He steps back toward the bed. I feel his hand cup my face, his fingertips tracing along the curves of my cheeks like he’s memorizing the shape of me in the dark.
“I need you here,” he says. “Safe. Just give me that much, alright?”
I swallow back my arguments and nod. “Okay.”
“But when I come back to this bed… when this meeting with Harold is done and we’re alone again in the darkness…” His thumb sweeps across my lower lip, feather-light, teasing, taunting, tantalizing. “… I want to hear you say all those things you were saying in your sleep. But this time, awake. To myface. With no dreams to hide behind.” I feel rather than see his lopsided grin. “Do you understand?”
I nod. “Yes,” I whisper. “I understand.”
39
BASTIAN
THE FOLLOWING NIGHT
double-cross cut /'d?b?l krôs k?t/: noun
1: butchery term for a bone-in cut severed at two points.
2: when the briefcase in his hands was always meant for different fingers.
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
That’s false. Because I-94 from Skokie to the heart of Chicago is paved with cracking asphalt and roadkill.
Zeke takes the wheel while I ride shotgun, watching the highway unspool before us like a gray ribbon leading straight into the ninth and lowest circle of Dante’s Inferno. The familiar skyline emerges through the windshield in increments. First, the Sears Tower. Then the Hancock. Then the bristling spear of glass and steel that I used to call home.
They all look like glittering middle fingers raised against the darkening sky. I still don’t know who they’re telling to go fuck themselves. Me? Harold? Aleksei? Fate? Reason?
Jury’s still out.
My burner phone sits in the cupholder. Harold sent coordinates to a parking garage in the West Loop. Neutral ground, supposedly safe. A lot hinges on the word “supposedly.” But what choice do I have?
Zeke fills the silence with nervous chatter. “Yas made me promise to text her every fifteen minutes,” he says, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “She’s convinced we’re walking into a trap.”
“Smart woman.”
“Yeah, well, she’s also convinced I’m going to propose within the year, so her judgment might be compromised.”
I grunt something noncommittal, but I’m barely listening. My mind keeps drifting back to Eliana in my bed. The promise I extracted from her to repeat her dreams to me face-to-face.
I have to survive this. I have too much to lose now.
“Turn here.”
Zeke follows my instructions and there it is. The parking garage looms ahead like the hollowed-out, concrete ribcage of some long-dead beast. He pulls into a spot near the entrance ramp and kills the engine. “So what’s the play?”
“You stay with the car.”
His head snaps toward me. “Excuse me?”
I point at him, then tap the center console. “You. Car. Stay. Need me to write it down for you?”
“Like hell I’m letting you walk in there alone, asshole!” Zeke looks panicked, eyes huge and round. “This is exactly the kind of stupid solo mission that gets tough guys like you killed. Horror movie bullshit. The guy who goes off alone always ends up as a cautionary tale.”
“If this goes sideways, someone needs to get back to the safe house and warn them.” I don’t look at him. Keep my gaze straight out the windshield, at the pocket of shadow marking the mouth of the garage. “Someone needs to protect the others. And I don’t want Yasmin haunting me if I get you killed. She’d be a vengeful ghost, that one.”
Zeke’s jaw works as he chews this over. Finally, he slumps back in his seat. “Ten minutes,” he says through gritted teeth. “After that, I’m coming in whether you like it or not. And if you get yourself killed before then, it’s not Yasmin you have to worry about.Iwill personally drag your ass back from the afterlife just to beat it again.”
