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My brain has to play catch up as the warm spray washes over my skin and I rest my cheek on his shoulder. I can barely keep my eyes open, so thoroughly content and worn out in the best of ways that I could probably fall asleep standing. I almost do, too, when Luka carefully starts to wash my hair and lather my body in soap, so gentle it’s almost enough to make my heart burst. He even spoils me further by wrapping me in the fluffiest of his safehouse-provided bath towels, taking great care to dry me off.
“Stay,” he whispers, brushing a few strands of my hair away from my face. “Stay tonight, Dani.”
I almost tell him yes. The answer is on the tip of my tongue. What girl wouldn’t want to after all that? I can just imagine all the fun we could have, but I’m unfortunately starting to regain my senses. The tiny voice in the back of my head is screaming to get the hell out of here. What if we’re seen together? What if one of my colleagues discovers what happened? I’d be in a world of trouble.
I shake my head slowly as I get dressed. Luka helps me with that, too, offering me his hands for balance as I shimmy back into my clothes. “I need to go,” I murmur. “Lots of work to do.”
Luka’s face is difficult to read. I can’t tell if he’s disappointed. The only thing I have to go off of is the way he works his jaw, his joints audibly popping under the stress of his movements. “I understand,” he mutters eventually.
“It’s no easy feat,” I try to say lightly, “keeping you safe from harm.”
“When will I see you again?”
I swallow. God, is that hope I hear lingering on his words? To be perfectly fair, I want to tell him I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m sure I can find a way around the cameras, or I can reschedule the patrol lineup so nobody notices me slip inside. But that goes in direct conflict of what we’re trying to do here. This is a safehouse, not a holiday resort.
“When I deliver your groceries,” I answer.
“I look forward to it, then.”
I stare up at him, mesmerized. He’s really a sight to behold with his hair wet and clinging to the nape of his neck, steam giving his chest and shoulders a lovely dewy complexion. With a quick hop onto my toes, I kiss his cheek. “Nobody can know about this.”
“I know.”
“Alright, then. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
I leave in a hurry the same way I came, throwing a cautious glance left and right before hurrying to my parked car about two blocks away.
Chapter 19
Luka
I’m restless, festering in my boredom and stewing anxiously in my inaction.
It’s been almost a week since the attack at the hospital, but from what little I’ve been able to glean over my spotty internet connection and secured search browser, the police haven’t found any leads. It’s been quiet. Too quiet. But until there’s a development, I’m stuck here indefinitely. And it doesn’t help that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Dani the entire time.
She scratched me up something fierce, but there’s something incredibly sexy about the way she dug her nails into my back and attempted to hold back her moans. I’m eagerly counting the days until she returns. Waiting to see her again makes every second, minute, and hour stretch out—and it’s starting to make me antsy.
I try to throw myself into some semblance of a routine. It’s the only way I can keep my mind from rotting. Waking up before noon takes some adjustment considering my usual sleep schedule. I’m effectively nocturnal, preferring the quiet of the evenings when I work. Breakfast/lunch, a brief workout in the sparsely furnished living room, a cold shower, and the rest of my time is spent tinkering on my makeshift laptop.
It gets old really fast, though. There’s only so much doom scrolling I can take. All I can do is wait for the damn pin to drop. Either the FBI finds my attackers and tracks The Trinity down before they can cause any more harm, or they’ll find me and kill me on sight. Until then, I exist in limbo—neither coming nor going. It’s frustrating, to say the least.
After about an hour futzing around on the internet, I decide on a whim to do a little bit of social media sleuthing. Tabitha Harper. I’ve been curious about her ever since our little run-in the other night. Dani may be an elusive mystery, but I’d bet a pretty penny her teenage sister doesn’t have the same hangups about internet safety.
Just as I thought, finding Tabitha’s profiles is a lot easier than with her sister. She uses the same handle,@happytabby, for her Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok accounts. She has a couple hundred followers here and there, and her posts get minimal engagement. Mostly just friends and family. Pictures of her meals, outings with friends, silly recreations of viral dances—young person stuff. Not exactly one of those stupid viral influencers.
I take particular interest in the pictures of Dani. There aren’t many of her on Tabitha’s profile, but the few I do find all feature her smiling, big and bright. Carefree. It’s the little things I find the most intriguing. She was platinum blonde at one point. It looks like she used to have braces, too. I like the picture of her and her family gathered around at her college graduation, her degree in criminology in hand while dressed in a black academic robe and cap.
As I continue to scroll through Tabitha’s profile, I notice something interesting. Up until roughly two years ago, there were plenty of posts featuring her parents. Not to mention the fact that her wheelchair is nowhere to be seen and she’s standing in the pictures. My investigation leads me to one post in particular, a black and white photo of her parents, a somber message dedicated to their memory in the description box.
I sit back and take it all in.
I’m really protective of my sister.
I feel like I’ve encroached on something private, even if itison public display. What a difference paying a little attention can make.
The jingle of keys and the fiddling of a lock make my ears perk up. When Dani steps in with two large bags of groceries, I nearly shoot out of my seat. I close out my browsers as she steps into the kitchen. Agent Gomez, unfortunately, follows close on her heels.
“I’ll leave these here,” Dani tells him. “Can you do a perimeter sweep? We can never be too careful.”
