Chapter 13 #2
"Completely." Raven was quiet for a half step. "She built a good life. The Scroll would have probably destroyed it if she weren’t on board. I gave her a contact number if anything suspicious happens."
Noor had built a life she could be proud of.
Her business was helping people. She was leading a life outside of the Shinobi, outside of the confines of what that compound had framed for her.
God, he wanted that. With Emi … Raven, the woman he’d always loved.
With Guardian, with time … he smiled. For the first time in what seemed like forever, he was filled with hope.
He was filled with optimism, not only for the love he had with Emi, but the future he might have with her at Guardian.
It was a seed of a thought. A hope he’d keep alive, but dreaming seemed possible now.
With Emi in his life, everything was possible.
* * *
Dubai defied logic. The people who’d built the city had decided the desert was simply a detail to be managed and had managed it with towers of glass and steel. The skyscrapers caught the Gulf light and threw it back at the sky in pieces.
Their layover was fourteen hours. The air crew needed mandated rest, and Guardian had selected this city for that purpose. Ring had arranged separate rooms at a hotel that occupied the top floors of a tower that seemed to be in architectural competition with the sky itself.
Dan stood at the window of his room and looked at the city spreading below.
The Creek glittering silver in the evening light, the Burj Khalifa standing in the distance like a testament to what the engineers knew was possible.
He swung his attention to the old dhows moving across the water with the same unhurried purpose they'd had for centuries, long before the towers had arrived.
Along the marina, lights cascaded down the sides of buildings and pooled on the water below.
Sheikh Zayed Road cut through it all like a river of headlights, twenty lanes of the city going about its evening with complete commitment.
His Guardian issued phone vibrated with a message from Raven.
Dinner? There's a restaurant on the 122nd floor of the Burj Khalifa. Ring made a reservation.
He stared at that for a moment.
Ring had made a reservation. Maybe he wasn’t as possessive of Raven as he’d originally thought.
He typed back: Give me ten minutes.
She answered: I’ll meet you at the elevator.
* * *
From the restaurant windows, Dan gazed at the expanse of Dubai as it spread in every direction.
The Gulf was visible to the east, a dark presence beyond the city's light.
To the west, the desert waited, completely unmoved by everything the city had built on its edge. Between those two, Dubai blazed.
Raven had changed into a dark dress, simple, the kind of thing that required nothing because she already had everything.
Her hair was down, and the earpiece was gone.
She’d told him in the elevator that Ring was off for the evening.
He smiled because her tone was that of someone who’d issued an order and expected it to be followed.
He sat across from her, and the city glittered over a hundred floors below. He looked at her across from him. Years of convincing yourself this wasn't necessary. Years of telling yourself you were fine. Look at what you gave up.
"Ring chose well," he said.
Raven snorted quietly. "Ring chooses everything well. It's insufferable."
"Do you ever tell him that?"
"Constantly." She looked at the menu. "He takes it as a compliment."
He smiled at that. “He would.”
Raven looked up at him. “Right? I knew you’d understand.”
The food came in courses. The kitchen was doing something ambitious with fresh seafood and unique spice combinations that tasted amazing.
Dan realized that somewhere between the first and second courses, the feeling between them had changed.
The operational context that had been present in every conversation since the day he'd appeared on her doorstep receded. It wasn’t gone.
Things like that never completely leave people like them.
But it was quieter. Rather like the way background music was present.
You heard it but didn’t really pay attention to it.
She told him about the years. Not the missions.
Of course, those were classified, and they were professional enough not to discuss anything that could be overheard, but she did give him the shape of her past, the scope of her missions.
As he listened to her, he understood that building a life inside an organization that asked everything of you and gave back something that was meaningful …
wasn’t quite enough. He understood the loneliness of being exceptionally good at an art that required you to be invisible, and he told her about his years alone.
He talked about the cities and the long stretches of operational solitude that had felt like self-discipline until they'd started feeling like self-deprivation.
“How did you keep yourself sane?” she asked as she took a drink of her wine.
“By tracking them and building the picture of what was happening piece by piece. I told myself this was my purpose even when that felt thin as air.”
He didn't tell her that the other thing that had kept him going was her. He didn't need to. She already knew. She'd always known.
"You actually enjoy the work," she said. Not an accusation, but an observation. The kind that came from someone who'd been watching carefully.
"I enjoy doing it well." He considered the distinction. "I enjoy solving things. They’re the most complex problem I’ve ever encountered."
She lifted a finger and pointed at him. “Until now. Now, you have Ring."
"Ring is—" He paused and chose honesty. "Ring is extraordinary.” He lifted a hand and placed it over his heart. “I want it on record. He's genuinely extraordinary. In the most obnoxious and pushy way possible."
She laughed.
It was the real one, not the controlled professional one, not the surprised one, but the one that came from somewhere unguarded and couldn't be called back. It changed her face completely.
He looked at her.
She caught him looking.
The moment held. He lifted his finger and trailed it down her cheek. “Emi.”
She smiled at him. “I know. I feel it, too. Please don’t give up.”
“Never. I’ll never give up on us.” He pushed her hair back behind her ear. “As long as there’s hope.”
“There’s certainty. Just not right now.”
She looked away first. But she was still smiling. Just slightly and just enough. The rest of the meal was genuine and reminded him of days long past. After dinner, he asked if she’d like to take a walk and was elated when she agreed. It seemed neither of them wanted the magic to end.
The Dubai marina at night was the city at its most beautiful.
The water was lit from every angle. And the promenade, well, the promenade was alive with energy.
The air was warm, and it carried a smell of salt water from the Gulf and the faint smell of jasmine from the containers planted along the water.
In all honesty, the mission was the furthest thing from his mind.
Tonight, he was aware of her beside him.
He knew the precise distance between them.
She walked differently in civilian clothes versus her operational gear.
There was a looseness in her shoulders of someone who’d temporarily permitted herself to be somewhere other than a combat environment.
“This city is all flash and bang. Shock value, you know?” She turned to him.
“Like Las Vegas?”
She elbowed him gently. “No, Vegas is small change. Dubai is … ostentatious? Nope, that’s not a big enough word.”
“Superior … pompous,” he offered.
She turned and walked backward while talking to him. “No, it's … exhibitionistic.”
“Yes, that’s it. Everything is an exhibit.
” He glanced at the skyline as she turned around and fell into step with him.
The conversation was lighter. They talked the way they'd talked in the dojo years ago, when conversation had been easy because neither of them had learned yet to be careful with each other.
Or perhaps it’s easier tonight because we're finally done being careful.
They stopped at a point where the promenade opened onto a view of the marina's full curve, the water below reflecting a hundred towers, the Burj Al Arab visible in the distance with its iconic silhouette catching the Gulf wind.
"This isn’t a bad city," she said.
"No."
"Ring will be insufferable about having chosen it."
"He's earned it."
She turned to look at him. The city behind her, the water below, the warm Gulf night pressing gently against everything.
He could have said a million things. There were so many fucking things to say. He'd been carrying them for years.
But the moment wasn't asking for words. It was asking for attention and presence. It seemed as if she knew it, too. They stood together above the marina watching the city until the energy changed slightly before midnight.
"We should get back," she said.
It was the last thing he wanted to do. “You’re right.”
“I’m always right.” She winked at him as they walked.
In the elevator, the mirrored walls gave back their reflections at four angles, two people side by side with the posture of people who were very aware of each other. The doors opened at his floor.
He stepped out.
Turned back.
She was watching him from inside the elevator with an expression he recognized.
"Goodnight, Dan."
"Goodnight." The doors closed. He stood in the corridor and listened to the elevator continue upward. Two floors.
He didn't move right away. He stood in the corridor of a hotel in Dubai and thought about the years that had passed. About the stone on her doorstep … the one that hadn’t been moved.
And, of course, about the way she’d laughed at dinner and the relaxed way they’d spent the night.
He shook himself from the want of more. Their future would come. It had no choice.
* * *