Page 35 of Shai

McIntyre pushed the pancake plate away and pulled the other one in

front of him. He held my gaze as he added an unseemly amount of ketchup. “You withdraw from this city, and you leave half your men behind, who become my men.”

“Just half. You don’t want them all?”

McIntyre paused with his fork halfway to his mouth to give me a

narrow-eyed stare. “I’m a reasonable man. I just want back what’s mine with a bit of interest to sweeten the deal.”

“What you want”—I leaned over the table, the smell of McIntyre’s food

wafting up into my nostrils—“is for people to see me leaving town with my tail between my legs.”

He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “It’s all mine anyway.”

“It was yours.” I let the silence stretch between us. “Now half of it is

mine.” I sat back again, adopting the same indolent pose as earlier. “I always thought you’d put up more of a fight, but it was surprisingly easy to take it from you.”

Another muscle twitched in his cheek. “You were lucky.”

“Lucky!” I gave free rein to the laugh that wanted out. “Keep telling

yourself that if it helps you to sleep at night, if it helps you not to dwell on your own incompetence. You know as well as I do, that all I did was exploit the many cracks in your operation. It was ripe for the picking. It’s just that I was the only one who dared to reach out and take it.”

McIntyre sat upright, the fork slipping from his fingers as if I’d finally

said something that had made him lose his appetite. “Sixty million, and that’s my final offer.”

I gave a slow nod as I pretended to think about it. “It’s a lot of money.” A smile slipped onto his lips. “It is. You could retire, move to the back

of beyond and spend your days playing with your snakes.”

I curled my fingers and examined my fingernails. “Do I look like a man

ready for retirement?”

The smile died on his lips. “You look like a man who’s not stupid, who

knows a good offer when he sees one.”

“Oh, I do. And that isn’t one. You could double it and I still wouldn’t

take you up on it. You could throw in half of your men and I’d still laugh in your face.”

A sullen look settled on McIntyre’s face. “So why agree to this meeting

if you had no intention of even considering my terms?”

I smiled at him, the action triggering the muscle in his cheek to start its spasmodic movements once again. “I like wasting your time. Besides”—I waved a hand around the café—“It’s nice to get out of the city sometimes, isn’t it?”

McIntyre dropped any pretense of being friendly, his face twisting into an expression of pure hatred. “You won’t win. You’re nothing but a conman who got lucky.”

I was already out of my chair and lifting my phone to my ear. “Pull the car around the front, Taylor. I’m done here.” I shifted my attention back to McIntyre. “We’ll see.”

He didn’t bother to respond as the car drew to a halt at the curb, and Taylor opened the door so that there would be no more than a few steps where I’d be at risk from a sniper. Even so, it was a relief when I was inside the car without the tell-tale crack of a bullet ringing out.

I FOUND Elijah in his room, the door locked from the inside. The extra seconds it took to locate the key provided enough of an irritation that I resolved to have it removed. He wasn’t going to get to lock himself away from me. There was zero purpose in him having a door that locked, now that my mother had lost interest in him. He was standing by the window. His gaze jerked to mine momentarily as the door opened before he continued his scrutiny of whatever was so interesting on the other side of the glass. I went to stand next to him, positioning myself close enough that our bodies touched. It had been two days since our date and I hadn’t touched him since.