Page 70 of The Hard Way

“I don’t care. I think you want to hurt Hank. I think you feel like it will end Mahfoud when you hurt Hank, and that it will end your seeing that guard’s eyes when you close your own, but it won’t.”

“Are you playing psychologist now?”

“Yes, and I won’t let you give up on the high road, Odin.”

“Sometimes you need one person strong enough to absorb the darkness. Of all of us, I’m that.”

I looked at him, horrified. In a strange way, he was right—at least in that he could do it, that he knew how. Odin was offering a gift—his own soul for my sister. But we’d lose him—I knew that as sure as I knew the sun would rise. We’d lose him just as he’d lose himself. “Fuck that, we’re in a marriage now. You don’t get to leave or go dark. Period.”

“You’ll survive.”

“Are you out of your mind? No.”

“You think you have a choice?”

“Odin. No!”

He turned away. The wind whistled through the tree branches. “A man like that, so careful. If there’s evidence, we won’t find it without his help. I know it. They both know it. They just won’t tell you it.”

I squeezed his hand—hard. “Promise me, you won’t go after him directly.”

“I won’t make that promise.”

I felt nervous and so scared. “Promise for twenty-four hours. Something might come out of the break-in.”

He stiffened.

What?Would he not even promise twenty-four hours? “Somebody’s here,” he whispered.

“Are you trying to get out of promising?”

He shook his head.

I stiffened.Shit. Had somebody followed us here? We were pretty much sitting ducks up on that platform.

Odin pulled out his Sig.

“Promise me. A full twenty-four hours.”

He gave me a look.

“Do it.”

“Fine. I promise.” He stretched out on his belly, looking down through a gap in the boards.

“What do you see?”

“Nothing. Yet.” He directed me to stretch out on the edge of the platform, the part covered with the most wood, just in case shooting started, but of course he didn’t say that.

“You think somebody’s going to just light this thing up?”

“If it’s Denko? Yes.” he said.

“You think it’s Denko? I thought we ruled him out.”

“We never rule out Denko, goddess. And I’ve felt somebody out there, watching. It could’ve been Hank all this time. He has to know there are insurance investigators in town. I’d watch us if I were him…”

“But it could be Denko.”

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