Page 49 of The Hijack

“Meaning?” he prodded, his eyes focused on the eggs in the pan.

“Meaning, what exactly is our plan?” I asked. Sometimes I swore he was purposefully obtuse.

“I have to go after Regg,” he replied. “The plan hasn’t changed. I need to find him and bring him to justice so we can clear our names.”

“But what about New Dawn?” I asked.

“Maybe they’re just two different sides of the same problem,” he suggested.

“Do you really think so?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “But I don’t think we can rule it out.”

“But we’re no closer to finding him than we were before,” I argued.

“No,” he agreed. “But we’re together now. And we have that supercomputer upstairs to help us out.”

“What about Lukas and Z?” I asked.

Theo sighed, sliding a spatula underneath the omelet and flipping it over with the skill of a practiced chef. “They’ll understand.”

“After all they’ve learned about Mr. Abernathy, I doubt it.”

Theo turned off the burner and got four plates from the cabinet. He cut the omelet like a pizza pie with the sharp end of the spatula, portioning out a section for each of us.

“Maybe we should split up,” I said, checking to see how he would respond.

He froze for a moment, the frying pan in one hand. I watched him come back to life but remain silent, carting the dirty cookware to the sink. It was a long time before he spoke.

“If that’s what you think is best,” he offered finally, putting the ball squarely back in my court.

“I don’t think that’s best,” I said, arguing with myself as much as with him. “But I think it’s something we might have to do.”

“I’m not going to stop you,” Theo said reluctantly. “I don’t think I could if I wanted to. But I love you, and if we went our separate ways, I would do nothing but worry.”

He’d never said ‘I love you’ before. It was the offhand way he tossed it out, as if it was a given instead of a revelation. I realized that I loved him too. He wasn’t just my lover because we’d had sex. He was my lover because I cared about him, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life in his company.

“I love you too,” I said finally. “I think that’s maybe why we have to split up. I don’t know if I could survive watching you die, knowing that I was responsible.”

“You could never be responsible for my death,” Theo assured me.

“You say that, but I just can’t believe it. If someone from New Dawn got to us, and something happened...I could never forgive myself.”

He came close, wrapping his hands around my waist. Instantly, I felt relief wash over me, and the budding familiarity of his body was a welcome distraction from my pain.

“This coming from the woman who swore to end me two years ago?” he teased softly.

“Stop it,” I muttered, pushing gently against his chest. “I mean it. I don’t think I could live with myself if anything happened to you.”

“I’m a big boy,” he countered. “I can take care of myself.”

I put my head down against his shoulder, wishing that someone else was in the eye of the storm. I wanted to retire with Theo to a foreign land, but there was too much business to be taken care of first. We couldn’t spend our lives running. That wasn’t what either of us had in mind. I needed to clear a path forward by rooting out New Dawn and stopping them from completing their mission. And Theo needed to find his one-time friend who had framed us both for murder before separating us and dumping us on opposite sides of the planet. There just wasn’t any way around it. I was afraid that we would have to split up.

Theo felt the conflict in my heart as he held me close. “It’s your decision,” he said finally. “I’ll support you in whatever you choose.”

Chapter 25

Theo