Page 81 of War Games

“I’m sorry it took me so long to come see you,” Siren murmurs, offering me a small smile.

“I . . .” I throw myself into her, crushing her as I wrap my arms around her slender body. Heavy tears stream down my face as my heart breaks a million times over.

Siren holds me, letting me get my tears out as they quickly morph into deep sobs. “It’s okay, Mills. Get it all out,” she says, her hand rubbing up and down my back, and for just a moment, I wonder if I’m going crazy. If my grief is forcing me to imagine the whole thing, but she’s really here. She’s alive, but that’s not possible because I saw her die on the footage. I saw the moment she took her final breath.

“You were dead,” I say into her shoulder.

“Yes,” she agrees.

My brows furrow, and I pull back, taking the tissues from her hand as I shamelessly try to wipe the tears from my face, only the second they’re gone, they’re replaced by new ones. “I don’t understand,” I say. “I watched you die. I saw your name appear on the death toll right under Reaper’s.”

“I know. I did die, right there next to Reaper. It was as real as it gets,” she tells me, pulling the neckline of her shirt aside andshowing me the angry scarring on her chest. “Shadow shot us, but she also saved us.”

I shake my head. “No. No, that’s not what happened.”

“She put the footage on a loop after she left the room. It was the only way. We were being watched so closely. With Graves, Reaper killed him in the hotel, and within six minutes, his name was already on the death toll. We had to move fast, and yes, I have to admit that Shadow surprised us, but she had one hell of a good plan. It needed to look real.”

“I’m not understanding.”

“After she shot us, she called for an ambulance, and as we laid in bed, slowly bleeding out, she looped all the feeds within the house. To you and to anyone watching, it looked as though we bled out on that bed. It looked as though we died. When in reality, the paramedics were already working on us.”

My brows furrow, and I shake my head, understanding what she’s saying but not believing a word of it because I saw her die. I saw every second of it and felt the grief tear through my chest.

“I’m right here, Mills,” she says, taking my hand and squeezing it. “We all are.”

Siren waves to a spot behind me, and I glance back over my shoulder seeing both Shadow and Reaper leaning against the hood of a black SUV. Reaper gives me a small smile and a chill sails down my spine. I watched this man fall in love with my best friend for a month, and despite seeing every part of him on those surveillance cameras, nothing could possibly prepare me for seeing him in the flesh. He’s simply terrifying.

As for Shadow, she looks guilty as shit.

“Wait. There’s so much I don’t get,” I say, looking back at Siren. “You said you died.”

“I did. Technically,” she tells me. “In the ambulance and again in the hospital. My heart gave out a few times, but I was revived. Same with Reaper.”

“Shit. But how though? The number one rule is to avoid hospitals and cops, and that would have brought both. Your identities—”

“It’s complicated,” she says, “and had it been my own plan, I probably would have done it differently, but our backs were against the wall, and we did whatever we had to do to get out of there. But we posed as the real homeowners of that house, claimed a murder/suicide gone bad, just like my parents, and while the cops were left with more questions than answers, it was enough for them to go on and not watch us so closely. Besides, the cops and FBI agents in Blue Springs were already so busy with the aftermath of War Games and all the bodies that came along with it, that ourincidenteasily slipped through the cracks.”

“Shit, Siren.”

“You’re telling me,” she mutters under her breath. “We slipped out of the hospital the second we were up for it and have had Shadow taking care of us this whole time.”

“Wow.”

“She’s incredible,” Siren says, glancing over my shoulder and smiling at the girl who I thought ripped my heart right out of my chest. “It had to be timed so well, and she pulled it off incredibly. I think she must have been planning it for a while.”

I let out a heavy breath and lean back against the bench, holding onto her hand in a death grip, terrified that she might just disappear and I’ll never get her back. “So what now?”

Siren fixes me with a heavy stare. “I want to come home, Mills. Seattle is where I belong. I want to go back to my apartment and start a life with Reaper and Shadow. I want to go back to work. I want to be here with you, but I can’t.”

I shake my head, not seeing the bigger picture. “Why?”

“The second our identities are flagged, we’ll have a bounty out on us that we can’t escape. The prize money Shadow won wouldlook like child’s play, and we’ll be hunted by the kind of people who make Reaper look like a fairytale. I can’t risk it, and the only way to avoid that is to take out the asshole behind War Games.”

I suck in a breath, my heart hammering in my chest, knowing exactly what she’s asking me. “I . . . I’ve tried, Siren. A million times. I’ve searched every corner of the web. He’s invisible.”

“Mills—”

“I’m sorry,” I say, tears filling my eyes. “You have no idea how desperately I wish I could help you, and you know I’m going to start searching the second I get home, but I’m not good enough. I can’t find him, no matter how hard I try, it’s not possible.”

---