Page 38 of The Rook’s Obsession

I look over at her. She’s already there—I can see it in her face. The same thought that’s now forming in my mind has already formed in hers.

Liam put a tracker in Aurora back when their relationship was a little rockier than it is now. He had it implanted under her skin, in the back of her shoulder.

Is it possible? Could they have done that to her? All the way back in the early days, when she was recovering. When Vincenzo would’ve wanted to keep her close. In the many years since, it would’ve been a convenience, being able to track one of his weapons.

And she knows it. There’s a sick certainty in her voice when she concludes, “They’re tracking me. Not us. Me.”

“It makes sense,” I have to admit. In fact, it’s the only thing about the last half hour that makes sense. How else could they zero in on her the way they did?

She’s quiet for a long moment before opening the car door and getting out. I follow her inside to a restroom, one of those single-occupancy family bathrooms with a lock on the door. She goes in first. I follow, locking the door behind us.

The lighting is harsh and makes a buzzing sound, washing the room in a shade of gray that makes anyone look sick when they stand under it. She waits in front of the chipped porcelain sink with her back to me. “Check me,” she says before pulling her shirt over her head.

I step closer. Her back is bare under the fluorescent light. The scars from the explosion are visible on her arm, trailing down her left side. I start at the base of her neck and run my fingers slowly over her skin, pressing gently, feeling for anything that isn’t muscle or bone. Across her shoulders. Down her spine. Along each shoulder blade.

There. On her upper back, just below the right shoulder blade. There’s a tiny lump under her skin, maybe the size of a grain of rice. If you weren’t looking for it, you’d never notice. It’s deep enough that it doesn’t show on the surface, but it’s unmistakable under my fingertip. A hard, smooth object that doesn’t belong in a human body.

I have to swallow back my rage. “Found it.”

She reaches back, and I guide her hand to the spot. When she presses it, she goes very still. “That son of a bitch.”

“We can find a vet’s office nearby,” I suggest, watching her face in the reflection as she processes the latest betrayal. “Break in, get the right tools to take it out properly⁠—”

The look on her face stops me mid-sentence. It’s not fear or disgust. It’s cold fury, maybe edged in something that could be dark humor. “I’ve dug bullets out of my own body,” she tells me. “I’m not a pussy. Just get me a blade and something to clean it with.”

I stare at her for a beat, then leave the bathroom with a grin.

There’s a small convenience counter near the entrance to the rest stop, staffed by a teenager who looks like he’d rather be literally anywhere else. I buy a first aid kit, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and a pack of gauze pads. There’s already a pocketknife in my jeans. I’ve carried one since I was fifteen.

She’s standing in front of the mirror when I get back to the bathroom, her shirt still off and her jaw set in a way I’ve come to understand means she’s preparing for pain. She knows what’s coming. She’s already building the wall around herself, shielding herself from what’s definitely going to hurt.

First, I wash my hands thoroughly, then open the pocketknife and hold the blade under a stream of rubbing alcohol until every surface has been covered. I soak a gauze pad and clean the area on her back, wiping in widening circles around the lump.

“Ready?” I ask.

“Just do it.”

I press the tip of the blade against her skin and make a small, precise incision. She doesn’t flinch or make a sound. Her hands grip the edge of the sink, her knuckles white, but that’s the only hint she gives of being in pain. Blood wells up immediately—not a lot, but enough to run down her back in a thin, red line.

I widen the cut just enough to get my fingers in, pinching the tiny device between my thumb and forefinger. It resists for a moment—it’s been in there a long time, and the tissue has grown around it—before it slides free. A small, smooth capsule, no bigger than a pill. Dark in color, slick with blood.

I hold it up so she can see it in the mirror.

She looks at it the way you’d look at a cockroach you found in your bed. She then takes it from my hand, turns to the toilet, and drops it in. The flush is satisfying.

“Gone,” she says.

After cleaning the wound with alcohol—this time, she hisses through her teeth—I close it with butterfly strips from the first aid kit, then cover everything with a gauze pad and tape. It’s not pretty, but it’s clean and it’ll hold.

She pulls her shirt back on and looks at herself in the mirror. The only thing to give away what’s turning inside her is the way her eyes burn. The tracker was in her body for twelve years, and she never knew. Every move she made, every city she traveled to, every safe house she slept in… he knew. The freedom she thought she had was really a longer leash, and the other end was always wrapped around Vincenzo’s fist.

“Let’s go,” she decides.

I unlock the bathroom door, but rather than head straight for the exit, she stops off at the convenience counter. “Jack Daniel’s,” she announces, pointing to one of the bottles behind the register.

When she glances my way, I realize she’s waiting for me to pay. And as much as part of me wants to remind her we need to be clearheaded, she just finished having a foreign device extracted from her body. Something tells me clearheaded is the last thing she wants right now. Refusing her would be cruel.

Besides, good luck to me. I couldn’t force her to do anything.