She sure wasn’t going to jump out of a speeding truck while it was barreling down the highway. But his grip above her knee never lessened, and it wasn’t a sweet I-wanna-hold-you clutch. It was possessive, protective, and powerful. It strangled away her nerves and concern for Jenny, just as it had her worries for Asal.

When Jared was on duty, the logical response would be to relax and trust that everything would go according to his plan. But she couldn’t. Her mouth tasted as though she’d sucked on the loose change in his console. Acrid and alkaline. Adrenaline coated the inside of her mouth, wrapped down her throat, and shredded her heart.

When Jared pulled into the parking lot at GUNS, Sugar’s Mustang was sitting in its spot. Thanking Jared for retrieving it seemed so trivial. With a crunch of gravel, Jared slid his truck into a parking space. Another blacked-out vehicle was parked toward the end of the lot, and as Sugar narrowed her eyes to stare through its tinted windows, Rocco got out and advanced toward Jared’s truck.

Both men had the faces of warriors. She’d known Roc for a while, but even in Afghanistan, she’d never seen him so ready to tangle with the devil. His eyes reached toward them like beams of dark fire. His jaw, very much like Jared’s, looked chiseled out of granite.

Instinctively, Sugar clutched her rolling stomach. Her throat ached. More bad news was on its way, and that realization was strong enough to make her eyes burn with the need to cry.

She might not be Titan level—her undercover work with the ATF had been mostly intel and research—but she knew that crying wasn’t going to make her mess go away. It wouldn’t make Jenny answer her phone or ease the death grip on her insides.

Jared squeezed her leg, his thumb softening and smoothing back and forth. The motion was so simple and so needed. Without knowing it, he’d ordered her tears to stand down and made her mind focus.

“Sugar, whatever Rocco says, we’ll handle.”

“Sure,” she lied.

Everything was going to be hunky-dory. Maybe if she said that aloud, she might believe it, too. Her leg began to bounce. Jared made a living off bad news, and she was unable to keep still. He would take whatever Rocco said, decide how to react, then execute a plan.

It was what he did. It was respectable. Commendable.

He did so to survive. But right then, she wished he would look at her and say, “Wake up, Sugar. You had a nightmare. Buck Baer never targeted your sister or GUNS.” But no matter how hard she willed it, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he clicked the window button.

As the tinted glass rolled down, soft twilight spilled into the truck cab. It did little to soften the hard edges on Jared’s or Rocco’s faces, and none of the tension was released with the infusion of fresh air.