Page 30 of The Rook’s Obsession

This was a kill order. Both of us, dead.

And when I look at the number at the top of the thread, the cold stone that settled in my stomach turns to ice.

“I know this number,” I whisper. “My handler. I don’t know his name. But this is the number my orders have always come from.”

Nick doesn’t say a word, but then he doesn’t need to. The silence says it for him. I told you. Everything they gave you was a lie.

Trembling, I set the phone down on the porch railing. They weren’t coming to bring me back. They were coming to erase me. The way I’ve erased people for them. Quickly, cleanly, with no recovery.

I’m not their asset anymore. I’m a loose end.

And I know exactly what they do with loose ends.

I stare at the lake. Moonlight is turning the water silver. It’s beautiful and still. Meanwhile, dead men are going cold all around us. The people I spent years killing for just tried to kill me.

“Now we have to figure out how they found us,” Nick says. “And what we’re going to do next.”

He’s watching me the way he always does: patiently, waiting to see which version of me will surface. The woman who fights him, or the one who fights beside him.

Something has changed that can’t be changed back. I feel it in my chest, a hollow space where loyalty used to live. Vincenzo emptied it in an instant with seven words on a screen.

Terminate both. No recovery. Confirm when complete. They’re branded on my brain. I’ll see them every time I close my eyes from now until this is over.

For the first time, when I look at Nick, I don’t see a captor. He’s not a stranger or an enemy. He’s the only person who fought beside me instead of trying to kill me.

“Yes,” I decide with a nod, pushing my useless, noisy emotions aside. “We have to figure it out.”

NICK

It’s been two hours, and she hasn’t said a word.

I’ve been watching her in the passenger seat. Stealing glances between stretches of highway that all look the same in the dark. She’s sitting with her feet on the dash and her arms folded across her chest, staring through the windshield at nothing.

I don’t have it in me to point out how dangerous it is, sitting that way. If we have an accident, she’ll end up with her kneecaps wedged in her skull. Something tells me she wouldn’t take well to the reminder.

The mood she’s in, she might welcome the idea.

Her face is blank in a way that’s different from her usual composure. Something has collapsed. I see it in the set of her mouth, the way her jaw hasn’t unclenched since we left the cabin.

She isn’t angry—that would probably be easier. No, she’s crushed. Questioning everything about her past with the Russo family. Vincenzo didn’t try to rescue her. He tried to erase her.

This is a woman who built her entire identity on being useful to them. Being their weapon. Now she knows how disposable she always was. There’s always another weapon out there, the next in line, waiting for their turn. He decided it would be easier and better for everyone involved to erase her completely.

She’s been thrown completely off balance twice in four days. I’m not sure how she’s still operating.

I want to say something. To reach across the center console and put my hand on her knee, and tell her everything will be all right. But it wouldn’t be true, really. The last thing she needs now are empty words, easy to see through. She doesn’t need another man telling her things that aren’t true.

So I drive, AirPods in my ears, my phone in the cup holder. Liam is still beside himself an hour after I called him, once the distance I’d put between us and the cabin felt enough that I could loosen up a little, stop being quite so watchful, and give him the news that his childhood vacation home is now full of bullet holes. Neither of us can piece together how eight armed mercenaries found us at a cabin that’s supposed to be off the grid.

“Are you sure you were as careful as you could be, bringing her in?”

I grind my molars at the question, which he’s already asked at least twice. He only used different words. The message is the same, of course. How did you fuck this up? I trusted you with my sister, and you haven’t been on US soil for twenty-four hours but are already on the run.

“I’m positive,” I grunt. “Your guess is as good as mine. Unless someone who installed the security system talked to the wrong people.”

“You know how well-vetted the team is.”

I can’t help but remember a certain member of our small team who decided to switch sides and team up with the enemy. As far as I know, none of us has heard from her since she handed Liam over to Donovan. I never would have imagined she was capable of that. Who’s to say what a person is capable of when the right pressure point is nudged?