Paul's desk phone rang.

He answered, listened, and turned pale.

“They said my daughter's address.”

“Who?”

“No name. They said stop talking to the cop and the dog.”

The back window shattered.

Ronan hit me before the sound registered.

We went down behind the desk. A bullet struck the filing cabinet where my head had been.

Paul screamed.

I drew my weapon and called the state team. Ronan crawled toward the back wall below the windows.

“Stay down,” I ordered.

“I am staying low with initiative.”

“Ronan.”

“Briar.”

A motorcycle engine started in the alley.

Ronan reached the side door before I could stop him. He did not run into the open. He kicked a wheeled trash bin down the ramp.

The shooter fired at the movement.

Muzzle flash revealed the alley corner.

I returned one shot into the brick above him, forcing him back as state vehicles closed both exits.

The shooter abandoned the motorcycle and fled over a fence. Officers caught him two blocks away.

He wore no ring.

In his pocket was an envelope containing five thousand dollars and a photograph of Paul’s daughter.

The order on his phone came from a disposable number. The message ended with a split-moon symbol.

Paul and his family entered protection before sunrise. The access log, camera still, and threat call were preserved.

Outside the freight office, adrenaline left my hands shaking.

Ronan touched my elbow, then withdrew.

“May I?”

I looked at him.

“You tackled me through a desk without asking.”

“Immediate bullet exception. Current situation lacks bullets.”

“You are bleeding.”

Glass had cut his cheek.

I took a clean cloth from the medic and pressed it to the wound.

“This date was terrible,” I said.

“So it was a date.”

“That is what you heard?”

“I need something positive.”

He smiled carefully beneath my hand.

I kissed him.

It was not careful.

For half a second, Ronan froze. Then his hand settled at my waist without pulling me closer. He waited inside the kiss the way he had waited outside Kara's evidence, beneath the freight window, beside every line I had drawn.

I moved closer myself.

His mouth tasted like bad coffee and syrup.

When I stepped back, he looked genuinely speechless.

“Say nothing,” I warned.

He nodded.

Three seconds passed.

“Best surveillance shift of my life.”

I pressed the cloth harder against his cut.

“Ow.”

“Still positive?”

“Overwhelmingly.”

Paul tried to call his daughter. His hands shook so badly he entered the wrong number twice.

I took the phone only after he asked. His daughter answered from a college dormitory. We moved her to campus security while state officers arranged protection.

“I thought cooperating was right,” Paul said. “Why is she paying for it?”

There was no honest answer that made righteousness safe.

Ronan crouched opposite him. “Bad people make good choices expensive. That doesn't make the choice wrong. It means the rest of us help pay the cost.”

Paul looked at the biker rather than my badge.

“Can you guarantee she's safe?”

Ronan glanced at me.

“No one can guarantee that,” I said. “We can give her lawful protection she approves and keep her location restricted.”

“And we won't leave either of you alone with this,” Ronan added.

That promise we could keep.

After Paul left with the protection team, Ronan found the diner's pie in a paper box inside our vehicle. The waitress had written STOP TALKING AROUND IT across the lid.

“Around what?” he asked.

“She probably meant the evidence.”

“Naturally.”

He divided the slice exactly in half with a plastic knife.

“Equal territory,” he said.

“You can have mine.”

“I dislike charity.”

I ate my half. His fork met mine at the last crumb.

“This is dangerously intimate,” he said.

“It is pie.”

“You will remember it differently after our wedding.”

“There will be no body if you continue.”

“Still worth it.”

My phone rang.

Silas had identified the split-moon ring.

It belonged to the Winter Council's internal tribunal—the body responsible for investigating Gideon Rusk.

Ronan read over my shoulder. “Does this invalidate the date?”

“There was a shooting.”

“Our standards differ.”

“Next time, coffee without bullets.”

His expression softened. “There is a next time?”

“Make me say it twice and there won't be.”

For once, he stayed silent.

He held the passenger door open for me without making a joke. I entered, closed it, and watched him grin through the windshield when he thought I could not see.

I could.

I let him keep the victory.