Page 54 of Catching Fire

They could be jealous or die mad about it.

The two agents wrapped up the utterly bizarre and painful conversation. Watson put the tablet away and they stood, declaring the whole weird thing over.

“We'll be back,” she announced as the agents neared the front door to let themselves out. “We're monitoring you. Rossi and Verner are in their vehicle watching the house right now. The trackers aren’t like with Balero. These aren’t the only measure we’re taking. They're anaddedone.”

Seline’s voice stopped Watson before she went out the door. “Are you tracking Maggie and Sebastian?”

“Not yet, but they're our next stop.”

“Good.” Seline obviously relaxed at the thought.

The room felt empty as Watson and Decker left. Kalan turned to look at Seline. He was opening his mouth to say something when it occurred to him that for all the conversation they'd had, and everything he learned, no one seemed to have told the agents that Seline had a bigger plan than just swallowing the tracking pill.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Nothing had happened! It had been a week since she swallowed the first tracker. Well, nothing except that Seline slowly got more and more tense.

No bodies were found and she received no more notes. There was some speculation as to whether or not Sanders had finished for the round.

Seline both loved and hated that thought. Sanders tended to kill in clusters of four or five—at least that they knew of. So he might have quit—for now.

While she breathed easier at the thought that no one else would get murdered for a while, she understood it was the last part that was the most important. If they didn’t catch him, things only stoppedfor a while.

Which meant they would wait, get complacent, and Sanders could surprise them again. She couldn't have that. She couldn't wait out the rest of the semester, let alone into next year, wondering when she might get her job back or if they would simply let her go.

She'd worked endless hours in her lab at home, filling notebook after notebook with the experiments she'd run. She sent daily copies to Dr. Morales, and she would be ready to publish the results soon. But this wasn’t the research she was supposed to be spending her time on. She couldn’t pursue that entirely in her home lab. This setup had always been intended as a backup.

Still, she would write up the paper and submit it to journals for peer review in a desperate attempt to prove that she was still useful to the university.

Thankfully, Maggie and Sebastian had come over several times to have dinner. Though they were just friends visiting, those little shots of normalcy were the only thing keeping her from pulling her hair out.

As Watson and Decker had encouraged them to keep going about their lives, Seline had swallowed her third tracker that morning. She stood in the kitchen with her glass of water and stared blankly out the window. She didn’t know how much time passed before she heard the footsteps behind her.

Seline didn’t turn around, she didn’t have the emotional energy. “After Marina’s funeral today, I think you should move back to your own place.”

She braced for the onslaught. It would feel bad if he put up a fight, and it would feed bad if he didn’t.

“Are you serious?” Kalan’s voice wasn’t flat, but she couldn’t tell what it was.

Though she’d worked through a million options and was ready for each, she hadn’t been prepared for that question. “Yes. This situation is too strange. You probably have things to do in your own home. I haven’t had a moment to myself for weeks.”Ooof, that was too harsh. She turned around and faced him, braced against the very counter where he’d made her scream his name just a week ago. “I don’t know what our relationship really is …”

He offered a slow nod at that. Then he backed up a step. “Well, I’m sorry you don’t know that.”

Did he really think this was normal? “How can you figure anything out in a time like this? TheFBIpushed us together—that is not normal. Things are dangerous and stressful and I don’t even know what my own feelings are.”

He didn’t flinch, but she could see the exact moment her blow landed. She hadn’t meant to hurt him. Just to tell the truth. But she scrambled to cover. “I cannot express how grateful I am for you staying here and doing everything to keep me safe.”

But, in reality, no actual threats had been made against her. She received notes from a killer. He’d said hello to her several times in passing, but there was never any threat againsther.

“But you’re fine now.”

She shrugged. “They think he stopped, at least for a while.”

Merde, there were no right words for this.

“So, you don’t need me anymore because you believe you’re no longer in danger.”

The way he said it put a knife through her heart, too. Her throat constricted, and her shoulders ached. She’d put a rift between them and she hadn’t meant to. She just wanted … “I don’t mean it that way. I don’t want this to be over, I just want to know that what happens between us is real. I want to know that you went out with me because you wanted to, and not because the FBI said you needed to.”

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