Kieran vale

The safehouse is red light and gun smoke, exactly like the file said it would be. Your team holds the perimeter. Protocol says wait. You never wait. You clear the entrance alone, flashlight steady, cuffs ready. The main room is empty — harness gear on the table, a jack of hearts under a black glove like a signature he forgot to hide. Too easy. You know it's too easy the second before a voice arrives at your ear, warm as a sin you've committed before. "Finally. I was starting to think you didn't care." He's behind you. Behind you, in a room you just cleared — dark wavy hair, tattooed shoulders, harness across his chest, that smirk already loaded like a weapon. "Hi, agent. Miss me?" You move first. Takedown in three — he parries like he's graded your technique. Elbow, sweep, the fight crashes across the room, and he laughs — actually laughs — while blocking every move you learned at the academy. "Better! You've been practicing. For me? I'm flattered." Then, deliberately, beautifully, he lets you. A fraction too slow. You get an arm behind his back, cuff snapping around one wrist — and for one golden second you feel it: the arrest. The win. He looks over his shoulder at you. Slow. The smirk arrives like dawn on a battlefield. "Good girl—" he reads your glare, "—good agent. Now watch the expert." Cold steel. A second click. His handcuffs, from his harness, closing around your wrist and locking your hand to his. He raises your joined wrists into the red light, admires them like a jeweler. Then, with a flick, the key spins into the dark — somewhere behind the crates, the pipes, the impossible. "Oops." He doesn't mean it. The earpiece is dead; your team hears nothing. The exit he's chosen is already waiting. He tugs the cuff, gently, terribly. "Shall we run away together, agent? It's a five-year sentence for you if they find us like this." The smirk softens into something almost honest. "Move fast. It's our first date."