Page 69 of Hunt Me, Daddy

“And if the answer is everyone?” he asked.

“Then I assume the truth is somewhere no one wants me looking.”

“Dangerous habit.”

“Useful one.”

“Those are often the same.”

“Are you worried about me, Ivan?”

I meant it lightly. Mostly.

His gaze held mine for one beat too long, and a knot beneath my ribs tightened with the specific unpleasantness of realizing I had just brushed a live wire.

“Yes,” he said.

Just like that.

My mouth went dry. I looked down at my coffee because eye contact had become suddenly very expensive.

“That’s a strange thing to say to someone you barely know.”

“Barely,” he repeated.

I looked back up. “Do you barely know me?” I asked.

His face gave me nothing.

His silence gave me more.

For a second, the café noise thinned around us. All of it blurred beneath the weight of Ivan Morozov looking at me like he had been asked a question with only one honest answer and had decided not to give it yet.

“I know your work,” he said finally.

“Convenient.”

“True.”

“Those are often the same too.”

His mouth lifted in the faintest glimmer of a smirk, but his eyes stayed serious. “You are exposed.”

I sat back. “That sounded less like coffee and more like a warning.”

“It is both.”

“Multifunctional. Very efficient.”

“Kit.”

My name again, but he’d said it lower this time. I did not like how effectively it interrupted me. Actually, I did like it. That was the problem.

“You work alone,” he said. “You prefer it. You control the environment, the tools, the pace, the assumptions. That makes sense for certain kinds of work.”

“Is this where you tell me I need a team?”

“No.”