Page 28 of In the Shadows
Keep her close. Easier said than done when keeping her close meant spending more time with her. Talking to her. Learning the small details of her life that had nothing to do with the mission.
He pocketed his phone and walked toward Beach Road. The cottage was dark, waiting for him like it did every night. Empty rooms. Empty bed. The silence of a life built around missions and covers and carefully maintained distance.
Lila's face appeared in his mind. The way she'd looked that afternoon, standing under the oak tree, asking him to tell her she wasn't crazy. The vulnerability beneath the strength. The trust she'd placed in him, a stranger with secrets he couldn't share.
He couldn't let anything happen to her.
The thought had become a refrain, repeating in his head at odd moments. Not a mission parameter. Not an operational priority. Something else. Something that had nothing to do with Shadow Ops and everything to do with the woman who'd handed him her father's files and asked for the truth.
He was in trouble.
And for the first time in twelve years, he wasn't sure he wanted to find his way out.
The back deck at Sarge’s was nearly empty. His eyes caught on the peaceful evening and empty tables with a killer view of the water.
He claimed the last table by the railing, the one with the wobbly leg that nobody wanted. He’d ordered a beer he wasn’t drinking and a plate of fried shrimp he’d eaten half of before his appetite quit. The sun was down, but the sky still held light—that long blue hour when Florida couldn’t decide if the day was over.
He heard her before he saw her. The scrape of a chair being pulled back from the table beside his. The thud of a bag dropped on wood.
“You look terrible.”
Lila dropped into the chair and signaled the bartender without waiting for a menu. She’d changed since he’d seen her at the office—jeans now, a worn sweater with a hole in the cuff that she kept poking her thumb through. Her hair was down, tangled from the wind.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said.
“I’m not supposed to do a lot of things. Eat carbs after eight. Leave my phone on the charger overnight. Trust mysterious strangers who show up in my town with fake résumés.” She accepted a glass of white wine from the bartender and took a long sip. “And yet.”
“We agreed to keep our distance in public.”
“This isn’t public. This is Sarge’s. Half the people here couldn’t identify their own spouses after three beers.” She tipped her glass toward the corner booth, where a group of fishermen was arguing about something with elaborate hand gestures. “See? Nobody’s paying attention to us.”
She was right. He hated it when she was right, which was becoming a recurring problem.
“How’s the shrimp?” she asked.
“Fine.”
“You’re a terrible liar. For a spy.”
“I’m not a spy.”
“You showed up under a fake identity to investigate my town. That’s a spy.”
“That’s an operative.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Spies wear tuxedos and order martinis. I’m wearing a flannel shirt and drinking a Yuengling.”
She laughed. Not the careful, public laugh she used at town meetings. A real one—sudden and surprised, like it had escaped before she could catch it. The sound did something to his chest that had nothing to do with the beer.
“My dad drank Yuengling,” she said. The laughter was still in her voice, softening the mention of him. “Every Friday night on the back porch. One beer, never two. He’d sit there and watch the sunset and not say a word for an hour.”
“Sounds like a man who knew how to be quiet.”
“He was. My mother used to say he’d used up all his words on survey reports.” She smiled into her wine glass. “She wasn’t wrong. He could write ten pages about a property boundary and then come home and communicate entirely in nods and eyebrow raises.”
“My father was the opposite. Talked constantly. About everything. The news, the weather, whatever book he was reading.” Ronan turned his beer bottle in his hands. He didn’t talk about his father. Not to anyone. But the evening air was warm, and she was sitting close enough that he could see the wine stain at the corner of her mouth, and something about this woman made his usual defenses feel like too much work. “After he died, the quiet was the worst part. I’d come home, and the house would just—be there. Silent. Like it was waiting for someone to fill it up again.”
