Page 132 of In the Shadows
“You just said you’d be working from this table. I sit at this table too.” She pulled the laptop toward her and opened it. “If I’m going to be living with a man who runs covert operations from our kitchen, I should at least know what’s happening.”
“That’s not exactly how operational security works.”
“Neither was falling in love with your local source, and you managed that just fine.”
He laughed. Couldn’t help it. She was impossible and brilliant and exactly right, the way she always was about the things that mattered.
“The intel package comes tonight,” he said. “I’ll brief you over dinner.”
“You’re cooking.”
“I’m always cooking. You burn everything.”
“That’s character development. I’m learning.” She stood and kissed the top of his head as she passed him on her way to refill her coffee. “Welcome back to work, Ronan Cross.”
He watched her move through the kitchen—their kitchen, in their cottage, in the town they’d fought to save. The curtains moved in the breeze off the inlet.
He picked up his phone and typed a message to Caleb.
Send the package. I’m in.
The response came in under a minute.
Good. The operative I’m sending is named Ethan Vale. Former Navy. He’ll need a steady hand.
Then he’ll get one.
He set the phone down and looked out at the water. Somewhere in Mobile, a town was being hollowed out the same way Blossom Springs had been. Shell companies, falsified records, and ordinary people who didn’t yet know that the ground beneath them was shifting.
They’d know soon. Ronan would make sure of it.
Not from a hotel room under a cover name. Not with a duffel bag packed and an extraction plan memorized. From a dock on the inlet, with a woman who loved him and a life he’d chosen and a future that stretched out in front of him, uncertain and terrifying and entirely his own.
The work continued. It always would.
But now, for the first time, so did everything else.
The hardware store was crowded for a Tuesday morning.
Ronan was looking for wood stain when he heard the crash. Aisle three. A woman with a toddler on her hip had knocked over a display of paint cans, and now she was standing in a spreading puddle of eggshell white, her face red, the kid starting to wail.
The old Ronan would have walked the other way. Avoided the complication. Kept his head down and his profile low.
He grabbed a roll of paper towels from the endcap and crossed the aisle.
"Here. Let me."
The woman looked up, startled. "Oh, you don't have to?—"
"It's fine." He was already on his knees, sopping up the worst of it. "Happened to me last month. Knocked over a whole shelf of deck sealant. Took three employees to clean it up."
That was a lie. But she laughed anyway, the tension draining from her shoulders.
"Thank you. I'm so sorry. He grabbed for something, and I lost my grip on the cart and…"
"Kids." He said it like he understood, even though he didn't. Not really. But he'd watched enough parents in this town over the past few months to know the script. "They're fast."
"Too fast." She shifted the toddler to her other hip. "I'm Emma, by the way. We just moved here. My husband got a job at the hospital."
