Page 189 of The ARC Unit: Breach

The words were rough enough that my breath caught. I knew he saw it because his stare dropped to my mouth for less than a second before returning to my eyes. The reaction made me furious with myself. I had blood on my boots, Keller’s death still sitting behind my eyes and somehow Wolf telling me where to look had managed to send heat through me anyway.

I had spent most of my time here baiting this man about control. Apparently my body had not understood that eventually he might stop letting me treat it as a joke.

“The pool party,” he said.

I frowned at him. “What about it?”

“Same fucking thing.”

“It was not the same.”

“You were given a boundary. You broke it. You came back with something useful and decided that made the boundary stupid.”

“Südweg led us somewhere.”

“I know where it led.”

“Then you know why I followed him.”

“No. I know what you got afterward.”

Wolf took another step, making me give ground until the backs of my thighs touched the desk again.

“At that party, comms dropped and you followed a target behind the cabanas after I told you what to do if contact failed. You came back with Südweg and spent the next week acting like that meant I had been wrong to tell you not to disappear.”

“I didn’t spend the next week acting like anything.”

“You sure as hell learned something from it.”

“What, exactly?”

“That if the result is good enough, you can ignore me and argue about the prize later.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Tonight, Viper left the route I put him on because you moved. Jackal pulled off the south side with fucking stitches still in him because you moved. Raven changed the whole tactical picture because you moved, and I stopped running my operation because I had to go get you before the armed trafficker you were walking toward decided he had changed his mind.”

“I didn’t ask anyone to follow me.”

The second the words left my mouth, I knew they were wrong.

Wolf’s eyes went flat.

“Say that again.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“No. Repeat it.”

“Wolf.”

“Repeat the fucking sentence.”

Heat crawled up my neck.

“I said I didn’t ask anyone to follow me.”

“And you think that means what?”