Page 44 of Tempest’s Torment

"Good. Keep going."

"One more thing,” he says. "Ghost's got Venom checking hospitals and urgent care centers in case Calloway's using the fake ID anywhere with a paper trail. Savage is running local contacts, anyone who might've seen someone new asking the wrong questions in the right areas. We're building it from multiple angles."

"Alright. Thanks, Rogue." He ends the call and looks at me.

"He's been here six weeks," I say.

"Yes."

I swallow hard. "I had no idea."

"You had an idea." His voice is low with barely concealed anger. "The SUV, the flowers, you caught both, your instincts were right. You just didn't have anything to confirm them with."

"That doesn’t—" I stop, because it doesn't make me feel better—that's what I was going to say. But I look at his face and he isn't offering comfort. He's stating a fact, he's not trying to make me feel better about it; he's just correcting a misread.

Somehow that's easier than if he'd been kind about it. I look out the window. Six weeks of him in my city, six weeks of carefully not being seen until he decided he wanted to be. The SUV positioned where I'd notice it, the sunflowers chosen because he knew what they'd mean, and the envelope written by hand. None of it was careless, all of it was deliberate.

He wants me afraid, he's been engineering it for weeks, and until yesterday, he was succeeding.

"What if he comes back?" I ask. Tempest looks at me. "Tonight, while we're here. What if he comes back?"

He's quiet for a moment. "Then he comes back and he'll find me waiting," he says and it almost seems as though he’d be eager for that to happen.

“Okay,” I whisper, and for the first time in three years, I feel as though there’s an end in sight.

By the time Sniper finishes, the apartment feels a little less vulnerable. He shows me the new locks, points out the camera in the hallway, then shoulders his toolbox.

"I'll dig through the building's entry log tonight," he says. "If somebody's been hanging around, we'll see it."

I nod. "Thanks."

He looks at me with the same ease he's had all morning. "Don't thank me, just lock the bar on the window every time you close it. You know how to use it?"

I nod again. "You showed me twice."

"Got it?" Sniper asks.

"Yeah."

"Good." He picks up his toolbox. "See you around, Lilah."

"Bye," I say with a small wave.

He leaves, pulling the door shut behind him, the apartment falls quiet. I glance at the front door and then at Tempest.

"He didn't have to do that," I say.

"Yeah, he did." He picks up his mug. "You're ours now. That's how it works."

I look at him, he says it like it's the simplest thing in the world. Like there isn't another option. You're ours now. That's how it works.

For three years, I've done everything I can not to need anyone. It's easier that way, it’s safer. Then Evan finds me, and less than twenty-four hours later, there's a new lock on my door, a camera outside my apartment, and three men I barely know rearranging their lives because somebody threatened mine. I don't understand it, I don't think I ever will. My eyes drift to the new deadbolt. Somehow, it doesn't just feel like a lock.

Tempest's phone rings halfway through dinner.

He glances at the screen.

"The clubhouse."