Chapter 28
Evie
The streetlights outside cast an eerie glow through the front window. Jake sits in the dim light on the sofa, facing the street, phone in hand, scrolling. One ankle rests on his knee. As I descend the stairs, his fingers still and he glances over his shoulder.
“Gabe’s on his way back.” I’m aware of this; he texted me. That’s why I finally decided to venture downstairs.
“Do you want some light?”
“I’m good.”
“Are you texting Gabe?”
He should be driving, but maybe he’s using voice-to-text.
“Nah. My girlfriend. Daisy.”
“Oh. Is she here in DC?” But as I ask the question, I realize I know nothing about this man. “Do you live around here?”
“I live all around, it seems.” A lazy smile spreads across his face and he flips the phone face down on his leg, giving me his full attention.
“Daisy’s in Chicago. I’ve got a rental in the mountains in NC.
But I go where the job takes me, and Daisy’s got the kind of gig where she can work from anywhere, so she comes along more often than not. ”
I tap the light switch and the chandelier comes on. I take a seat in the armchair across from him, positioned with a direct line of sight to the kitchen—where Gabe will come in through the back.
“That’s nice,” I say, and he nods.
“Yeah. It is. You get used to having somebody with you, you know?”
I actually don’t know. I’ve always pictured myself more like Katharine Hepburn—happily living apart from whomever she loved, protective of her solitude. The image feels less certain than it used to.
“I guess that means most of what you do is safe?”
He points an index finger at me, smile widening. “If you’re probing for Gabe, you should ask him.”
I’m about to correct him, but he drops the finger and continues.
“Now me, I had a little health scare not too long ago—a heart thing—and everybody worries. That’s probably half of why Daisy agrees to traipse around with me. So if I’m on an assignment, you can bet they’ve decided it’s going to be fairly low-key. I do a lot of sitting and watching.”
“Babysitting,” I say. “That’s what you’ve been doing all afternoon.”
“Might feel like that, but that’s not what it is.
” He tips his chin toward the window. “Me sitting here on this sofa—if anyone was thinking about coming up to your house, highly unlikely in broad daylight in this part of the city, but if they see me sitting here, they’d probably turn away. Wait for a better opportunity.”
That’s not exactly a comforting thought.
“So you’re like the empty cop car sitting in a parking lot.”
“Exactly. Except in this instance, someone’s sitting in the car. I’m deemed fit for action.” His expression is easy, unhurried. “You’re safe.”
“I’m not questioning that.” I mean it. I didn’t think I’d want him here today, and I spent the afternoon half-convinced the precaution was unnecessary.
But there’s something I registered every time I heard him shift on the sofa, every time his footsteps crossed the floor—a loosening in my muscles I hadn’t expected. “Have you worked for KOAN long?”
“Coming up on a year.” He studies me for a moment. “Have you known Gabe long?”
“Very long,” I say, leaving the details out.
He nods like that’s enough. “He cares about you.”
The observation is simple. Matter-of-fact. Like he’s telling me something obvious. It settles over me strangely, but it’s not unwelcome.
“Would you like something to drink? Tea? Water?”
“If you’re getting tea, I’ll have some.”
“Any preference? Peppermint, lavender, green?”
“Oh.” He pauses. “You meant hot tea. I’m good.”
“Water?”
“Sure.”
I get him water, then return to the kitchen to set the kettle on. Headlights sweep through the back window.
Gabe.
Footsteps fall behind me. Jake fills the hallway that connects the kitchen to the front room.
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “It’s Gabe. I told him to park back there.”
Wordlessly, Jake returns to the sofa.
I open the back door before Gabe reaches it. He steps through and surprises me—pulling me against him hard, pressing his face to the side of mine. His chest expands on a slow breath, like he’s orienting himself. Like I’m the thing he needed to find.
Something about the urgency in it, the quiet desperation he usually keeps so well-contained, makes my throat tighten and my eyes sting. I wrap my arms around him and hold on.
“You okay?” I whisper.
He straightens, releasing me—but slowly, like he’s rationing it. He pushes the door closed, then brushes my hair back and cups my jaw. His eyes find mine and stay there. Something lives in them that he’s not ready to say out loud yet.
I hold his wrist. Press my lips to the back of his hand.
“Jake’s still here,” I say quietly.
“Let me send him home. Then I’ll tell you everything.”
I set about making two mugs of tea while the low murmur of voices drift through the house. The front door opens and closes. The deadbolt slides home.
Gabe reappears in the kitchen doorway.
He takes the chair beside mine at the table—but angles it toward me, so our knees touch. He leans forward, elbows on his thighs, hands loosely linked. The posture I’ve come to read as him being present. Not so much assessing, as just here, wholly.
But he’s not speaking, and he has something to say.
“You’re making me nervous,” I admit.
“Don’t be.” His voice is low. “I promised myself on the drive back that I’d tell you everything.
You said you don’t want to be controlled.
I’m not entirely sure I always know how to do that—how to balance it against keeping you safe.
But I know a good place to start is telling you the truth. All of it.”
“That works,” I say.
And then he tells me.
About Dahlia. About his father dying in a Russian prison, a different situation than the one notated on the official document that reached his mother’s door.
About the deal that was brokered and then—for reasons that may never be documented—fell through.
About the parallel he’d only started to see clearly: his father was investigating financial corruption tied to intelligence operations when he was taken.
Shell companies. Laundered money. People who needed problems eliminated.
The same type of people my case threatens now.
He watches my face as he talks. Looking for the thing that might break me, I think, but I’m not going to break. These are the very people I want to put in prison. I’m angry they exist. There’s a difference.
“The good news,” he says, “is that KOAN is fully behind this. Hudson, Quinn, all of them. They want to expose the people responsible. They don’t care how much money those people have.”
“Is that why you joined them?”
“No.” A slight shake of his head. He links our fingers, and I let him. “I told you before—Scott told me you were working on something that worried him.”
“Scott?” Scott doesn’t worry—not really.
“I know how that sounds.” A ghost of a smile.
“But your dad had said something to him—your dad’s the one who’s actually anxious, always has been—and it got under Scott’s skin enough that he picked up the phone.
So it started with your father, in a way.
But it was Scott who called. Scott who asked me to look out for you.
Your dad never spoke to me directly. Not once. ”
“So he didn’t send you. But you moved here, and didn’t let me know?”
“When I moved here, I told myself I was more useful watching out for you from a distance. That if Scott was right, I was more effective figuring out if you were in danger if no one connected me to you.” He pauses. “If you hadn’t spotted me that day, I might still be out there.”
That takes me a minute.
“Out there because I’d convinced myself distance was the smartest strategy.
Not because I didn’t want to be near you.
” He pauses. “Though if I’m honest, that’s an old habit too.
You were too young for a long time. And then you weren’t, but you were still Scott’s little sister, and I didn’t think I’d earned the right to be anything else. ”
I think about all the years of it. Him at the edges of my memory—older, untouchable, belonging to a world I wasn’t part of. The way I used to track him across a room without meaning to. How I’d told myself it was just proximity, just the particular quality of attention he brought to everything.
I pull back. His grip tightens, not letting go.
“I’ve always wanted you,” he says. “Even if I didn’t know what to do with it.”
The kitchen is quiet. Rain taps against the back window.
I look at our hands—his holding mine—and suddenly I’m the one who wants to tell him everything. “That teenage crush? I thought I’d gotten over it.”
“Did you?”
“No.” I lift my eyes to his. “Not even close.”
He exhales, slow and even. But his eyes—those gray-blue eyes that go icy when he’s in operator mode—are anything but controlled right now.
He reaches up and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. His thumb grazes my jaw, and I feel his touch everywhere.
“Can I kiss you?” he asks.
Not I’m going to kiss you. Not the press forward of someone who’s already decided. We’re still straddling the disagreement it seems.
“I’m yours, remember?”
He leans in slowly. My heart thunders against my ribs. His hand cradles my jaw like he’s afraid I’ll break.
I pull back just far enough to breathe.
“Gabe.”
“Yeah.”
“Upstairs.”
He stands when I do and follows me.
In my room, the lamp on the nightstand throws a low, warm light. He closes the door behind him, and when he turns back to me, he stays where he is. Makes no move toward me.
He’s waiting.
The realization moves through me slowly, and then all at once. He’s standing there—all six feet of him, broad-shouldered and still, with rain-damp hair and something raw in his eyes—and he’s waiting for me to come to him.
I cross the room.
He catches me when I reach him, hands sliding to my waist, drawing me in. But even then, he doesn’t rush. He presses his forehead to mine, our breath mingling in the narrow space between us.
“Tell me what you want,” he says quietly.
“I don’t want you to be careful with me. Not in here.”