Nothing. But I’m sure that it’s true.
“He’s going to send someone. You know him better than I do. Does he seem like a man who lets one of his people just vanish?”
“No.”
“So he’s already looking.”
“Yes.”
“And the Syndicate’s looking for me. Two sets of people, both patient, and you sitting in the middle with a woman you took off the books.” I tip my head back against the rock. “I’d be worried, in your place.”
“You’re not in my place.”
“What happens when they find you?”
“Depends who finds me first.”
“That’s not a plan. That’s a coin toss with my life on one side.”
He doesn’t argue it.
“What if I told you there’s somewhere I need to be? That there’s more at stake?”
“Then tell me.”
I open my mouth.
And what if this is all just a ploy? Aurora’s way of extracting information from me. It would get back to the Syndicate. They’d take it out on my sister.
“Forget it,” I say.
“All right.”
That’s all I get. He doesn’t even circle back to it, and somehow that stings worse than pushing would have.
He’d have listened. If I’d said it, he’d have listened.
And taken it back to Viktor. I can’t risk it.
I put the thought away.
“Does anything get to you?” I ask. “Anything at all? I’ve been at you since the truck, and you haven’t raised your voice once.”
“Wastes energy.”
“Being a person wastes energy?”
“Raising my voice does.”
“You’re either very patient, or you can’t be irritated. I honestly can’t tell which.”
“Both.”
“That’s not a comfort.”
“Wasn’t meant to be.”
A laugh gets out of me before I can stop it. The first one since I last saw Kaylin, and it surprises me. Nothing surprises him.
