Page 53 of Rivals & Revenge

An uneasy feeling slithered through my stomach as I opened the folded slip of paper, recognizing the handwriting from Connor's abduction note.

"Naughty boy. Since you have time for games. I am cutting your remaining time in half. Six hours have passed, and now only threeremain. Tick-tock." I read aloud, crumpling the note into a tight ball, before throwing it toward the fireplace. For once, I didn't pay enough attention to notice if I made the shot. I didn't fucking care at this point.

"This might be good." Tierney said, her brows pinched. Her eyes focused somewhere far away as she worked through the puzzle.

"Good isn't a word I would use. Pretty sure Connor would agree."

"Right. No. Good was—well, a poor choice of words. But—they started this by putting out the order on me and drawing you out. Now they are cutting the timeframe—"

"Yeah. I know. I've been following along too." I replied, arching my brow.

She swatted against my bare chest. "they didn't cut it because we messed around with the order. They cut it because the 12 hours came with the expectation of us fighting two enemies."

"Fuck." I swore, raking my hand through my hair.

"Yeah, fuck." she nodded, glancing back toward the kitchen.

"Look, dinner's ready. You feed the dogs and call Jax. I'll make you a plate and we can talk it over while we eat."

I nodded along with her words. It wasn't like I had any better ideas, anyway. I did as she said, my body on auto-pilot, not really processing any of it.

"So, what do we know?" She said, spearing a carrot and popping it in her mouth.

"Jax said the encrypted file he was fighting with, the one that attacked his system when he downloaded the image. He said it's a map of the city set over a weird grid pattern. It comes up with a prompt. He thinks when we find the first clue, it will contain something we can enter to get more info from the map."

"What. The. Fuck."

"He also narrowed the search area down based on the criteria we sent. There are still two good sized areas to search—"

"I'm not good at knowing the right thing to say. If you're looking for a sarcastic comment, then I'm your girl."

We shared a quiet laugh. "A smart guy I know told me that food is fuel. So we finish eating, then split up and search those two areas."

I shook my head, flipping my hand over, so it captured hers. "No splitting up. We do this together."

She nodded, offering me a small smile. "Two assassins are better than one."

"Something like that."

We finished our meal in silence, both of us mentally preparing ourselves, slipping into work mode. Any conversation about whatever was happening between us had been tabled, pushed to the side in favor of more important matters.

That twisting in my gut returned, souring the food the moment it touched my stomach. If it had just been me, I would have thrown it in the trash and went to work on an empty stomach. But I knew if I did that, Tierney would follow suit and she needed to eat. She was still injured and her thin frame couldn't heal without protein and vitamins to fuel her body.

In short, I did it for her. I ate every bite. My stomach roiled, protesting every morsel, but I swallowed them with a smile—for her.

Chapter 30

TIERNEY

"It's later." I prodded as we stepped out of Ahren's truck.

He spun on his heel, confusion darkening his eyes. "Uh-huh. And?"

"You said you would tell me about the broker later."

"Oh, that." he laughed, his shoulders relaxing. "I called in a favor to Henri. He's still in good standing, so I asked him to create a distraction, something that would get her out of the house for a bit."

"So..." I started, kicking at a small rock as my voice trailed off. Fuck. I didn't want to sound whiny and insecure.

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