Page 174 of The Darkest Chase

He wasn’t this strange, walled-off creature standing in front of me, feeling like he’s a thousand miles away.

One silvery-blue eye watches me over his shoulder—icy, remote. No feeling at all.

And he’s asking me to say the words that will crush me.

My heart is flipping pulp.

My lungs, collapsing sacks.

I breathe in and out slowly, counting one-two, one-two, until that awful tightness eases.

I don’t even think it’s an asthma attack.

It’s just my heart breaking like a shattered iceberg.

“Micah, I…” I falter, digging my fingers into the straps of my bag. “What am I supposed to say? You’re talking to me like I’m your employee. Like we never…”

Yeah, I can’t say it.

“We never should have.” He turns away from me again. His back is an impenetrable wall. “I’m not who you think I am, Talia.”

I press my lips together.

I want to scream at him, but I’m trying to stay calm, stay rational.

“If this is about your past, your family, or even killing Xavier, I don’t care! I know those things about you. I know. And I know there’s a part of you that’s afraid you really are capable of killing a man. And maybe you will. Maybe it wouldn’t even be wrong after what Xavier and the Jacobins did to your brother, but… but that doesn’t change you. I know you, and you’re so convinced you’ll ruin me that you don’t even realize you’re ruining yourself.”

He doesn’t say anything. Every second feels like a spike slowly piercing my skin.

His head bows.

His hand curls against the back of the barstool.

His grip is white-knuckled, bone and blue veins against ash skin, tendons standing out harshly.

Rolf flops down at his feet and looks up at his master with a pitiful whine, but for once Micah doesn’t answer that plea.

Finally, his cold, emotionless voice emerges. “I’m with the DEA.”

“You’re—what?” I take a step backward. It doesn’t make sense. I shake my head. “I don’t understand. How are you Redhaven police and DEA?”

“Because I’m not really Redhaven PD. Not that anyone here knows it. Not even the chief, when he was under suspicion as well. I had to slip in completely unknown. Even my employment records in New York were replaced with falsified records with the NYPD.” He delivers the news so flatly it’s like he’s briefing someone on a case, but every fact stomps on my heart. “I only came here on a mission. Now that I have what I need, the DEA will run a sting operation and I’ll be leaving. I was never meant to stay here permanently.”

“Oh.”

It’s the only thing that gets past my numb lips while my mind whirls so fast it makes me dizzy. At first, I’m just trying to take it in, to understand, to fit the pieces together.

It just feels like I’ve been looking through a window all this time, not realizing it was smudged and tinted, and what I thought I saw through it wasn’t real.

But now the dirt is washed away, letting me see clearly.

What’s on the other side looks completely alien.

And in that glass, I see my reflection.

I’m an idiot.

I’m a fool.

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