Chapter 33

She stared at him from the bedroom doorway. “Did you hear from Ian?”

He scrambled up onto his knees, grabbed her hands, yanked her down hard. Fast.

And they were facing each other, holding hands, both kneeling.

The dark of his eyes deepened to the color of rich earth, black-brown, warm as he fixed them on hers. And yet she also picked up something else. A crazy sense of something else in him. Freedom? Relief? “It’s going down different, Tish. Listen.”

Her heartbeat kicked up and she squeezed his hands but he held her firm.

“I made some decisions in the last few minutes.” He fixed his gaze on hers. “You’ll be safe, and Ian will be safe. There’s nothing to worry about.”

She stared back at him. “And you?”

“You’ll be safe, and Ian will be safe.”

Worry spun in her chest. “What did you do?”

“There’s a man who’s after me. Renegade cop. Not nice. Tonight, I’m going to give him what he wants the most in the whole world, but only after I get a call from Ian that he’s fine.”

“What does he want? Money? Information? Plans?”

He exhaled a quick puff of air before he answered her, and this time there definitely was an undercurrent of something sad in his manner, something of giving up. She saw it in his frame.

“Me.”