Page 57 of The Ghost Assassin

He sighs. “Send him to the school. After you catch this killer.”

“About that. I’m going to need you to connect me with Ghost again.”

“He’s not going to show up.”

“I need to find him.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Then I’ll lure him out.”

“How?”

“I have to figure out the next hit, and considering there were two in twenty-four hours, logically, if there’s another target—which Ghost claims there is—”

“He doesn’t lie. There’s another target.”

“I don’t have much time.”

“We don’t have much time.” He shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it on the chair. “We need this out of our lives. Tell me how to help.”

On the surface, it’s him being an amazing husband, coming together with me in all things. But I know Kane. He has a mammoth problem to solve with his father rising from the dead, and he’s not himself. Normally, he’d be sitting in the chair, working through it, while I solve my crime. He’s in avoidance mode, and I’ve never seen this side of him. Ever. Either he truly has no answer and just can’t deal with that fact at all, or, more likely—because this is Kane, after all—he knows how he’s fixing this problem, and he doesn’t want to tell me. It’s that bad of a solution. That dangerous of a solution.

Chapter Forty-Three

I wake with a dry mouth and an aching neck to realize I’m on the floor of Purgatory, next to Kane, with his arm under me. I moan and roll over only to eye the clock on my desk and realize it’s 7:00 a.m. “Kane,” I murmur. “Do you have to go to work?”

“I think it’s Saturday.”

I push to my knees and realize he’s wide awake, one hand under his head. “You think it’s Saturday?”

“It’s Saturday.”

“How long have you been awake?”

“About an hour. I was thinking about your case.”

“What about my case?”

“You can drive between Washington and New York in four hours, but with traffic it’s five. A chopper ride would be the easiest route. Maybe Ghost didn’t seek you out. Maybe you surprised him.” He sits up and if his arm is asleep, which it almost has to be, he ignores it. “Then he fed you all that crap about handling this for you to justify his next payday.”

“I don’t think so. I believed what he said, and I don’t believe anyone. He got really close to me, like he wanted me to see his face.”

“You’ve seen it before.”

“Not this close. Not like this.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s like he welcomed me to study him, to really get to know every line of his face. I could get with a sketch artist, and we’d have a composite drawing to hunt him. He knows that. It’s like he was showing me he trusts me, like he believes I won’t turn on him. Which I will, and then he’ll turn on me and try to kill me. They all try. That’s my life. Bad people want to kill me, and I kill them.”

“Those bad people you killed are not Ghost.” His mood is as sharp as one of the blades I favor when facing my enemies. “What else happened?”

“We drew on each other.”

“He drew on you?” he presses.

“After I drew on him.”

---