Page 108 of Cruel Love

He checks his watch again. I clear my throat, thinking fast for ways to distract him.

“So, Lilah checked in?” I ask.

“She did.”

“And Myra’s really down?”

“Archer specializes in capture,” he says. “I’m sure they’ve got her secured.”

“How sure?”

“Well, he caught Lilah one time. That should give you an idea.”

“You’re kidding,” I say.

“He had her for two days before we tracked them down,” he says. “Scared the hell out of me and...”

Elijah.

“Remind me to buy him a beer sometime,” I say, moving on. “That takes some talent. How’d you manage to find them?”

“She turned her phone back on and we chased the signal down.” He flexes his jaw. “Then, we walked in on them.”

“Walked in on them?”

He squints with timid anger.

I fight my laugh. “Ah.”

“I respect him,” Dante says. “But I don’t necessarily like him.”

I nod, biting my inner cheek.

Dante bows again, staring down below at the club’s back exit, not nearly as distracted — or relaxed — as I’d like.

“It’s all gonna be fine, Dante,” I say. “She’s got a lot of back-up. The best in the world, if you ask me.”

He nods but he doesn’t answer.

I lean in to perform another scan of the area through my scope. Nothing’s changed. Still the same holding pattern but no news is good news. It’s always been.

My thoughts drift to Dani. A phantom rush of her delicate apple scent teases my nose, just as it did a hundred times on every mission I took as a Snake Eyes agent. The only difference now is that we’re really together. It was just fantasy before but now it’s real. Every kiss, every time we made love, every smile. It’s all real. It’s all waiting for me when I get back to her.

I abandon the past. I focus on our future.

Or lack thereof.

It won’t be easy. It’ll never be as easy as I made it out to be. If we don’t find and kill the Boss, we’ll never stop being hunted. The price on our heads has nowhere to go but up.

What kind of man would I be if I put Dani through that?

She deserves a normal life. A loving husband. Doting children.

I’m not so sure I can give her that.

“You should call her.”

I look up from my scope at Dante’s raised brow. “What?”

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