Page 45 of Fractured Allegiance
Another light clicks on, two windows to the left. She’s moved into another room. I lose sight of her completely.
I don’t move.
Minutes stretch. The city doesn't breathe out here—it holds. Every car horn or slamming door from blocks away feels like a knife dropped on a hard floor.
And then—
Her shadow returns.
Closer now. She steps into frame again, one arm crosses over her body like she's hugging herself, but it might just be instinct.
The sheer curtain flutters. Maybe the window’s cracked open. Maybe not.
She doesn’t know I’m here.
But my body feels like she does.
My fingers curl against my thighs. I should walk away. Log the time, log the pattern, report back.
Instead, I stare.
She shifts again, and for one fleeting moment, her head turns, as if she senses something or someone. A presence.
I stay completely still.
Her hand lifts, just barely. As if she’s simply adjusting her hair. Or maybe she’s about to yank her curtains closed. But she doesn’t. The window remains uncovered. I watch her turn away.
Transfixed, I stay longer than I know I should.,, Long enough to feel it. A shift within me, anything but subtle. A primal territorialism.
Not because I want to own her.
Because I already do.
Not physically. Not tactically. But something deeper… something harder to undo. The kind of pull you don’t namebecause once you do, it stops being a weakness and starts becoming a vow.
She doesn’t belong to Drazen.
And she won’t be left in this alone.
The walk back to my apartment takes twenty-three minutes.
Fifteen if I took the subway. Nine if I drove. But I don’t. I take every back alley, every cut-through, every dead-end street that lets me move without being seen. Not because I’m hiding from the Bureau, or Drazen, or anyone else who’d like a piece of me.
I’m hiding from the way I feel when I walk away from her.
There’s a rage in it. A hunger with no mouth.
Inside the apartment, everything is where I left it. Gun on the table. Cleaning cloth folded. Surveillance maps stacked in order by quadrant. But none of it feels like it matters anymore.
I drop my coat. It lands in a heap that doesn’t belong here.
I stare at it too long.
Naomi’s flash drive is still next to the Glock. I pick it up, roll it between my fingers. I could plug it in. Could listen to my own breathing through every rooftop mic and window static. But I already know what I’ll hear.
Nothing useful.
Just my obsession replayed in surround sound.
