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Why I was still here.
What the end-game was with Roan.
What I was going to do with my life when I was finally done chasing him, obsessing over him___It was a week.
Just a week.
For someone who spent their life finding un-find-able people from under whatever rocks they had hidden themselves, and therefore knew all the tricks of the trade, all the ways one could avoid being found, it was pathetic.
Hell, I'd once tracked down a runaway fifteen-year-old who had eluded me for six months.
So, yeah, it was pathetic when I opened my front door, one hand still squeezing chlorine-smelling water out of my hair from doing laps in the pool in the gym - a luxury that had been the deciding factor on settling here instead of one of the other places around that I could have called my temporary home - and I found him sitting on my couch.
Reading my book.
On instinct, I turned back to look at the door, glancing at the locks I knew I had secured.
"You put too much faith in padlocks," he told me, flipping the page he seemed to be reading, not bothering to look up.
"Not much of a choice here," I told him as I sidestepped toward the kitchen.
"Soup pot was a good spot," he told me, knowing exactly what I was going for, making my gaze shoot over toward him, finding him reaching with the hand that wasn't holding the book to wave my gun at me. "Toilet tank, then one taped under the nightstand..."
He got all the guns.
But, it seemed from where I was standing, just the guns.
I hadn't stashed the knives at the hotel, the space being small enough to ensure that I could get to a gun relatively easily if someone happened in.
He hadn't been looking for those.
And, what's more, I didn't think he found any.
"Well," I said, trying for casual, going toward the cabinet above the cheap four-cup coffee maker I had bought online, gotten delivered. Along with the book he was reading. "Since you seem to be making yourself at home," I went on, pulling down the can of coffee. "Want a cup of coffee?" I asked, reaching inside.
He was a big guy.
Too big to move as fast as he moved.
There was no way he should have been able to cover the number of feet in the room like he did.
But he'd managed.
Because by the time I had pulled out the knife from the grounds, he was just a few feet behind me.
There was a devilishness to his smirk, something that said he enjoyed this, that he liked my fight.
"Knives too," he mused, nodding.
"You better hope I can't make it to my tasers," I told him, flicking the knife open in my hand.
"Everyone could use a couple thousand bolts every now and again," he told me, lips twitching. "Clears the head."
I had to hold in a snort, wondering if maybe that was what my ass needed.
Since I was clearly not operating with a clear mind.
"That was how I tracked you down, y'know," he told me, jerking his chin toward the towel on the island, but not taking his gaze off me. I guess he had learned his lesson in not underestimating me. I couldn't tell if that worked in my favor or not.
"What is?"
"The pool," he clarified. "There are a couple hotels that offer them, but the views are shit. Then I remembered this place has a pool in their gym. And a great view of the town. Of my compound."
I hated that he was right.
That he knew me so well.
That a part of me was pleased with his ability to piece it together like that.
"I guess I need to take up a new form of cardio," I mused, taking a step back, as much as everything in me chafed at the idea of retreat. It was too close a space to try to maneuver.
"Your neighbor is a dick," he added, something that made me pull to a stop.
"What?"
"The guy with the tan line from his missing wedding band," he clarified. "Saw me standing at your door, asked if I was here to 'smash,' it," he went on, using air quotes as if I would ever assume he'd use such a juvenile term. "And informed me that he's working his long game on you. That he's wearing you down." There was something in his voice, something tight, uncomfortable.
"What can I say, I have a thing for receding hairlines and Hawaiian shirts."
"And soul patches," he added, making a snorting laugh escape me.
"Oh, God. The soul patch. Doesn't he know that women like beards, not little patches of hair?"
My lips clamped shut, realizing what I had said, what he had grown since I'd seen him last.
A beard.
"Women like beards, huh?" he asked, reaching up to stroke a hand down his. And the movement was sexy, damnit. I knew there was no way I should have been thinking something like that, but there was also no denying it either.
