ELEVEN
Stina wasn’t cooking.
She was trying not to come apart.
Rome knew it the second he stepped into the kitchen and saw the cookbook open on the counter, ingredients scattered across every available surface and a pile of herbs he could only call pulverized instead of chopped.
She stood in the middle of the mess with a knife in her grasp and an expression that told him this had nothing to do with food.
He studied her from the doorway, taking in the tilt of her jaw and the way she glared at the spice jars like she was going to start throwing them.
While he watched, she squared up to the cutting board and placed an onion on top. She lifted the knife, letting it hover for a moment, then let it fall with a lethal chop.
The onion halves rolled apart.
“If you’re here to lodge a complaint about my methods, you can eat one of those…what do you call them? MREs.” She didn’t glance up when she spoke.
His mouth quirked upward and he stepped into the kitchen. “And I thought you were only a threat to onions.”
She slanted a look at him, and he approached, careful not to crowd her.
The scent of garlic, lemon and whatever was simmering in a pot filled the space. But beneath it was the sharper edge of tension.
Her shoulders lifted too high. Her movements had too much force behind them.
He leaned on the counter a few feet away from her. “You taking over the kitchen permanently?”
“Somebody should.” Chop, chop, chop.
“I’m not arguing. At the risk of sounding sexist, Sierra eats a lot better with you and Jolie here.”
That earned him a side-eye. “You’re not arguing? We always argue.”
“Tell me one time we’ve argued.”
“Did you hit your head today?” She scanned his face for bumps and bruises and found nothing but a grin.
Normally he’d rise to the bait she dangled—he loved arguing with Stina as much as taking her to bed. But he stood close enough to see the tightness around her mouth and the faint shadows under her eyes.
“What are you making?”
“I don’t know yet.” She brought the knife down with enough force to cause serious harm to the wooden cutting board.
“Is that how recipes work?”
“It’s how this one works.”
At the risk of bodily harm, he took a step closer. “Stina.”
She slammed the knife on the counter and turned to him. “Do you have a reason for coming in here and bothering me, Rome?” Her chin dipped a little.
There it was.
The crack.
She didn’t cry or try to escape, but she gave him a small peek into her true state of mind.
“I just came in to see you.” He inched closer.
She shot him a warning look. “If you ever bothered to show me the nice big-brother side you’re known for around here, I might let you stick around.”
He moved in. “You don’t want me to be your big brother, Stina.”
She gripped the edge of the counter as if she needed it to stay on her feet. Or keep from throwing herself in his arms.
Maybe that was just his ego talking, but he recognized the signs—the light flush beneath her skin and her breaths coming faster.
She tipped her head to meet his stare. “You think you know what I want?”
He closed his hands on her waist and closed the gap between them. “I’m confident I do.”
Her laugh came out sharp and humorless. “Then are you going to give me answers? Because that’s what I want, Rome. Answers.”
The question lay between them, but he didn’t move away.
Stina folded her arms, the gesture more defensive than defiant. “What is going on with the threat? Who’s after us? Are they after me more than Jolie? Am I ever getting my life back, or am I supposed to live down in this tunnel forever while everyone tells me to be patient?”
His jaw tightened.
She wasn’t done.
“How long am I supposed to do this? No phone, no work, no life. No answers. Every time I think I understand one piece of the puzzle, three more holes open with nothing to fill them. The restaurant guy. Jolie’s kidnapper.
Dead agent. Guys chasing us through Chicago.
Now I’m supposed to just chop onions and pretend this is normal? ”
He released a slow breath. “No one expects you to think this is normal.”
Truth was, he didn’t have an answer, and that bothered him more than he wanted her to see. She’d been here for weeks and they didn’t seem to know much more than they had the day he forced her to wear the blackout hood.
Rome was good at spotting patterns and making them work. But he couldn’t make sense of Stina’s case within the bigger picture.
He looked into her eyes and told her the only thing he knew. “I’m not going to lie to you.”
“Refreshing.” She pushed an errant curl off her face.
“We don’t know who’s behind this yet.”
Her expression flickered. She glanced down at the mangled herbs. “Great.” Sarcasm didn’t fill her tone—exhaustion did.
His attention shifted, and he stopped seeing the mess in the kitchen and started looking at the pattern.
The photo. The agent. The restaurant. Jolie’s kidnapping. Every piece was connected but the ties weren’t strong enough.
“Maybe there is more.”
Her head came up. “What?”
“Walk me through the last few weeks before the restaurant incident.”
She blinked. “Which restaurant incident? The dead guy? The pizza guy? There are too many restaurant incidents now.”
“The dead guy.”
A faint grimace passed over her beautiful face. “I went to work. I came home. I worried about bills. I occasionally made terrible decisions involving iced coffee. Very exciting.”
“Did anything change in your routine?”
“No.”
“Think.”
Her eyes widened. He’d told her to think before, during the questioning.
“Did anyone show up in a weird place? As an example, your landlord started coming into the restaurant and going to the coffee shop you frequent. That sort of thing.”
Her brows pinched and she shook her head.
“Anyone at work ask about you? About Jolie?”
“Customers always talk, so do coworkers. Especially when Jolie went missing.”
“Did anyone know details they shouldn’t know?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it again with a frown.
He kept going. “Same car near your apartment or the restaurant?”
“Chicago has a lot of cars.”
“Anybody hanging around outside when you closed?”
“Chicago always has men standing around pretending they’re not creepy.”
Her answer made his lips twitch but he remained solemn as he fired off another question. “Customer more interested in you than the food?”
“That’s half my section every Friday night.”
“Did anyone ask if you always close alone? If you took out the trash? If you walked home?”
Her expression shifted—it was small but he saw it.
“Stina?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t know. Maybe.”
Everything inside him sharpened.
“Any deliveries you didn’t order? Flowers? Messages? Hang-up calls? Weird DMs?”
“No.”
“Did you ever get the feeling you were being watched but talked yourself out of it?”
She didn’t answer.
The kitchen seemed to shrink around them.
Deeper in the base, a door shut and voices drifted through the corridor, muffled by concrete. She stared at the counter as if the answer might be written between the scattered ingredients.
“I’m not asking if you can prove it.” He pitched his voice low. “I’m asking if your instincts ever told you something was off.”
Her throat worked. “I thought I was being paranoid.”
He didn’t move.
“Chicago is full of weird people,” she said, but the words lacked conviction. “Customers stare. Men stare. Sometimes if you smile, it means you like them. Sometimes they wait around too long after close.”
He waited.
She dragged in a breath and let it out slowly.
“There was a guy.”
Every muscle in his body locked down.
“Tell me.”
“I don’t know if it’s anything.”
“Tell me anyway.”
She reached for the towel beside the cutting board and twisted it between her hands.
“I just remembered. That black car I told you about—outside my apartment. I saw it outside Antonio’s once.
Maybe twice. Driver wore a dark coat and a baseball cap.
He was leaning against a black car like he was waiting for someone. He kept looking toward the windows.”
Rome stayed silent. If he pushed too hard, she’d retreat.
“One of the busboys made a joke about it,” she continued. “Said my boyfriend was waiting again. I told him I didn’t have one, and he said the guy had been there the night before too.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t know. A couple weeks before everything happened? Maybe longer.”
“Did you see him anywhere else?”
She pressed her lips together.
Then nodded.
“Near my apartment.”
The words were exactly what he expected and still managed to make his blood run cold.
“Same guy?”
“I thought so.” She looked up at him then, and the uncertainty in her eyes cut deeper than fear would have. “I didn’t know. I still don’t. He didn’t always wear the same coat. He was across the street, pretending to look at his phone. When I noticed him, he walked away.”
“How many times?”
“Once for sure. Maybe twice. I remember thinking he had the same hat. Then I told myself that was stupid because a million men own black baseball caps.”
It couldn’t be the agent—she’d seen his body and said she didn’t recognize him.
Rome’s mind connected the final pieces.
The photograph on her kitchen table hadn’t been taken by chance. It had been earned through weeks of surveillance.
Whoever left it had watched her long enough to learn exactly where she’d be—and when.
His phone vibrated before he could say anything.
“Dammit,” he bit off.
Cannon’s projected into his ear. “War room. Now.”
Stina went still.
He held back a sigh. “Copy.”
He didn’t move right away.
Neither did she.
Her fingers curled around the towel. “You have to go.”
The flatness in her voice made leaving worse.
He stepped closer, unable to stop himself this time. “Listen to me. You’re safe here. Try to stay busy.”
Her mouth twitched without humor. “You just want me in the kitchen.”
“This isn’t a joke.”
“I know.”
That quiet answer bothered him more than any argument.
Rome lifted a hand, then dropped it before he touched her face in the middle of the kitchen and gave them both another problem. “We’re finishing this conversation.”
“When?”