“So it wasn’t about… you know, halos. Angels.”
A dry sound escaped him, a half-laugh with no real humor in it. “No. Nothing holy about it. It meant I was the one they dropped in when they needed someone to disappear or if they needed someone brought in. No records, no medals, no trace. Quiet, efficient, off the record. I got in, got out. Took care of things. Usually clean… not like tonight.”
“What happened tonight?”
“Emotions. They’ll get you killed, make you sloppy.”
I didn’t want to push that, as much as I did want to know what he meant. Instead I moved the conversation on: “So, like a Navy SEAL?”
“Deeper.”
“Delta?” I hoped he was impressed that I even knew what that was. I saw it in a movie once and, honestly, I wasn’t even sure if it was real.
He huffed what might have been another laugh. “Deeper.”
“And you kept it? The name?”
“Seemed fitting. When I left that world behind, everything else went with it. My name, my file, my country… but that stuck. It got me into doors… or out of them.”
The thought chilled me, how easy he made it sound. Like erasing himself had become a survival tactic.
“Do you miss the name you had before?”
That made him pause.
“I don’t think about it much,” he said, but then added, “but… sometimes. It feels like it belonged to someone I killed a long time ago.”
I didn’t say anything right away. I wasn’t sure what to say.
“My name was Zayn,” he said quietly.
I said it out loud, testing it. “Zayn.”
He flinched a little, like hearing it aloud hurt.
“No one’s called me that in a long time.”
“I like it.”
The steel in his voice returned. “Don’t get used to it.”
I smiled but didn’t push it. I wasn’t sure when sleep finally found me, but I remember the moment I stopped shaking. I remember the way his fingers pressed gently into the dip of my waist like a tether. It was a quiet promise that he was still thereand that he wasn’t going to vanish like the blood, or the body, or the name he'd buried.
Chapter twenty-two
Halo
“The Point of No Return”
Shewasasleep.I’dcounted the rhythm of her breathing, watched the slow rise and fall of her shoulder under the blanket. She had fallen fast asleep with me lying behind her, my hand on her hip, breath against the back of her neck. She wasn’t worried that I’d kill her or I’d snap and do something to her like I did to Parrish.
That meant something; it meanttoomuch.
I moved to sit by the window, elbows on my knees, hands still aching from earlier. My knuckles were split. Blood came off in dried, black flakes. I squeezed my hands into fists, watching as the skin stretched and separated where it had broken apart earlier. I wanted the pain; it was something to pull me back from the place her warmth had pushed me into.
Her foot had brushed mine, and her breath had caught when my hand found her waist. I don’t know what possessed me to touch her, I think I hoped the touch would comfort her and assure her that I was here. Her body had relaxed into mine like she belonged there, like I was something she needed. What she had witnessed from me tonight should’ve scared her.
Instead she made jokes, she teased and laughed. God help me, I wanted to laugh too. I wanted to stay, butthatwas the danger.
