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Whoever he was, he scanned their environment. Even when his head didn’t move, his eyes did. Remaining alert, his vigilance screamed Olympus.
“You should vary your routine,” he said. “Vary your routes. Tracking you is way too easy. I don’t even have to follow you; I just wait for you to show up.”
“Who are you?” she asked again as he righted himself to put his spine against the backrest and check in the other direction. “If you don’t start talking, I’m leaving.”
“Why?” he asked. “You’ve got nowhere to be. Nowhere you want to be. You spend all your time walking or sitting here… or writing to my brother.” He brought his focus to her. “That is who you’re writing to, right?”
If anyone else asked that, she’d get up and go. Get up and run.
The word “brother” stunned her still. “Styx?”
“Listen…” he said. “I don’t know if I can trust you and we don’t have a lot of time for me to figure it out.”
“A lot of time for—”
“We don’t need time. You’re H’s daughter, so I’m taking the chance. Pay attention. Ask Z to take you out to dinner. Alone.”
“Why would I—”
“Next Saturday, ask him to take you to his favorite restaurant. Tell him you want to walk home after.”
“Why would—” she stopped, expecting him to cut her off again. When he didn’t, she waited a beat then kept going. “Why would I ask him to dinner? Why would he want us to go out alone?”
“He might be smart and more than three decades older than you, but he’s got an ego. Not many guys his age would refuse a chance with a woman in her twenties, and you’ve got the Lady’s look. Helen’s eyes. Hades says they were his downfall. Those eyes could make him do anything.”
The suggestion sickened her. “You want me to seduce Z?”
He scoffed out a laugh. “Tell him you wannawalkhome. Through the park.”
The deliberate words were supposed to convey something, maybe, probably. It didn’t matter, she didn’t want to ask Zeus out or on a romantic walk through the park on the way back to his apartment… to his bed.
“I won’t let him touch me.”
Even if it was for the good of Olympus. Geez, Daire would go postal.
“You won’t have to,” he said. “He won’t be touching anyone after I break his neck… or drown him, I haven’t decided.”
Shocked, she didn’t blink. All she could do was sit there and absorb. The casual posture of the relaxed man at her side didn’t even hint he’d be capable of murder. Except if he was Styx, the man she’d heard Daire and Harry talk about, he was definitely capable of it. He’d killed his own father.
Rather than lead with what could be a divisive hot button, she put it to him to prove his identity.
“How do I know you’re him?” she asked in a quiet rush. “How do I know you are who you say you are?”
He smiled again. “Suspicious? Good. There’s hope.” His head went back, so he could explore the sky. “How do I prove my relationship to two men you barely know?”
Tess had an idea. “How old were you when you completed your first successful joint mission?”
“Fifteen.”
“What month was it?
“July,” he said, still watching the clouds.
“How old was he?”
“Sixteen. There’s three months between us,” he said, casting his focus her way for a brief moment. “Anyone could know that.”
“How did you celebrate completing that mission?”
