Page 9 of Harbinger

“What are you doing here still?” I ask because I’m not sure what else I should say.

“I told you I was watching you through the night.” He barely looks up from the stove, concentrating on what he’s doing.

He wears the same clothes he had on the day prior, but this morning, his hair is disheveled, and his black shirt is wrinkly. It’s cute.

“Okay, well,” I look around, spotting Shiloh on the couch. His ears are back as he watches Ronan move around the kitchen. “I don’t think we need protecting anymore.”

He puts the pan of eggs down with a clank, his eyes moving up slowly to meet mine. They’re hooded, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s annoyed or he likes what he sees. “Well, I was told to stay here and watch you. I think you just have to deal with it for now.”

“What makes you so sure that I won’t call the police on you right now?” My chest puffs out, and I cross my arms over it.

“Well,” he starts as he returns to work on breakfast. “I assume you’d rather not spend the next couple of days in jail as they question you about thousands of lives lost,” he says without looking back up.

“How do you know I had any involvement at all? Who would be capable of that?”

I don’t quite remember what I told him the night before and whether he knows the full extent of what I know about my parents. In reality, it’s not that much. I’ve worked incredibly hard to forget a lot of it, and what I do remember was still a long time ago. A lot has happened since then.

A lot of terrible things, clearly.

But what type of terrible things would make me have to go into some kind of witness protection, I’m not quite sure.

Is it still witness protection if I’m being protectedfromthe FBI?

“I still don’t know who you are or who you work for,” I tell him as I take a seat at the counter. The cold metal of the chairs bites into my exposed thighs.

“You don’t need to know that just yet,” he says as he grabs two slices of toast from my toaster, placing one each on the two plates in front of him.

“Why not?”

“It’s just better if you didn’t know,” he shrugs.

“Okay.”

Handing me a plate of breakfast, I eye it, not sure if I should eat.

“If I wanted you dead, I had every opportunity in the world to kill you while you slept,” he says, his voice monotone.

“Yeah, but it would have been obvious I was killed. You could just slip me something here, and no one would know.”

Ronan rolls his eyes. “That’s not how it works. I could have made it look like an accident last night, too.”

I take a forkful of eggs, eyeing them warily before taking a bite. “I still don’t trust you.”

He takes a bite of bacon. “The feeling is mutual.”

And yet, somehow, out of everything we’ve spoken about, out of all the words, that makes us both crack smiles.

A couple minutes of silence follows until Ronan sets his fork down. “It may kill me, but I want to apologize for last night. I know that you had nothing to do with your parents’ deaths, and you didn’t have anything to do with their, well, business. I just need to make sure you’re safe. I can’t really tell you why yet, which I understand makes things a little complicated,” his knuckles tap the counter twice as he looks at the ceiling, and I can practically see the gears turning in his pretty little head. He doesn’t know how to speak to me. “I just know that your parents weren’t in a great place when they passed away and that you’re a person of interest in, well, many things at the moment. There’s a lot of people who may want you dead.”

I decide to play stupid. “Why would anyone want me dead?”

“Why wouldn’t someone want you dead?” he asks me, his eyes burning holes into mine.

“Well, I’m not sure.”

“You’re the daughter of two of the most powerful people in this world. Two people who have used that power to hurt many people, Sydney. I understand that you haven’t had contact with them in a long time, but you have to understand the gravity of the situation and how many people wanted them dead. Now that they are, what better way to get revenge than to go after the daughter?”

“And why does law enforcement want me?”

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