Page 55 of Shadow Of Sin

Every head whips toward her. Even mine.

“You let him hit the building,” she says, taking the pen out from behind her ear. She taps it against the table. “But you know he’s coming. So you control what he finds when he gets there. Bad intel. Wrong files. A building that looks empty but isn’t. You give him what he wants, and it blows up in his face.”

Ronan stares at her.

“Or you just beef up security across the board and he picks a different target we’re not tracking and we’re back to square one,” she adds with a shrug. “Your call.”

Gavin sticks his head back in from the hallway. “Did she just suggest we bait Dmitri into a trap?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“I fucking love her.” He disappears again.

“Gavin,” Ronan calls after him.

“I know, I know. Shut up.”

Ronan looks at me. Then at Eva. Then back at me.

“She stays in the room when we plan this,” he says. That’s damn shocking, mainly because it’s the closest thing to a compliment Ronan has ever given a stranger.

Eva doesn’t react. No nod or smile. But I see her shoulders drop about half an inch, the tension slowly leaving her body.

I notice these things. Everything about her, really. Her posture, her jaw, the pen behind her ear, the way her hair falls over her shoulder, how she twists it when she’s stuck.

Kind of like my thumb tell.

I notice all of these details and my brain catalogs them, files them, and pulls them later when I’m trying to focus on something else.

That’s my big problem. I scrub a hand down the front of my face.

I can’t stop cataloging her.

And I’m not entirely sure I want to acknowledge what it all means.

Lochlan and Adriana take Eva to a side room to go deeper into the property layouts a little while later. Ronan disappears into his office and closes the door. I walk into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water when Cillian appears in the doorway.

“So no basketball again,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “Is your pretty little hacker friend to blame?”

“Did I—?” I sweep a hand through my hair. Shit. I did miss.

Cillian nods. “Yeah, brah. Second time. But don’t worry. I’ve been practicing, and next time you actually show up, Imma beat your nerdy ass.”

“I won’t hold my breath for that. I could take off half a year and you’d never even come close to beating ‘my nerdy ass.’”

“We’ll see.” Cillian chuckles. “Now tell me what I missed.”

“She suggested baiting Dmitri into a trap.”

“Holy shit,” he says, then lets out a long whistle. “How’d that go over?”

“Ronan said she stays in the room to plan the trap.” I run my finger along the smooth countertop, sliding the boxes so that the edges are lined up.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Cillian says. “That’s basically a marriage proposal from Ronan.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“And how’s she hanging in there with Ronan and Lochlan? She freaked out at all?”