Page 29

He swivels his head toward me. "I need to take this."

He steps past the desk with its bank of monitors and through a doorway I haven't been through yet. A room beyond the main space. He pulls the door shut behind him and I hear the low murmur of his voice, controlled and sharp, but nothing distinct enough to piece together.

I chew the corner of my toast and count the seconds. Sixty. One hundred twenty. Two hundred.

The toast goes cold in my hand. I set it down.

I've explored every visible inch of this safehouse since I got here. Kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, the wall of monitors he checks every few hours. Nothing special. But the door he just pulled shut behind him is a complete mystery. I assumed it was a closet or storage, but that can’t be unless he likes taking calls with a mop in his face.

I'm off the stool before the argument between the good girl and evil in me finishes. The responsible part of my brain says sit down, eat your cold toast, and let the dangerous man handle dangerous things. The part of me that is my father's daughter says fuck that and get answers.

My feet move.

The main space is open and sparse, every corner visible from the kitchen. But the door Thane disappeared through sits in a recessed section of the far wall, partially hidden by a concrete pillar. His voice carries from deep inside, muffled through concrete and steel.

I ease the door open.

Plush carpet cushions my bare feet. The shift from cold concrete to warmth alone is enough to make me pause, but the rest of the room steals my breath. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases line every wall, packed tight with worn spines and cracked leather covers stacked two rows deep in places. The shelves stretch from the carpet to the ceiling without a single gap. Hundreds of books. Maybe a thousand. A large oak desk anchors the center of the room, polished and welcoming. Under a glass top, he's tucked photographs. Dozens of them. A younger version of Thane with his arm slung around a man with onyx-black eyes who shares his jawline. A woman laughing in a garden with a baby on her hip. An older couple standing on a porch in clothes that look decades old. Birthdays. Holidays. A whole life is arranged under the glass that spans years.

My chest aches.

Every surface in this safehouse is stripped clean and cold. No photographs, no personality, no proof a human being lives here. I accepted that. I filed it under simply who he is as a man. But this room tells me a whole other story.

The man I thought had no personal attachments has an entire room full of them.

Two monitors sit on the far end of the desk, angled away from the photos like he keeps his worlds separated even in here. A phone rests on a charging dock beside a laptop with a matte black case. The screen scrolls through encrypted lines of what looks like code with green text on black background. I don't need a tech degree to know that kind of interface doesn't come from Best Buy.

A section of bookcase to my left sits slightly forward from the wall. Behind it, a gun safe stands open. Three handguns sit in foam cutouts alongside spare magazines, a suppressor, and a cleaning kit with oil still wet on the brushes. A tactical knife with a carbon blade lies unsheathed beside a stack of folders on the shelf next to it. I recognize all of this because of my father, good or bad.

My pulse climbs but my feet don't stop.

I move to the desk. The folders are unlabeled, plain manila with no markings. I flip the first one open. Printed photographs. Surveillance shots of a building I don't recognize, taken from multiple angles and at different times of day. Notes in tight, precise handwriting fill the margins. Entry points. Shift rotations. Blind spots in camera coverage.

My stomach lurches.

I close it and open the next. Financial statements. Wire transfers routed through accounts in countries I will never visit, amounts that make the numbers blur because my brain cannot process that many zeros belonging to one person. Alongside the statements is a list of dates but no names attached. Just dates and six-figure payments followed by a single word next to each entry.

Closed.

Completed. Finished. Done. In my father's world, closed meant the problem no longer existed. The payments beside each date are large enough to buy whatever the hell anyone wanted.

I set the folder down and turn toward the door.

Thane fills the frame.

His gaze drops to the folders on the desk, then lifts to my face.

"What are you doing in here?" Thane’s tone rumbles with unleashed irritation.

Well too damn bad.

Yeah, in my head I might be all fight and fury, but my heart occupies my throat so talking is a no-go for a moment. It takes me several tries to get my voice to start working again. When I do, I don’t hold back. "Finding answers you won't give me." I don't flinch. I don't step back, either. My father taught me that retreat invites pursuit, so I plant my feet and hold the stare of a man whose office contains weapons, surveillance photos, and a ledger of payments that add up to only one profession.

Hitman for hire.

His jaw tightens. "These are private."

"So is trying to kill me, and yet here we are having that conversation." I cross my arms. "What do you really do, Thane?"