Page 143 of Only the Hunter

“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.”