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This was connection. Pure and simple. This was… love.
After a couple moments, we settled together in a spoon formation. I rested against him and he pressed his chin to my shoulder, and for a while, we just stayed that way.
Decompressing, I guessed, was what we were doing.
It took me long enough to realize that I’d still been on edge the whole time he’d been downstairs with Finn, and I finally felt like I could inhale deeply enough to flood my lungs with the oxygen I needed.
With a soft kiss on my cheek, he murmured, “You okay to talk about this?”
“Yes. Kat sleeps as if she’s in an iron lung after a nightmare, but she’s got earplugs in any way. Aoife was a lifesaver and had some on hand so we can whisper without disturbing her.”
He hummed as he slotted our fingers together and bridged them over my belly.
“I think,” he said slowly as if he were thinking out loud, “that the Sparrows believe the kids saw them at this weird meeting they were having where they used their children as pawns to protect themselves, and they think that they can identify them. Which, considering their ages, is a stretch.
“Or, they think Reinier or DeLaCroix will ID them to save their own hides, and they’re just cleaning up the mess to stay untouchable.
"They’re both in positions of power—attorney general and White House chief of staff—so they have a lot to lose.”
The rage that churned inside me was a stark contrast to the calm I’d been feeling since he’d wrapped me in his arms.
“I fucking hate them,” I hissed, the words bubbling with my vitriol.
“I know. I do too. Tonight, I learned where they’ll both be on Wednesday and it’s on the island…”
“Which island?”
“This one.”
“You’re shitting me! They’re meeting here?” I wriggled around to face him. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“I’m not. They’re going to meet at his office. According to Smythe’s planner, it’s to discuss some law they’re trying to hoodwink Congress into, but we both know that’s BS.”
“Meeting in person is high risk, isn’t it?”
“Hardly. It could be passed as work. Foundry’s the head of the Justice Department. Smythe could easily justify a meeting.”
“We need to grab them,” I muttered. “It makes our job a lot easier if they’re together and we can contain them simultaneously.”
“I had a feeling you’d say that.”
“You did? Stop knowing me so well.”
He chuckled. “I have an entry and exit strategy, but it needs me on the ground and you, Dead To Me, as well as Troy to get involved.”
I shrugged. “They’ll be down for it.”
“You think Troy will try to make a run for it tonight?”
“I do, but I think she’ll end up talking herself out of it. She’s hella paranoid, but she’s safe here and she loves Lyra and Lyra is undeniably better protected in an Irish Mob stronghold than in a car on the road in the middle of Buttfuck, USA.”
“I understand why she’s paranoid,” he admitted. “Her father’s a known psychopath. Just as crazy as Da but without the religion to temper him.”
“I don’t think religion tempered your da,” I drawled with a disbelieving laugh.
“Oh, you’d be surprised.” He hummed. “It’s interesting that she lost herself in... well, whatever she is.”
“Nah. It makes sense. The best way to get rid of your demons is to lose yourself in a cause that’s bigger than you.”
