Chapter 9
Raven could tell Guardian's private aircraft was not what Dan had expected.
Raven watched him board and take in the interior.
Her eyes followed the same path his took.
The soft leather seating, the polished wood trim, the quiet hum of systems that cost more than most people make in a lifetime.
She saw the slight adjustment in his expression. He was impressed.
Good, she thought. Let him see what I have. What I’ve been entrusted with. What exists on the other side of the life you left me to.
After settling into a seat by the window, she pulled up her tablet and pretended to review files she'd already memorized.
The pilots were invisible behind their closed door, professional and discreet in the way Guardian's staff always were. The cabin was theirs alone.
Ring's voice came through her laptop before they'd finished taxiing.
"Preliminary cross-reference complete. Dan’s operational data checks against forty-three confirmed incidents across eleven countries. I'm building the full network map now, but I need—"
"Ring." She almost groaned his name.
"—just a few clarifying points about the cell reconstitution timeline in—"
"Ring."
A pause. "Fine. I'll send it to your tablet. But I want it noted that I have significant questions that remain—"
"Noted."
"—unanswered, and the Japan trip will be considerably more productive if we go in with a complete intelligence picture rather than a partial—"
"Ring."
"Yes?"
"We're taking off."
"Right. Yes. Safe travels." Ring paused a nanosecond. "Tell Dan I have seventeen follow-up questions."
Dan’s voice came from across the aisle, dry and unhesitating. "Tell Ring the answers are in Japan."
A pause on the line that sounded almost like respect.
"Fair enough," Ring said. "Check in when you land."
The comm channel went quiet.
The plane lifted off the tarmac, climbing smoothly into the gray morning sky.
Raven looked at her tablet, and Dan looked out the window.
The tension was tight and hummed around them.
Dan was close, and that tension was caused by more than the mission.
It was caused by a chemistry that had been formulated long ago.
One that still reacted whenever they were close.
She’d loved him with all of her heart and had never stopped loving him, even as she’d mourned.
But now he was real, and she was hurt, confused, and in need of distance due to his admissions.
Only, she couldn’t obtain that space because of a threat she hadn’t known about and a journey they had to take together. Talk about a fucking catch twenty-two.
* * *
For the first hour, they worked. Maps spread across the small table between their seats.
Satellite imagery of the region surrounding Kuro's compound.
Flight paths, ground transport options, and approach routes.
The practical architecture of an operation that needed to be seamless and get them in and out of Japan without killing Kuro—or anyone else for that matter.
This I can do, Raven thought. This is safe.
Mission planning had structure and rules.
It kept everything else at arm's length. It kept her pain and her longing at bay. She wanted answers. She wanted to scream at him, to rage against what he’d done, but that couldn’t happen now.
So, she pretended she was in control of her emotions.
She pretended that his closeness didn’t make her want to fall into his arms. She’d gotten good at pretending while he was dead. She could fake it while he was alive.
Even so, as they worked, she watched him intently.
Dan was methodical across the table from her.
He'd developed operational habits in the years of solo work that were slightly different from hers.
They were more conservative in some ways, more aggressive in others.
She noticed where they diverged and filed it away.
Knowing how the other person thinks was how you stayed alive, Kuro had told them once.
She'd spent years trying to forget not only how Dan Miller thought but also how he moved, how he sounded, and what he did to her when he looked at her and his gaze reached her soul. Obviously, you haven’t succeeded.
They moved through the planning without friction.
That was the thing about their training, even after all this time and with everything that lay broken between them, the tactical wavelength was still there.
She'd start a thought, and he'd complete it.
He'd identify a problem, and she'd have already mapped the solution.
This was comfortable. Like breathing or closing your eyes in the warmth of the sun’s rays. And she hated herself for thinking that, but it was her truth. By hour two, the maps were exhausted.
Ring had sent his cross-referenced files. She'd reviewed them, forwarded the relevant sections to Dan, and received his annotations back within minutes. They were thorough and perceptive, and he'd caught two things Ring had missed.
She'd tell Ring that later because Ring's mega ego didn't need the challenge, and watching Ring try to process the idea that someone had out-thought him would encourage him to talk more. So not going to happen.
Setting her tablet down, she looked out the window. The cloud cover at thirty thousand feet was gray and white and endless.
Dan was looking out his own window, his reflection faint in the glass.
She studied it without meaning to. The close clipped beard.
The lines at the corners of his eyes that hadn't been there before.
The way he held himself … He was still and contained, like a man who'd spent years in spaces where any movement could be the wrong one.
He's been so alone.
Good, a part of her that was still angry chimed in. He’s suffered, too, acknowledged the part of her that wasn't.
She reached for her tablet again.
"I missed you so much."
His voice was quiet. Not dramatic. Not a bid for a response. Just said simply like he'd been holding them for a long time and had finally put them down.
She went very still and didn't look at him. Outside, the clouds moved, and she watched, hoping that what she should say to that would float by. It didn’t.
"Dan—"
"I'm not asking for anything," he said. "I'm not trying to—" He stopped. "I just needed to say it out loud. To you. Not to the version of you I watched in the debrief, who I didn’t really recognize. But to you, right here."
She narrowed her eyes and turned to look at him then. "You said you didn't know I'd joined my organization until recently."
"I didn't know the specifics. But I knew you were in Virginia. I knew you'd found a place to belong." He held her gaze. "I've been in the country four times in the last three years. One time, I found you."
"You found me before the night in Niger?"
"Yes. I was following someone I believed might be an operative. We were in Arlington. I saw you … or at least I thought it was you. I broke from my surveillance and followed you. I thought you’d seen me, too. You looked back suddenly … but you kept walking."
“So, the drone was a lie.” She tightened her body, ready to fight.
“No. I didn’t track you to your home that night for a multitude of operational reasons. Not having a car to follow you was one.”
"So, you watched me without making contact."
"Yes."
The anger she'd been managing since Niger moved through her in a slow, complicated wave. Not the hot rage from the doorway conversation. Her emotion now was cooler. More considered.
"Tell me what you saw," she said, her voice steady.
He seemed to weigh the request but answered, "You went to a bar and met up with what I assume are your coworkers or friends.
Three men. You were happy, and you laughed at something one of them said.
The kind of laugh that shakes your whole body.
" He paused. "I'd never seen you laugh like that.
Not at the compound. Kuro didn't exactly encourage it. "
He paused.
"You looked—" He stopped.
Yeah, he wasn’t allowed to stop there. "What?"
"Alive. You looked completely, fully alive."
She took those words in and turned them over, examining them.
"Was that the only time you watched me?" she asked.
"No. Two weeks ago, I saw you. I was already tracking your target, like I told you.
When I saw your exfil setting up, I moved quickly.
I watched you that night." He looked at the window.
"I watched you work. The way you moved through that environment.
What you've become. I wasn't surprised. But I was … "
"What?"
"Proud," he said quietly. "And devastated. In equal measure."
Those words affected her differently than she expected. She wondered what it cost him to say that. To admit he'd been close enough to watch, far enough away not to be noticed. To witness the life she'd built and choose to stay invisible in it.
She thought about being angry at him for it, and she was. She definitely was. But underneath the anger was something else, emotion she wasn't ready to examine too closely at thirty thousand feet.
"You could have found a way," she said. "At some point, you could have—"
"I could have tried. Yes."
"Then why didn't you?"
Turning from the window, he met her gaze.
"Because the time I saw you, you were laughing.
Really laughing. And you looked whole. Or close enough to whole that I couldn't tell the difference from where I was standing.
" He paused. "I thought … if I come back, if I put myself back into her world, I could break that. I could take away the life she built."
She stared at him. "So, you decided," she said. Her voice was very even, and that took one hell of a lot of determination. "Again. Without asking me. You looked at my life from the outside and decided what was best for me."
"Yes."
"Dan." She leaned forward slightly. "Let me be extremely clear about this."