Chapter 59 Ava
Ava
The train station is too crowded.
Too loud.
Too exposed.
Which means it’s perfect.
People think safety looks like locked doors and hidden rooms.
It doesn’t.
Safety looks like motion.
Noise.
Confusion.
It looks like a thousand strangers all moving in different directions, none of them paying enough attention to notice the woman in the gray coat with a bruise under her cheekbone and a gun tucked against her spine.
I keep my head down as I move through the crowd, one hand wrapped around the strap of my bag.
The bag matters.
More than the passport in my pocket.
More than the blood drying under my collar.
More than the ache in my ribs every time I breathe too deep.
Inside the bag is enough information to bring powerful men down.
Which is exactly why they won’t stop hunting me until I’m dead.
I clear the terminal and step into the cold Prague air just as my burner phone vibrates.
One message.
Unknown number.
Don’t go to the church. It’s burned.
I stop walking.
Not because I want to.
Because that message shouldn’t exist.
No one was supposed to know about the church.
No one except one dead handler, one compromised minister, and—
I go still.
No.
Absolutely not.
I stare at the screen until a second message comes through.
East bridge. Ten minutes. Come alone if you still want to live.
There’s no signature.
There doesn’t need to be.
My pulse kicks harder anyway.
Not fear.
Memory.
Because there’s only one man I know who would word it exactly like that.
Blunt. Cold. Efficient.
Like there’s no room for emotion.
Like emotion never wrecked us both.
I force myself to move again, crossing the street with the crowd, every instinct screaming at me to change direction, vanish, disappear into another country before sunrise.
That’s what I should do.
That’s what the old me would do.
But the old me didn’t spend eight years clawing her way out of a grave someone else dug.
The old me didn’t find out the people signing patriot speeches with one hand were funding slaughter with the other.
And the old me definitely didn’t have Ethan Cross’s ghost suddenly texting her from the dark.
I cut through an alley, check my corners, switch pace, double back once.
No tail.
Good.
Or bad.
With men like the ones chasing me, no tail usually means the kill shot comes first.
By the time I reach the bridge, the sky is still black, the river below it smooth and dark as oil.
No movement.
No obvious surveillance.
Too clean.
I hate too clean.
I step onto the bridge anyway.
Halfway across, a figure steps from the shadows.
Tall.
Broad shoulders.
Still as stone.
For one insane second my body forgets the years and remembers everything else.
His hands on my body.
His mouth against mine.
The sound of his voice in the dark, telling me to stay down while gunfire tore through concrete.
Ethan.
He looks older.
Harder.
Like the years carved the softness out of him and left only control.
But it’s him.
God help me, it’s really him.
His gaze locks on mine.
No smile.
No relief.
Just that sharp, devastating stare that used to see straight through me.
“Ava.”
My grip tightens on the bag strap.
“Didn’t think dead men texted now.”
His jaw flexes once.
“Cute. You’re late.”
I almost laugh.
Almost.
“Eight years, Ethan.”
His expression doesn’t shift.
“I noticed.”
The wind cuts between us, icy and thin.
Neither of us moves closer.
Neither of us is stupid enough for that.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” I say.
“You sent my name.”
His eyes drop briefly to the bag, then back to me.
“What do you have?”
I let out a breath.
Still Ethan.
Straight to the point.
Still asking the question underneath all the others.
Not where have you been.
Not why didn’t you come back.
Not did you ever think of me.
What do you have?
“Enough to get us both killed.”
Something changes in his face then.
Not much.
Just enough.
“Then you’re coming with me.”
I actually do laugh at that.
Soft. Bitter. Tired.
“You always did love giving orders.”
“And you always did hate listening.”
Footsteps sound behind me.
Fast.
Too many.
Damn it.
Ethan hears them too. Of course he does.
His weapon is out instantly.
“Company?”
I don’t look back.
“Several.”
His gaze cuts to mine.
“Are they yours?”
“Do I look stupid?”
“No,” he says. “Just impossible.”
That almost sounds familiar enough to hurt.
The first shot cracks through the dark.
Glass shatters somewhere behind us.
The second hits the railing inches from my arm.
Ethan moves at the exact same second I do.
He grabs me, drives me down hard behind a concrete support as gunfire tears across the bridge.
His body covers mine.
Solid. lethal. warm.
For one disorienting second, the years vanish.
Then reality slams back in.
He looks down at me, eyes blazing.
“Tell me the bag stays with you.”
I meet his stare.
“It stays with me.”
Another shot sparks off the concrete.
Ethan reaches for my wrist.
“Fine. Then don’t fight me while I keep you alive.”
I should yank free.
Should tell him to go to hell.
Should remind myself that trust is how people end up buried.
Instead, I hear myself say the one thing I never thought I’d say again.
“Too late for that, Cross.”
Then I raise my weapon and fire back.