Page 18 of Hunting Snow

Sapphire studies me for a half-second longer than professional courtesy requires. Those blue eyes are cataloging every micro-expression, hunting for the flinch, the hesitation, the tell that says a runner has a problem with the target. Whatever she's measuring, I give her nothing worth noting.

Sapphire pushes the folder with my copy of the contract across the dark wood toward me.

"Target's last known details are in the file. Address above a bakery on the south side. Daily patterns, known associations, and the business registration." Sapphire collects the pen. "Clock starts now, Cross. Forty-eight hours. I’ll send through the usual digital version of the contract within the hour."

"Understood."

I rise from the chair, button my jacket, and cross the lounge without a backward glance. The doors close and the silence wraps around me.

This is the last contract I will ever take.

I open the file in my car beneath the fluorescent wash of the sub-basement. The target profile includes her current address above the bakery, a business registration under her name, surveillance photos, and daily movement patterns. Someone did their homework before this contract hit Sapphire's desk. Detailed intel. Professional.

One of the surveillance photos catches my eye and drills a hole straight through the center of my chest. She's standing outside the bakery door in a flour-dusted apron with a dish towel twisted in her hands, squinting against the morning sun. Candid. Unguarded. Her dark hair is falling loose from a braid and there's a smudge of white on her cheek.

My knuckles go white around the steering wheel.

I start the engine and pull into the Chicago night.

Finding her takes only minutes. I've driven past the bakery a hundred times without knowing she was inside. The building sits on a quiet block, brick and old bones, a narrow storefront with a window facing the sidewalk. It’s dark at this hour. Her apartment above glows with a faint, warm light behind drawn curtains.

I park across the street and cut the engine.

She doesn't have security. The door is bare, the exterior shows zero alarm panels, and the entry point wouldn't slow down a teenager with a credit card. The alley access behind the building is open and unlit. I have no doubt the daughter of Chicago's oldest mafia family locks one deadbolt and thinks she is safe. Her father must be rolling over in his grave.

She has no idea what's coming for her.

I spend the night doing what I do best. Watching.

The lights inside the bakery flick on at three forty-five in the morning. Her silhouette moves behind frosted glass, small and purposeful. My pulse climbs with each passing minute. By four-thirty, the warm glow of ovens colors the windows a soft amber. The smell hits me when she opens the side door to haul out trash. Vanilla. Warm apples. Cinnamon. It floods the car and sinks into my lungs and twists a knot behind my ribs that I can't loosen.

Neve Castellano. The sole heir to a billion-dollar criminal empire. After a little digging while I waited, I found she walked away from a throne and chose a galley kitchen and four a.m. alarms instead. And I would bet not a single one of her customers knows the girl behind the counter carries a dead kingpin's blood in her veins.

And her stepmother paid ten point five million to make her disappear.

I watch her greet the morning regulars as the clock rolls on. An old man with a newspaper claims the end stool first. Two women settle in shortly after and laugh loud enough for the sound to carry through glass. She smiles for every customer. Easy, warm, genuine. The smile fades the second they turn away. When she's alone behind the counter, her shoulders drop and her eyes drift to somewhere I can't follow.

She's carrying something heavy on her heart. I recognize the weight of loneliness. I've carried my own version for a long time.

By the time afternoon rolls around, I know her rhythms. She opens at six. The rush peaks at eight. By ten, the traffic thins. She closes at two and spends the rest of daylight prepping for the next morning. No security escort. No cameras. No one checking the alley after dark.

Vivienne will expect confirmation soon. When she doesn't get it, she'll send others. Runners who won't hesitate to pull the trigger. They won’t care about pretty green eyes or the sound a young woman makes when she laughs with her customers and forgets that the world her father built is still circling her life like a predator waiting for the right angle of attack.

I can't stay in the dark.

I watch her flip the sign from open to closed. The last customer exits and the front door locks behind them. Through the window, she unties her apron and drapes it over the counter. She rolls her neck, stretches, presses her fingers into the small of her back. Loose strands of dark hair fall across her face. Flour dusts everything.

I shave the contract under my seat and then step out of the car.

Thirty-two steps from my car to her bakery entrance. I count every one. Each step carries me further from the ghost I've been for two decades and closer to the woman who made me want to stop vanishing.

She's locked the door. Pulled the shade down. I knock twice on the glass.

The shade comes up. She reaches for the lock, raises her eyes to mine, and freezes.

Recognition breaks across her face like dawn cracking over a dark horizon. Green eyes go wide. Soft, kissable lips part. Color floods her cheeks in a rush of heat I remember from a dark bar and a darker bedroom, the same flush that climbed her throat when she wrapped her legs around me and whispered a word that changed everything I am.

She turns the deadbolt.