Page 13 of Shadow

Daphne walked to her laptop and opened the new email.

Agent Asher Morrison’s personnel file.

The photo loaded first. Dark hair. Serious expression. Gray-green eyes. Early thirties, maybe. Strong jaw hidden under a full beard—dark and well trimmed, the kind that made him look harder, more dangerous.

Wait.

She opened the other file. Ah, no wonder blood covered his hands.

Okay then.

Still. “I need to talk to him first.”

“Understood. Roger Rousseau is being released from prison medical Friday afternoon. You need secure locations established before then.”

Friday. Three days away, a twenty-hour drive between here and Renegade. Maybe two days, with stops.

Which meant she needed to leave now.

She let out a breath. “You kept my name out of a report that could’ve ended me. I haven’t forgotten.” A beat. “So yeah. I’ll do this one favor. Then you delete my number.”

“Thank you.”

“And Caroline?”

“Yeah?”

A beat, then a softer voice. “Copy.”

Daphne hung up and looked at her apartment. Her couch with the remote sitting on the arm. Her TV with Friends still paused. Her wine glass on the counter. Her now-empty bathtub in the bathroom.

So much for her forty-eight hours.

Daphne went back for her Glock from the bedside table, then grabbed her go bag from by the door, always packed, always ready. She walked to the kitchen. Dumped the wine down the sink. Rinsed the glass and put it in the dishwasher.

She locked her apartment door, set the security system, and walked down the stairs to the parking lot. And of course, as she got in her car, her mother’s voice echoed with those last words five years ago, cancer stealing her breath but leaving enough for one final command. Promise me, Daphne. Don’t go back there. That town takes everything. It took your father. Don’t let it take you too.

Sorry, Mom.

Two

He was such a liar.

And it didn’t help that Asher sat in Riley’s Sports Bar, surrounded by friends who thought they knew him, watching a hockey game like nothing to see here.

Except his stupid phone kept buzzing with texts from Patterson, wondering how his meet with Draven went.

Uh, not at all. He wasn’t ready to meet with the syndicate boss. Not with Martha’s blood still fresh on his hands.

He was just as liable to pull out his gun and end the man. So just in case, yes, he’d answered Michael’s text to hang out with a few of his cronies, nursing beers and wings.

“Did you see that save? Unbelievable,” Michael said. He sat with a guy named Luca, a PI Asher knew by reputation but hadn’t worked with, and another big guy named Rowan, a former spec ops guy who had recently moved back to Renegade.

Oh, and EMT Jackson Stewart, who he knew by name from local emergencies. Jackson had brought his girlfriend, Mia, and apparently Michael had a girlfriend now too, and wouldn’t you know it, it was Dani Kim, from the office.

He probably needed to pay a little more attention to people’s personal lives. (Except he was sort of busy just trying to live two lives.)

The Blue Ox goalie had just stopped a breakaway. The crowd erupted—cheering, stomping, beer sloshing from raised glasses.