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“Yeah, I won’t let her go there. I’ll take care of her.” I sighed and sank against my seat. “What about Jonah?”
Aaron stared up at the night sky as an explosion of red and gold fireworks lit it up, answering distractedly. “What about him?”
“Ash has been all over him, the way he’s always wanted.”
He turned his attention back to me at that. “He’ll be okay. They’ll be okay.”
“You don’t think it was just a crutch for Ash, him leaning on J like that?”
“There was an element of that, yeah, but what’s between them is real.”
“You’re sure?”
He smiled. “Yes, I know Ash.”
He stilled abruptly. And then his eyes darted through the windshield. “We’ve got movement.”
“Finally,” I muttered. We’d arrived ahead of schedule after a grueling four-hour drive, and we’d been stuck in this van for the last two hours waiting.
I shifted, angling myself to get a better look as we watched Drew finally exit his shop and lock up the garage.
Normally, it would’ve been perfect to approach a target in a quiet area away from prying eyes. But this was no ordinary mission, so we’d had to wait for him to finish work, then head toward all the chaos of the winter festival.
The diner that he frequented had been our initial go-to where we’d planned to confront him, then I’d use a couple of selfies of him and me posted all over my social media accounts to out him that way. But now we had this festival. Finally, we’d caught a break. Things had been made easier for us for once.
As I took in the hulk of a man, the jeans and flannel shirt combo, the brown work boots, and the gray buzz cut, along with his electric-blue eyes just like Aurora’s that I was able to make out from the floodlight over the garage, another barrage of fireworks went off.
I watched Drew jolt, then flatten his back against the garage door. He brought shaking hands to his face and squeezed his eye shut for several moments.
Then, he reached into his shirt and pulled out a silver flask.
“Well then,” Aaron commented as we saw him down several gulps before stowing it out of sight. “That’s why Lan didn’t bring him in on this at all.”
“PTS?”
“Looks like,” he said, as we saw Drew literally incapacitated for several moments against his shop.
“Maybe we should abort, go for Ronan instead.”
Aaron shook his head at me. “A real sweetheart, aren’t you?”
“No, I just don’t think… I mean, he’s a vet and he’s—”
“And he’s our target. End of story. This is the mission. Don’t let emotion or your conscience pull you off track. You better believe if the situation was reversed, he wouldn’t.”
Fuck. “Fine. Let’s do this then.”
“You ready to get into that public persona again?”
For Aurora, I was. Just for her. “I’m ready.”
I made my way through the town square, following at a distance from Drew and his wide strides as he navigated his way through the madness, his fists clenched, clearly not doing well with it. He was headed for the congregation of food trucks, given that his usual go-to for dinner was that diner that was currently closed because of the festival.
There were booths everywhere with games, handmade goods, fried this and that, a good few hundred people moving in and out. The trees lining the streets were doled up in Christmas lights, garland all over the booths, a rainbow of colors giving off a celebratory, cozy vibe.
Kind of like how Christmas was supposed to be.
There were posters even referencing Santa and his workshop a few blocks over.
