Page 164 of Only the Hunter

“I am.”

“Lying down,” she scolds.

“Other than my shoulder, I’m fine.”

With my good arm, I reach for the suitcase handle. She lifts the box that had been resting on top, and I wheel the luggage down the hall, past the closed guestroom door—equipment storage now, guns locked away, the way my father always taught me.

“This apartment’s bigger than I thought it would be,” she says as I deposit her suitcase in the entry to my bedroom. “It’s nice. But…sparse.”

“Haven’t lived here long.”

She takes in the living area, which includes an open kitchen, and makes up the bulk of the apartment. There are two small bedrooms and a bath off the entry hall, and the master en suite at the opposite end.

“Where should I set Atlas up?”

“Why don’t you use the guest bath for his litter box?” I gesture down the hall.

She takes the litter box from the box. I reach in and grab his water and food bowls. The kitchen is as good a place as any to set him up.

As an adult, I’ve never had a pet. When I was a kid, we had a family dog.

Evie rejoins me in the living area, and the room feels different with her in it—smaller, maybe, or just less like a place I only sleep in. I’m too tired to find the right word for it, so I don’t try.

Atlas makes a slow circuit of the living room before pausing at the balcony door to seemingly take in the view.

Evie sets her bag down on the kitchen counter. She doesn’t launch into an update or a prosecutorial summary—Hudson’s kept me in the loop most of the night, so there’s not much left to say. She just walks toward me slowly, gaze lingering on the bandage.

“Did you speak to Harridan?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He said he thought I was smarter. Basically, he thought I’d cave.”

That sick bastard.

“He was wrong.” Exhaustion tinges her statement—and blunt fact. “We didn’t get much out of him tonight, but we will.”

She stops a foot away from me. Close enough that I can see the faint smudge of ink on the side of her hand—either from writing, or from an evidence bag. Close enough that I can feel the heat from her skin.

This is the first time we’ve had a room to ourselves since it happened. No officers. No Jake. No comm line. Just this.

“You didn’t tell me,” she says quietly.

“No.”

Her fingers find the edge of the bandage. Not probing. Just contact—the careful inventory of someone confirming that what they feared didn’t happen.

“You were talking me through it,” she says. “The whole time.”

“Yes.”

She’s quiet for a moment. Her thumb traces the medical tape along my shoulder, and I let her, because I understand what she’s doing. She’s reading the evidence. Building the timeline. Putting together what was actually happening while she was upstairs in that locked room thinking I was positioned at the east end of the block, whole and operational and fine.

“I kept thinking—” She stops. Starts again. “Your voice sounded exactly the same.”

“That was the point.”