Chapter 14 Sabine
SABINE
Iawake to the hiss of the old radiator under the window kicking on and find Jace still smashed against me in this tiny bed.
The studio apartment offered exactly two options, sleep together or one of us takes the floor, and after everything yesterday, neither of us had the energy to argue about propriety or boundaries.
Besides, the nasty sex made it easy to lie tangled up with him all night.
His breathing is deep and even against my shoulder, and the warmth of his body next to mine feels safer than it should given that we're both fugitives running from people who want us dead or imprisoned.
Moving requires careful extraction to avoid waking him, and when my feet finally touch the cold floor, the apartment settles back into stillness.
My phone sits on the small kitchen counter where I left it last night, and all I can think about while pulling my laptop from the bag and powering it on is how we have to track down the rest of the people through my unit.
My phone has all the information we need, and I have to get it to the computer. So I pull out the wire and connect the two devices to get things switched over.
When the final file transfers successfully, my hands pick up the phone and turn it over, examining the device that's been my constant companion for years and is now a liability we can't afford to keep active.
The military can track phones with frightening accuracy when they want to, and leaving this one powered on is essentially broadcasting our location to anyone with the right clearance and motivation to find us.
I'll have no choice but to smash it to bits later, but for now I take out the battery and the SIM card and pray that's enough.
Then I snoop around the kitchen until I find a coffee maker and some coffee pods, and soon, the scent of caffeinated beverages wafts through the tiny apartment and I hear movement.
The sound draws my attention through the bedroom door where Jace is stirring slowly.
His eyes open and focus on me standing in the kitchen area with my coffee and the parts of my phone spread across the counter.
He looks tired, like he didn't sleep well at all, but he sits up carefully, favoring his injured leg.
"Morning." He runs a hand through his mussed hair and yawns at me. "You're up early."
"Couldn't sleep." I don't tell him the reason for my insomnia is the torrent of emotion I'm living under. I'm sure he can gather that deduction for himself. "Transferred the files to my laptop…"
He nods and swings his legs out of bed, standing and stretching so his shirt rides up slightly and reveals the muscle definition beneath. My eyes drop to my coffee before he can catch me looking, and I feel heat rising in my cheeks. He's an attractive man. I'm not blind, but sometimes I’m stupid.
"Smart move." He crosses to the coffee maker and starts his own cup, and we stand in the small kitchen side by side. It doesn't feel uncomfortable, but it does feel a little awkward. "What's the plan?"
"West Virginia." I've put some thought into this.
Our first move has to be to someone I can break so Jace doesn't have to kill anyone this time.
"Staff Sergeant Everette Hamilton is the next name on your list, and he's the one I believe we can convince to help us.
If anyone's going to break from the group and testify about what Bryan did, it's him. "
Jace looks thoughtful while sipping his coffee, and I notice just how handsome he is.
A bit older than me—probably ten years or more—but striking.
He'd make beautiful babies. "Getting out of Chicago puts distance between me and Vittorio.
The boss is expecting updates and results, and going dark for a few days might give me a chance to think through what I'm gonna tell him when he realizes I'm not doing my job. "
He's tense, and with a boss like that, I'd be tense too. Mine can court martial me and put me in prison, but they'd never put a gun to my head because I failed. "Yeah, maybe…"
He walks out of the kitchen, past my laptop, and looks through the safehouse window, probably at his truck. "We should hit the road soon. It'll take a bit to get there, and we'll have to either pay cash for a hotel or sleep in the truck."
I understand and I'm not happy about having to go hunt down more of my former colleagues, but it is what it is.
Without someone else to corroborate my testimony, Defense will never believe me and I'll be marked as a problem, and with the charges now mounting against me and what I've done, we have no time to lose.
An hour into the drive, Jace and I have relaxed into natural conversation that started as a plan for how to approach Hamilton once we get there and now hovers precariously on the edge of personal topics.
He's a bit reserved with every answer he gives me, which isn't encouraging.
People say soldiers are the ones who have issues showing their emotions, but have you ever met an assassin?
"Well…. Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and it seems we'll be on the road.
" Jace's eyes stay with the flow of traffic, but I see his posture shifting.
It's inevitable that talking about this mission we're on would become dry and we'd run out of things to say, but I didn’t figure it'd be him that brought up personal stuff.
"Seems like we'll be celebrating together…
Probably while trying to strongarm a witness. "
The absurdity of it makes me chuckle and I sigh.
"Not exactly a traditional holiday experience.
" My eyes track out over the snow-covered landscape.
We're almost out of the chaos of Chicago's outer suburbs, but buildings still line the highway on both sides.
Smoke pours from chimneys and the world is a sea of crystalized frost and white powder.
"Did you ever have traditional holidays?" He sounds curious, and it makes me smile and relax a little. Jace's human side is coming out again, making it harder to feel distant from him. "You know… before you joined up?"
The question makes me think back to childhood and adolescence spent moving between military bases while my father climbed ranks and my mother made temporary homes wherever the Army sent us.
"I was an Army brat." I smile at that memory.
"Dad was career military, so we moved every few years and holidays were whatever you could make them in base housing or temporary apartments.
Nothing about my childhood was particularly normal or traditional. "
"But you had family," he says bluntly. "I'm sure your parents wanted to make it special since you moved around a lot."
"Yeah…" As an adult, I can see how things were that way, but as a kid I hated not having family around.
"Mom always tried to create traditions even when we were living out of boxes.
Dad would take leave when he could and we'd do the whole turkey dinner thing, even if we didn't get to see our grandparents or cousins. "
Jace is quiet for a second. I look over at him and see his face drawn up into thoughtfulness, maybe a little sadness too.
"Growing up in the gangs on the West Side, holidays were just another day. Maybe less violence because people were distracted with their own families, but nothing special. We didn’t have dinners or family to celebrate with.
And the Mob doesn't exactly have holiday parties or exchange gifts. "
It makes me feel sad for him that his life was so different from what the normal American experiences.
A lot of us have differing experiences, but most of us have a family.
It sounds like Jace lost his family young, but I don’t want to pry and make him emotional or defensive so I let his words rest for a while and the cab of his truck goes silent.
"Well, we can have turkey and stuffing somewhere.
I'm sure there's a truck stop diner or something…
" I'm speaking wistfully now, wishing somehow that I could make this Thanksgiving with Jace feel different from every one before it, and I'm thinking this way because that's what a good person would do.
But under all of that care and compassion shit that humanity is prone to do for each other, there's an undercurrent of affection.
Jace is misunderstood, not bad. If I were dragged from my family who died tragically and then forced to be raised by criminals and murderers, I think I'd end up being just as cold and dangerous.
The fact that he hasn't finished his mission by killing me and hiding my body shows that he's not just a robot following orders.
Jace could have at any time pulled the trigger, and he hasn't.
Yes, he was waiting for information, but even still, we've been together for almost twenty-four hours since I gave him the information on where to find the next people on his list. And instead of offing me and running with the intel, he slept with me, drank coffee with me, and now he's here talking about having Thanksgiving with me.
"I need to pee," he says, breaking my concentration.
I turn and smile at him because I realize that Jace likes me. Whether he will admit it to himself or me, he's here with me doing this thing because he's found companionship. It stirs a warmth in my chest too because I feel the same way.
"What?" he says, narrowing his eyebrows. "Why are you staring at me with a dumb grin? Are you a serial killer?"
"It would be a coincidence if there were two of us in the same car randomly, huh?" I say playfully, and he laughs.
"Hart, you're something else…"
I know it. Jace Morelli is falling for me, and I don't think I mind.
But we still have to tackle several major hurdles before we can even think about what might happen between us after this.
And I can't let myself get ahead of things.
We have to convince one or more of the people on that list to help me, and then we have to take the captain down.
I'll think about what happens after that when we've finished our objectives.