Page 42 of Hunted in the Silence

“He does his research on his enemies,” Silas said. “He’ll know about your sister. He’ll know how she died, and he’ll use it to try to throw you off balance.” He held Cole’s gaze evenly and openly, and it was clear that he wasn’t trying to dig up old wounds, but it was necessary. “I’m telling you now so you’re not caught off guard in the middle of a critical moment.”

Everyone had gone deadly silent, watching the moment unfold with held breaths, as if Cole were a ticking time bomb ready to detonate.

“Understood,” Cole croaked out, his voice as level as he could manage. He could feel Brynn’s eyes on him but he couldn’t look her in the eye just then. He focused instead on the board, the spider web of connections, trying desperately to close the pit that had opened up in his stomach.

It was nearly impossible with her watching him.

His thoughts went to his sister. How Devlin might use his knowledge against him. The calculated cruelty he’d met out on every girl he’d ever taken. How one of those girls had been Brynn.

He thought about standing across from that monster and being the agent who got to put him down, cleanly, once and for all. And he let the memory of his sister move through him like a ghost and settle where it had always lived, deep inside the place that had made him into the man standing now in this office, on a mission, determined to make the world a better place, one Devlin at a time.

He picked up his pen.

“Carson and Dax are coming in at three to go over the final plan,” he said. “Silas, I’d like you there.”

“I’ll be there,” Silas agreed.

Cole looked at Brynn. She was watching him quietly, steadily. Not with pity. There was nothing soft about it. Just seeing him, cutting straight through to the truth, like she always did.

He held her gaze for a second before returning his attention to the board. “Let’s use the next two hours well. We’ve got a lot to get right before tomorrow.”

They did exactly that. And by the time Carson and Dax arrived that afternoon, the plan had been updated, the entry team briefed, the sequence reworked to make sure that the team covering the south room also had eyes on the main floor where the unknown woman was most likely to be located. And Silas sat through it all, offering his insight periodically, which was spot on.

At five o’clock, when the meeting broke and Carson and Dax headed back to BPD to finish their own preparations, Cole walked out to the small concrete step at the field office’s side entrance for air. The cold had the kind of bite that made him breathe deliberately. He stood in it and let it do its work.

It didn’t take long for the door behind him to open and Brynn to appear beside him.

She was quiet for a moment. They just stood together in the cold, the side street quiet, the last daylight gone gray and thin above the rooftops.

“He’s going to use your sister against you,” she said. Clearly, she’d been thinking about what Silas said the same way he had. Did she think he was a weak link now because of it?

“Yes,” Cole said through clenched teeth.

“And you’re going let it slide right over you and take him down,” she said. “Because that’s what you do.”

He looked at her, a bit shocked by her assertion. Did she actually have that kind of faith in him, or was that more of a command? She was facing forward, her eyes on the street, her jaw set. A tough read, even for a seasoned detective.

“That’s what we do,” she said, her gaze sliding his way briefly. “Both of us. We carry the heavy stuff and keep pushing forward.” She took a breath, struggling past the same sharp air he was. “It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. It just means the hurt doesn’t rule us.”

Cole studied her profile in the gray winter light, the dark auburn of her hair against the stark white of her collar. Her steadiness.

He wanted to say something profound to meet the moment, but he didn’t have it.

So he just stood there beside her in the cold and let the silence stand, which didn’t really need filling, and after a minute, she went back inside and he continued standing there for several more heart beats before following her.

One more day.

He’d be ready.

Chapter 14

Brynn was awake before the alarm.

She lay in the safe house’s dark room for a moment, oriented herself to the unfamiliar ceiling, and then sat up and got dressed before she’d fully decided to. Her hands were steady. She noticed that the way she noticed weather, a simple fact that would determine how she handled the rest of the day.

Like any normal person, she got afraid before meeting a challenge, but she’d learned that steady hands didn’t necessarily mean no fear. Sometimes, the calm outside didn’t match the turbulent storm raging inside, and vice versa. And usually, when her hands were steady in a stressful situation, it simply meant that the fear and settled in for the long haul.

When she finally made herself leave the bed and the room, she grabbed a quick bowl of wheat bran cereal that tasted like what she imagined cardboard would and ate, standing, because she couldn’t make herself sit. Her grandmother had always said you couldn’t do good work on an empty stomach, and Brynn had spent enough years proving her right that it had become automatic. She ate until the bowl was empty, rinsed the bowl, and put on her jacket and checked her phone.