The next 24 hours went in a toxic blur. The only thing that Iris knew for sure was that Marcus was gone. Agent Marinos had fully taken his place. Marcus would have put an arm around her shoulders when she teared up as they tromped away from the beach house. Agent Marinos said nothing.

Marcus would have sat with her over the impromptu dinner they ate on the road. Agent Marinos ate a sandwich as he paced around the parking lot of a Subway, barking into his phone.

Marcus would have reassured her that her entire life wasn’t about to change, that she wasn’t in mortal danger, that she would see him again no matter what happened. Agent Marinos said absolutely nothing.

No words passed between them until just after they crossed the Maryland border. He pulled up to what appeared to be an abandoned driveway with an old, rusted gate. The gate opened for his truck as he drove up the overgrown driveway toward a large, almost factory-like building.

“Tell them the truth. And tell them everything you know. About anything they ask.”

Iris jumped as his words severed the silence between them. She’d been silently begging him to speak for the last hundred miles. And now that he had, it only increased the distance between them.

“Okay,” she said quietly, her eyes resolutely out the passenger side window.

And that’s what she did. They pulled up to the building to find it bursting with activity. People racing around with files and iPads, screaming into phones or working quietly at overstuffed desks. Marcus didn’t hesitate to dump her off in a depressingly bare room. He didn’t say goodbye.

One agent came in. A woman. Iris told her everything about the day she’d been abducted. How Marcus had saved her. His decision to go dark. She told the woman about every conversation she’d had with her brother in the last six months. Then a man came in. And she went through the whole song and dance again. By the third time, she was well past exhausted and verging on losing her mind.

Finally, one more woman came in. She had a cup of tea and a hot pretzel with mustard in her hands. She sat down in a puff of baby powder scent and slid everything over to Iris.

“You did good,” she said, fluffing back her short, brownish gray hair. “I’m Agent Jones, Agent Marinos’s handler here at the FBI.” She ticked a finger at Iris. “You kept me very busy these last three weeks.”

Iris gratefully gulped at the tea. Her mouth was parched. “Believe me, that was not my intention. Where’s Ma—Agent Marinos?”

“He’s being similarly questioned a few rooms over. Trust me. He’s getting it a lot worse than you are. It’s no simple thing to go dark as an agent. He’ll be in the doghouse for quite some time.”

“Doghouse! But he was doing it to protect me!”

Agent Jones pfff-ed. “The bureau considers there to be many ways to have protected you in that situation. And considering exactly how he came upon this assignment in the first place? Nah. They’re not going to be letting him walk without a considerable slap on the wrist.”

Iris felt her stomach plummet. He hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park over the last 24 hours, but she definitely didn’t want him to be getting penalized for keeping her safe.

“Anyways,” Agent Jones continued in a manner that Iris considered to be very far from professional. “I’m here to tell you that you can go.”

“What?” Iris leaned forward, her brow furrowed. “I’m sorry?”

“Well.” Agent Jones slid a file across the table that Iris hadn’t noticed before. “That’ll tell you what you need to know.”

Iris opened it and frowned, reading the documents. It seemed that somewhere between the second and third interview she’d undergone, the FBI had deemed her “out of harm’s way.” She didn’t know enough to be of any value to the Kutros family, and they had given no indication that they were still looking for her at all. Not so much as a google search of her name. And the FBI had been keeping a very close watch.

Additionally, it appeared that her idiot brother, still in some undisclosed location south of the border, had communicated with the Kutros family, clearing Iris’s name from all this.

Iris looked up at Agent Jones for confirmation of what she was reading. Jones made a hand signal like voila.

“You’re free as a bird. And safe too. According to the FBI’s official analysis of the situation.” Jones leaned forward and Iris had the distinct impression that the agent was attempting to communicate something with her. Although she had absolutely no idea what.

“Let me get this straight.” Iris pinched at the bridge of her nose and tried to interpret the wide smile that Marcus’s handler was giving her. “I’m free to go. As in leave. As in walk out of here and, what, catch a bus back to Pennsylvania?”

“Sure,” Agent Jones chirped. “In fact the FBI would be happy to offer you a rental car that you could drive back to Pennsylvania. We’ll give you a nice little phone number to call if you ever get any info on Kutros or if you feel like anything spooky is happening. Like you’re being followed or watched. We’ll want to know about that.” Iris’s head spun. “Or perhaps you stay and polish off that pretzel, give it a few hours. And then maybe you find a friend to give you a ride home?”

“A friend,” Iris repeated dully.

“A friend.”

She had to be talking about Marcus. That was the only thing that made any sense but still. Iris felt like she was trying to understand someone who was only speaking half the words she needed to be speaking.

“Alright.” Iris shrugged and slid the pretzel over to herself. Can’t beat em, join em.

It was maybe two hours later when the door to the questioning room was thrown open. Iris had been sitting alone in there on her own, drumming her fingers, ever since Agent Jones had left.

And it was Agent Jones’s cap of hair that bobbed into view now, she was gesturing for Iris to get up. “Out to the truck now,” she whispered in Iris’s ear, and then she was gone.

Iris wove her way through the building, doing her best to remember the way she’d come originally. It wasn’t two more minutes before she found herself at Marcus’s truck. It was empty. And locked. And now she was just standing out in the parking lot like a dope. Why had she done this again? Trusted that loony Agent Jones?

“Iris,” a deep voice said from behind her, making her jump a foot in the air.

It was Marcus, looking exhausted and furious and about a million other things she couldn’t even begin to interpret.

He didn’t wait for her to acknowledge him. “Get in the car,” he growled and loped around to the driver’s seat. He was pulling out of the parking lot before she got her door closed and swinging down the driveway before she had her belt on.

His knuckles were white as bone as he gripped the steering wheel. Iris sat perfectly still, saying absolutely nothing as they swung onto the highway. She did nothing but jump when suddenly Marcus’s fist smashed against the steering wheel. Once, twice, and then a third time before Iris unbuckled and slid over on the bench seat. She grabbed his hand to keep him from pounding it bloody.

“Stop!” she begged him, but her voice was small and almost trembling.

He froze, his fist enveloped in both of her small hands. His eyes slid over to her. “Buckle up,” he growled.

None of the tension left his body, but Iris had the impression that he was in more control as they ate up the miles.

“Marcus, please, what’s going on? You’re scaring me.”

His eyes softened but his jaw tightened. He said nothing.

“I-I thought this was good news. That I don’t need FBI protection anymore. They say I’m safe…”

Marcus scoffed and rubbed a hand over the top of his head. “Safe? That is such bullshit. Not their problem is more like it. You don’t have any information the FBI needs, so they don’t need you anymore, Iris.” He smacked his hand against the steering wheel again, but it was his palm, not his fist. “And they sure as fuck don’t need me. I’m suspended. Indefinitely. Psych evaluations pending.”

Iris sat back, stunned. “They suspended you? For protecting me like that?”

He nodded, tersely. “And now I have to sit around with my thumb up my ass, with zero intelligence from the bureau, while the Kutros family may or may not be coming for the woman I—for you.” He slammed his hand on the steering wheel again. “Bullshit!”

“That’s why Agent Jones wanted me to wait for you. To not take the rental car on my own. Because she thinks I’m still in danger too.”

“And she knew I’d lose my earthly mind if I got out of my examinations and realized that you’d already disappeared, unprotected.”

Iris couldn’t help but shrink into his side just a little bit as she stared out into the night. Who was right? Marcus or the FBI? Were there men out there right now? Coming for her?

“What do I do?” she asked in a small voice. Go back to Pennsylvania and write music and live her tiny life and hope to hell that they never came for her? It was unthinkable.

“Look,” Marcus scraped a hand over his five o’clock shadow. “We’re going to stay low. You’re going to disappear and I’m going to return to my daily life as best as I can. Anyone watching for us will be confused.”

Disappear.

The word rattled around her brain. “What the hell does that mean?”

Marcus laughed humorlessly. “We’ll change your name. Your hair. Makeup and clothes. Whatever. You’ll look different. I’ve been known to have a girlfriend. Anyone who asks won’t question it. I’ll be relaxing. Kicking back with a girl and taking my suspension on the chin. It’ll look like I’m settling back into my life. And you’ll be protected in the meantime.”

Iris’s head spun. “Let me get this straight. I’m going home with you and hiding in plain sight? Changing everything about myself, including my name, the way I look? Pretending to be your flavor of the week all because the bureau won’t provide me with any other protection?”

She got a flash of his white teeth. “Flavor of the week? My suspension is six months long.”

“Six months?” she groaned dropping her head into her hands. “Marcus, I get sweaty and guilty when I have a library book overdue. I can’t pull something like this off for six months.”

He laughed outright at that and the noise went a long way toward kicking Agent Marinos out of the car and inviting Marcus back in. “I’ll do the heavy lifting on the story creation, okay? And look, Iris, it’s not like you’re going to have to be filling in back story at dinner parties. Nobody is going to check on this story. Nobody cares. This is for appearances only. If there’s somebody from the Kutros family checking on me. We don’t even know if they know I was the agent assigned to you. But if they do, they’re not gonna find you. They’re gonna find my little, I don’t know, redheaded mistress.”             

Iris gagged. “Red is not my color.”

“Fine, whatever hair color you want.” He knew he had her. And he couldn’t be more relieved about it. It had taken surprisingly little to convince her to do all this with him. And deep down, he knew why. Because she trusted him. It was a trust he was never going to betray. He knew he could be fired from his job for doing this, and honestly, right now, with her sweet scent filling the car, her hair tumbling over his shoulder, he didn’t care one bit. He was going to protect this woman if he died trying.

Hours later, they’d pulled into Ocean City, Maryland. Apparently where Marcus lived and where he’d naturally return to, given a suspension. Iris watched the town pass by from her window and tried to get used to the fact that this was going to be her new home for a while. Not that she’d have the courage to leave the house and explore. Not until Marcus was back off suspension and was able to gather intelligence on the actions of the Kutros family again. Right now, it felt as if they were constantly around any corner.

He stopped at a pharmacy on the edge of town and picked up hair dye. They’d driven through the night so the shops were just opening.

“We’ll get home, change your hair and then we can go pick up some clothes for you,” Marcus said, nodding his head toward the mall they were passing.

Iris nodded. All of this was so surreal. “What will my name be?”

“Something that you’ll definitely remember to respond to.”             

She thought for a second. “Sometimes when people forget my name, they call me Irene. I almost always respond to that.”

“Alright,” he nodded. “It’s a little old lady-ish, but sure. Irene.”

“Irene… Carver,” she decided as they passed a street sign with the surname.

They parked his car about a mile and a half from his house, just to be safe. He bundled her hair up under a stocking cap he had in the back of his truck and they walked swiftly and tensely to his apartment. He made her wait in the hallway while he checked the place, making sure nothing had been disturbed and nothing was out of place.

When he came back to the hallway of his building and held the door open for her, he had a curiously grim expression on his face. “It isn’t, uh, much. I don’t spend a lot of time here. I’m often over at Eli or Jay’s places. And they have women to do the decorating for them so…”

Iris’s eyes bounced all over his face. He was nervous. This was…new. And adorable. And it went a long way toward soothing Iris’s nerves. Iris scanned her eyes around as she stepped into the apartment. White walls with a few pictures hanging here and there. Neat as a pin with some scattered Ikea furniture around. It had an open living room that melted neatly into the kitchen. A small back hallway led to what she assumed was the bedroom and bathroom.

“It’s nice,” she said, turning and giving him a small smile.

“It’s fine,” he amended, grimacing around at the impersonal space. “Like I said, I consider my friend’s houses to be more my home than this.”

“Just like when you were a kid,” Iris noted.

He cocked his head at her. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Some things never change.”

The morning sun was starting to peek through the blinds and Iris yawned. She’d gotten just a handful of hours napping in the car within the last 24 hours and she was exhausted. She could only imagine how Marcus felt.

“Let’s change your hair and then get a few hours of sleep,” he said, stretching his arms over his head and tossing his backpack onto the ground.

Iris gripped the CVS bag in her hands. “I can do it on my own. You should crash.”

“It’ll be faster if I help.”

“No,” Iris said as she shook her head. She could only imagine what it would feel like to have him touch her now. His hands in her hair, the way they’d been so many times. She couldn’t handle the familiarity, the intimacy of it. The last day or so couldn’t be undone. Everything had changed since they’d left the beach house and Iris was overcome with it. She couldn’t handle yet another switch between Agent Marinos and Marcus. She felt that if he treated her tenderly right now, she might break. “I’ve done it before. It’s not a big deal. Do you have some scissors?”

Marcus froze. “For what?”

“So I can cut my hair,” she said slowly, confused at his reaction. Hadn’t he told her that they needed to change her hair?

He took a step toward her, his eyebrows tight against his eyes. “You’re going to cut it?”

“Yeah, didn’t you say I needed to change it?”

He took two more steps and he was in front of her before she knew what to do next. He took a handful of her hair in his hand and let it slip through his fingers. “I don’t want you to cut it.”

Iris raised an eyebrow and felt like crumpling in on herself. All of this was too much. Too confusing, too many feelings. Tears pooled in her eyes and she lifted her open palms heavenward. “Tell me what to do, Marcus. Please.”

His eyes hardened as they narrowed in on the tears that were spilling over onto her cheeks.

Through everything, all of this, he’d never seen her cry. And it absolutely killed him that she was doing so now. She’d been torn away from her life by the Kutros family, and now he was doing it again, and not much more smoothly. He was demanding that she do all these things, none of which were bound to be easy for her, and he wasn’t making it any easier. He swiped the tears away with two thumbs.

“I’d get you a wig, if I could. A really good one for whenever you leave the house. And then at night, I’d still get to play in your hair.” The words were meant to be playful and soothing, but they came out sounding strangely like a declaration of something. He didn’t dwell on it. He only paid attention to the corner of her mouth that quirked up just the tiniest bit. “But considering all the ways a wig can go wrong, I think it’s best to cut and dye your hair.”

He stroked a hand over her long blonde locks and reminded himself that hair grew back. It would take a while. But he’d see it long and blonde again.

“Alright,” she nodded resolutely. “And then I’m going to need to sleep for a week.” She looked down at her jeans and t-shirt. The only clothes she actually owned. Everything else, of Tia’s, she’d left behind at the beach house. “So I’ll need pajamas.”

He nodded and led her to the bathroom. She disappeared inside and he didn’t let himself think about what was going on in there. How different she’d look when she came out. It was ridiculous to grieve the loss of her hair this much. But everything had changed so much since they left the beach house. He wondered if they’d ever again have the easy companionship they’d achieved there.

But that was ridiculous. He didn’t need companionship from her. He needed to keep her safe. In fact, the companionship had been distracting. They’d been safe enough in the beach house, that he’d been able to let it all slide a little. But here, when they were out in the wild, he needed to stay much more on top of his game. He half hoped that she’d come out of the bathroom with a terrible haircut, looking half as attractive as she had at the beach house.

When he heard the shower come on, he slid a t-shirt and sweatpants onto the sink counter, and his eyes zeroed in on the long blonde locks covering the floor of his bathroom.

He went back to his living room and reclined, looking at nothing but his blank walls. Clinical distance was the new name of the game. The only way to keep her safe. From Kutros and from himself. Marcus had never wanted a woman more. And he knew that was why he had to keep her at arm’s length. Because she was in danger of becoming something real to him. And he didn’t think he could resist her if that happened. And if he couldn’t resist her, then, well, he was inevitably going to destroy her. The way he had with other women.

Marcus’s eyes fluttered open when he heard her padding through his living room toward him. He prepared himself for a less attractive Iris. In fact, he welcomed it. He needed something to douse this fire. But when he opened his eyes and she came into view, he groaned like he’d been kicked in the groin.

She stood before him, wearing his clothes no less, with chin length, ash brown hair. It was cut just a little shorter in the back and angled down. She’d parted it on the side to complement the style and it swept down, almost over her eye.

“Je-zusss,” Marcus muttered, scraping his hands over his eyes and jamming his head backwards into the couch cushions.

“What?” Iris asked, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. She’d actually thought the hairstyle had come out alright, but she had no idea how to gauge his reaction. She shuffled forward to sit on the couch.

Marcus sprang up and paced around. “Oh nothing. Just me losing my fucking mind.”

“I—why?” she asked, utterly flummoxed.

She looked so fucking cute he wanted to scream into a pillow. The hairstyle changed her appearance a lot and still she was everything he wanted. It hit him like a box of rocks. It didn’t matter how she looked. She was so much more than a sum of her parts. He wanted her. He wanted her so badly he had to fight not to fall on his knees in front of her. This was hell.

“Because you look good, Iris. Irene.” He spit the words out as he paced around his living room. “I’m losing my fucking mind because I thought this would get easier if you had a bad haircut and didn’t look so fucking good all the time. But here you are. Cute as shit with your little…” he searched for the words, found he had no idea what kind of haircut to call it and instead just gestured to her head. “And to top it all off, you’re wearing my clothes and looking at me like that. And just… je-zusss. Why couldn’t this just be a tiny bit easier?”

Iris’s mouth had fallen flat open. Well. That solved that mystery. Marcus liked her haircut. She stared at him as he paced around his apartment like a caged lion. She barely knew what to do with all this energy in front of her. He was looking at her like he wanted to eat her alive.

For the first time, it occurred to her that there was absolutely nothing stopping them from doing just that. At the beach house, they’d had the officialness of his duty standing in their way. She’d desperately wanted not to seem like a horny civilian with some sort of man-in-uniform fetish. Not that he’d worn a uniform, but whatever. But here, in his apartment, he wasn’t assigned to protect her. He was doing it because… he cared about her. And she supposed that couldn’t be altogether stripped from the way he was looking at her now. Like she was an ice cream cone on a hot summer’s day.

This realization had Iris feeling both empowered and terrified at the same time. She knew, without a doubt, that Marcus could tear her heart in two. Jet was nothing compared to this man in front of her, golden muscles and dark, perfect hair. Purple under his eyes from exhaustion and was he…yes, he was literally licking his lips as he looked at her. Forget a broken heart. This man was capable of ending her heart as she knew it.

There was no recovering from a man like Marcus, this she was certain of.

And it was that thought that had the bone deep fatigue rising up and taking her by the throat. She was in no position to deal with this now.              

“Marcus, I’m really tired.” She grabbed one of the couch pillows and slid off the fleece blanket laid over the back of the couch.

“What are you doing?” he asked, taking a step toward her. Tension rolled off him in waves as palpable as heat from an oven.

“I’m taking a nap.”

“Not here.” He stepped forward and before Iris could even compute, he was lifting her up. Not in front of him, like a baby, but over his shoulder, like a sack of potatoes. She yelped.

“Marcus!”

“Here,” he grunted, full on caveman, as he strode into his room and tossed her on his bed. “You sleep here.”

“I—” She rose up on her knees on the bed and gave him a stubborn, frustrated look. “I would have walked, you know!”

“Just. Just sleep, Iris. Irene.” He took a step back, burning the image of her kneeling in his bed in his brain. Just to torture himself. “Just go to sleep for a bit.”

And then he was gone and Iris was flopping back onto the bed. Her stomach flipped as she realized that she was in Marcus Marinos’s bed. If she’d been any less exhausted, the thought might have kept her awake. But as it was, her eyes won the battle. She fell asleep, his scent floating into her dreams.