Chapter 8 #3
He held onto that. Because he wasn’t going to ever give up the hope that one day she’d forgive him.
That one day they’d be together again. He couldn’t fathom a future without her in it because he’d lived that hell, and he almost didn’t survive life without her in it.
He was insanely jealous of the people who’d shared her time when he couldn’t be with her.
She was his, even though he had zero right to say that.
It was how he felt, and he’d learned long ago to acknowledge his feelings.
"Japan," he said, shifting ground. "We should talk about what we're walking into."
She nodded. "The compound will be different from what you remember … from what I remember."
"Yes. Personnel will have changed." He paused. "But the building layout shouldn’t have. And Kuro's patterns, his habits, those don't change. They never did."
"No," she agreed quietly. "They don't."
They both knew that from experience. Both had studied the old man's rhythms for years. Had learned to move around him the way water moves around stone.
The thought of going back, of standing in that compound again, weighed on him like an anchor holding him to the ocean floor. He suspected it sat the same way on her.
"We'll need to go in at night," he said. "The administrative building is separate from the main compound. If we time it right—"
"We time it around him." She looked up. "I know his schedule. His habits. He was predictable in ways he never realized."
"You were always better at reading him than I was."
"You were always better at getting past his security."
Something changed between them. Not much, but breathing became a little more comfortable, the way it used to be. The two of them planning an operation together, completing each other's tactical thinking without effort. Natural as breathing.
It had always been like that. From the first time Kuro had paired them together, they were two broken children who’d turned out to fit together in ways neither had expected.
"Dan."
He looked up.
She was watching him with an expression he couldn't fully read. Part wariness and part something else.
"Japan," she said carefully. "I need to know—" She stopped. Started again. "I need to know if you can hold a professional line when we're in the field. Or if this—" She gestured between them. "If this will compromise your judgment."
He thought about it honestly. About how it felt to sit across from her in this room. About the way his chest tightened every time she let her guard down for half a second. About years of missing her and wanting her from a distance and wanting …
Stop.
"My judgment has never been compromised by you," he said quietly. "The choices I made were calculated and deliberate. Everything I did, I did to protect you. That's not compromised judgment. That's the only thing I've ever been completely certain of."
As she held his gaze, he wished he could read her mind. Would she ever let him back in? What would she do if he pulled her into his arms and kissed her the way he wanted to? How would she react to him telling her that she was his world and still is?
"Okay," she said finally. Just that. Okay.
It wasn’t forgiveness or acceptance. But he'd take it.
She stood and pushed back from the table. "Once we’re approved, my organization will arrange transport.”
“How long?”
“Forty-eight hours or less."
He stood, too.
They were closer than they'd been since he made contact on the mission. Close enough that he could see the fine tension in her jaw. The way she held herself very still when she was working, so as not to feel anything.
He took a step back, offering her room.
"Where are you staying?" she asked.
The question was casual. Almost, but he thought he caught concern in her voice. Maybe it was wishful thinking … "Close. Somewhere temporary." The car he’d rented with a stolen credit card, the one with plates from a similar car, was his home for now.
She nodded. "Are you safe?"
The question surprised him. Not the professional version of are you compromised, Is your cover intact, but the human version. Are you okay?
His eyebrows rose in surprise. He hadn't been asked that in a very long time.
"Yes," he said. "I'm safe."
She held his eyes for a moment longer than necessary.
Then she moved toward the door.
"Raven."
She stopped. Didn't turn.
"Thank you. For leaving the stone." A long pause with just the wind outside and the distant cry of a crow.
"Don't make me regret it," she said.
And then she was gone.
* * *
Dan stood alone in the farmhouse.
The comms array hummed softly in the silence.
Then Ring's voice came through the speaker, quiet and stripped of its usual relentless energy. "For what it's worth. She's never laughed like that in a briefing. In all the time I’ve worked with her, I've never heard her laugh like that in front of the bosses."
A pause.
"Just thought you should know."
The line went quiet.
Dan looked at the door she'd walked through.
Don't make me regret it.
He turned the words over.
She'd left the stone.
After everything, after years of grief and silence and rebuilding herself without him, she'd stood on her doorstep and looked at that black stone and made a choice. She'd let him back in.
He was going to be worthy of that.
Whatever it cost him.