Page 109 of Shadow Of Sin

Wolfe tosses his bag in the back seat. He turns and looks at me standing on the porch of his cabin wearing one of his shirts with my arms wrapped around myself.

“Friday,” he calls out.

“Friday.” Tears burn the backs of my eyes, but there’s no way in hell I’ll let them fall.

He gets in the car. Cillian backs out of the driveway and onto the road. I watch the car get smaller and smaller until the trees swallow them whole.

Then it’s just me. Alone.

The cabin is dead quiet when I walk back inside. But it’s not the peaceful kind of quiet. It’s more the holding your breath kind.

His laptop is on the kitchen table. His toothbrush is in the bathroom. His mother’s quilt is twisted on the bed. The whole cabin smells like him and I’m standing in the middle of it alone.

I pace around for a little while, then try to read. I stare at the same page for ten minutes before I toss the book onto the coffee table. Focus is impossible.

Then I put on a coat and walk outside. I sink into one of the porch chairs, but my eyes fall to the spot next to me, and the empty chair just makes my heart ache more.

With a loud groan, I walk back inside and pace the living room. I stare at the trees out the window. I check my phone for updates that haven’t come yet.

I stare at Wolfe’s laptop. He told me I’d have full access. Eyes on everything.

But I’m a hacker. I don’t sit still while other people work. It’s just not in my DNA.

I last about forty-five minutes.

Then I turn it on.

CHAPTER 26

WOLFE

It’s been twelve minutes since I left her, and my brain won’t shut up.

That’s the thing about Eva. When she’s next to me, my head goes quiet. Not the forced kind I get from music or code. Real quiet. Like my brain finally has something steady enough to hold onto and it can stop spinning while she’s close.

She’s miles behind me now. And the spinning is back. Every thought fights for space. Every part of me that she somehow managed to calm down is wide awake and screaming bloody fucking murder.

Cillian drives fast with the radio off because he knows me well enough not to add noise to the mess already happening between my ears.

“You good?” Cillian asks, glancing over.

“Yeah.” The damn stress knot at the base of my skull has been throbbing ever since I put that damn extraction plan together.

“You’re lying. But that’s fine. I’ll accept your bullshit for a few miles.” He adjusts his grip on the wheel and shifts in the seat. “You think she’s okay back there?”

“She agreed to stay. But no, she’s definitely not okay with it.”

“Of course she’s not okay with it. You basically asked her to sit in the woods while her brother’s life hangs in the balance and the people she cares about go to war without her.” He looks at me. “That’s a big ask, Wolfe. Even for someone who trusts you the way she does.”

“I know what I asked,” I mutter.

“Do you know what it cost her to say yes?”

Of course, I fucking know. I watched her pace my bedroom and argue and rage against the logic until her body wore out, her brain took over, and she finally gave in to it all. My mind stumbles back to those seconds when she sat on my bed and said in the most defeated voice I can imagine coming from her mouth, “if anything happens to Sal, I will never forgive you.”

It cost her everything she has. And I’m the one who asked for payment.

“Okay, moving on,” Cillian says when I don’t answer him. “The Sal meeting. You’re gonna handle that, yeah?”