections I'd drawn from the Meridian Fund to a series of shell corporations with names like "Aether Holdings" and "Prometheus Capital."
"This is it?" he asked, his voice quiet, intent.
"That's the surface," I said, moving to stand beside him. This was my language. This, I could do. "It goes much deeper. The money… it doesn't just disappear. It moves. It gets laundered through art auctions in Dubai, converted into untraceable assets like conflict diamonds, and then used to fund…" I trailed off, pointing to a circled area on the board simply labeled '???'.
"To fund my side of the world," Clyde finished for me, his voice grim. "Weapons. Militias. Black-ops. The fun stuff."
The way he said it, so flat and weary, drove the point home harder than any briefing ever could. My numbers weren't abstract. They were bullets and bodies.
"I'm close," I said, the words almost a whisper. "I can feel it. I've almost isolated the primary routing account. It's hidden, but it's there. Everything flows back to one source."
He turned his head to look at me. We were standing close, both facing the board, the evidence of my life's work spread out before us. His pale blue eyes were deep, unreadable pools.
"That's why they're getting desperate," he said. His gaze dropped to my mouth for a heartbeat, so fast I might have imagined it, then back up to my eyes. "That's why they sent a blunt instrument to a grocery store. They're panicking. Because you're that good."
The praise, coming from him, in that rough, serious tone, did something dangerous to my insides. It wasn't the polished compliment of a colleague. It was a warrior acknowledging a different kind of weapon. It was the most validating thing I'd ever heard.
"I just follow the numbers," I said, my voice barely audible.
"No," he countered, his voice low and certain. "You see the story they're trying to hide. That's a gift." He held my gaze for a long moment, the air between us crackling with a new, unspoken tension. The kind that had nothing to do with threat assessments and everything to do with the mere inches separating our bodies.
Then he broke the spell, taking a small step back, the soldier reasserting himself over the man. "I'll get the tech set up. You'll have everything you need by this afternoon." He gestured to my desk chair. "In the meantime, do your thing. I'll be right here."
Right here. The words echoed in the room as I sank into my chair. He pulled the other chair—the one I kept for the rare auditor—into the corner, positioning himself so he had a clear view of both me and the door. He didn't fidget. He didn't pull out a phone. He just… sat. Watching. Guarding.