Page 3 of You Can Run

The flickering pink-and-green neon lighting made everyone—strippers and patrons alike—look vaguely radioactive. Tonight, Jessica leaned into it, letting the lights blur the edges of her life for a while.

She hooked a knee around the pole out of habit, flipped her hair, and scanned the room without really seeing it. She'd seen that same room, or one very similar, a million times and it never changed. The men never changed, the music never changed, the routine never changed.

Shenever changed.

Until she spotted something glaringly out of place.Someone,actually.

He stood near the red EXIT sign, leaning the same way he had the first time she’d ever seen him, like his spine had been replaced with rebar. He was broad-shouldered, his forearms tan and veined. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt that somehow made him look more serious, not less.

Ryan Inglis. Just standing there. In a Corpus Christi strip club.

Jessica’s grip slipped fractionally. The pole squeaked. She caught herself before she could humiliate herself in front of a table of longshoremen celebrating Taco Tuesday like horny Vikings, but her heart had already dropped somewhere near her platforms.

She blinked, hard. But he didn’t vanish.

It had been two years with not a word from him. And now here he was, watching her dance like he’d taken a wrong turn on his way to buy milk.

She wrapped up the rest of the set with the enthusiasm of a woman filing her taxes. The customers barely noticed; most were drunk and the rest were too busy workshopping their midlife crises. When she stepped offstage, her hands were shaking so badly she had to squeeze them into fists.

Jessica shoved through the beaded curtain into backstage, where the air smelled like hairspray, cheap perfume, and weed. She was halfway into her top when she felt him behind her.

“Ma’am?”

Her whole spine locked up.

That word. That voice. That stupid, polite, maddeningly steady marshal voice.

She turned slowly, and there he was. He looked older around the eyes, but still infuriatingly handsome in a way that was not helpful for her blood pressure.

She folded her arms across her chest. “Are you kidding me?”

Ryan didn’t move. “I need a word.”

Jessica turned back to her locker. “Oh no. Nope. No way.” She grabbed her tote and slammed the door. “I'm not doing this again. I barely survived the first time.”

The first time.Two years ago, Deputy U.S. Marshal Ryan Inglis had strolled into her strip club in Panama City Beach witha shiny badge, the same grim expression, and a warning that she was about to be swallowed whole by a cartel war she’d never meant to step into. That time, her lifehadbeen in danger, but only because he’d made it so.

It had taken three days and a night trapped with him in a hurricane to figure that out, but not before she'd most inconveniently caught feelings for him.

She had long since recovered from those feelings. And while she might have forgiven him for his past sins, especially after she’d discovered the real reason behind them—that theLa Mano Negragang had kidnapped his ex-wife, Kylie, and forced him to betray Jessica to keep her alive—that certainly didn’t make them square.

She turned back to face him. “So, what, you just woke up one day and thought, ‘Hey, I wonder how that girl who I nearly got killed is doing?’”

Ryan didn’t rise to the bait. Nor did his gaze drop below her collarbones, not even once. That was worse, honestly. Because it reminded her exactly what kind of man he was: disciplined, inconveniently honorable, and completely unable to stop trying to fix things that were already broken.

“Jessica,” he said quietly, “you’re in danger.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, wow. Really? Is that why you tracked me down at—” she gestured around with both hands “—the classiest establishment in south Texas?”

“Yes,” he said. “And not soon enough.”

Something tightened low in her stomach. It was instinct more than fear.

“People have been asking about you. People who shouldn’t know your name.”

The moisture left Jessica’s throat. “Who?”

Other than a quick flicker of his eyes, he didn’t answer.