Page 12 of Hunt Me, Daddy

Maxim’s gaze narrowed again. “That is not what I asked.”

“It is the part that matters tonight.”

Maxim was not fooled. I knew it. He knew I knew it. That was the irritating thing about family; they made deception inefficient.

Finally, he said, “Do not let a variable become a weakness.”

I smiled faintly. “I would never.”

He did not smile back. “Ivan.”

“I’m handling it,” I said again.

“Good,” he said, but his gaze said he believed otherwise.

I left the Iron Wolf just after midnight. Boston was wet and black beneath the streetlights, the pavement shining like spilled ink. The air smelled like rain, exhaust, and the ocean somewhere beyond the buildings. I should have gone home, written up a report, sent it to Maxim with Kit Calloway’s name at the top and gone to bed. Instead, I sat in the back of my car outside the tavern, tablet balanced on one knee and opened her file.

The live monitor showed nothing dramatic. Just the soft movements of a woman who knew someone was near and refused to show fear.

A new note appeared in her workspace.

Watcher.

I stared at the word and felt something low and possessive curl tight beneath my ribs.

She had named me.

She didn’t know my face. She didn’t know my name. She didn’t know that the man she had reduced to one word was sitting in the dark outside the Iron Wolf with his brothers’ voices still echoing in his head and her life open in his hands.

She didn’t know that I had seen the cold case. She didn’t know that I had read the name Daniel Calloway and understood, with a clarity that annoyed me, that she would not stop. Not because she was reckless, though she was. Not because she was foolish, because she absolutely was not. But because stopping would feel like letting her brother die twice.

I understood loyalty like that.

I understood wounds that became part of you like that.

The file on my screen shifted as one of her traps activated fully. A pretty little cage, sharp at the edges and patient in the center. She had built it for me without knowing it was mine to admire.

“Clever girl,” I murmured.

The driver glanced at me in the rearview mirror, then quickly looked away because my men were well trained and not suicidal. I closed the false lead without touching it, leaving no indication that I had seen the trap at all. Then I made a note in her file.

Subject is aware of unknown surveillance. Did not disengage. Set lure at 04:07. High competence. High persistence. High risk.

I paused, fingers hovering over the screen.

Then I added another line.

Do not underestimate her.

That was sound operational advice.

I stared at the words for a long time while rain tapped softly against the car roof. In the reflection of the tablet, my face looked calm. Tired, maybe. Amused around the edges if someone knew me well enough to see it. Nothing more.

Good.

Because the thing moving under my skin was not calm.

I had known her as data first. As an intrusion, a route, a pattern, a name in a registry, a woman with bad sleep and better instincts. I had known her risk profile before I knew her grief. That should have made her less dangerous to me, but it did not.