Page 55 of The Sniper

His hand followed the slope of my waist, finding bare skin there, fingers curling slow and reverent. My body still ached from earlier—from grief, from need—but the ache was different now. Calmer. Deeper.

His mouth found my neck, warm and slow, and I turned toward him just enough for our lips to meet again—less frantic this time. Less desperate. More like a question.

And when I kissed him back, it wasn’t to forget.

It was to remember I was still here. Still alive. Still capable of feeling something that wasn’t hollow.

His hand slid between my thighs, gentle and sure, and I let my legs fall open with a soft, broken sigh.

16

NOAH

Idropped Hallie Mae off at her apartment, the truck’s engine idling low as she climbed out, her silhouette tantalizing me.

She didn’t look back—just slipped inside, the door clicking shut, leaving me alone with the hum of the road and a hollow I couldn’t name.

I pulled away, the Lowcountry stretching out dark and quiet, and it hit me—hard, like a slug to the chest—I was lonelier than I’d ever been without her.

The thought landed wrong, heavy, and I gripped the wheel tighter, trying to shake it.

Didn’t work.

Her absence was a hole, raw and nagging, chewing at the edges of my mind as the pines leaned in, their shadows clawing across the pavement.

I’d never felt this before—this ache, this pull toward someone who wasn’t just a body or a mark.

Hallie Mae wasn’t a mission, wasn’t a target, but she’d gotten under my skin, deep, and I didn’t know how to cut her out.

Didn’t want to.

My mind drifted, unbidden, to Mom—her face blurry now, faded by years, just a ghost of a smile and hands that smelled like dish soap.

She’d left when I was a kid, no note, no goodbye, just an empty porch swing creaking in the wind on Sullivan’s Island.

My brothers had tried to hold it together, raising me with rough hands and rougher words, but the hole she left never closed.

Then Dad—Byron Dane—gone, too, his death a shadow that hung over us, his mysterious billions a chain I’d never wanted.

I’d spent my life running from both—Mom’s absence, Dad’s legacy—chasing blood and bullets across deserts and jungles, thinking I could outrun the quiet.

Afghanistan, Ethiopia, the Indonesia—places where life was cheap and death was clean.

I’d stacked bodies higher than I could count, warlords and traffickers, men who’d begged for mercy I didn’t give.

Never felt a thing after—no guilt, no weight.

Just the next mission, the next kill.

But her—Hallie Mae—she’d cracked something open, let light into places I’d kept dark.

In my bed, her grief and need burning through us both, I’d felt it—joy, sharp and fleeting, like a blade catching sunlight.

I imagined …

Her laugh at dinner, soft against the hum of Shem Creek.

Her weight in my lap on that dock, her lips opening under mine.

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