“I was gonna tell you,” he said, laughing. “It’s in an hour.”
I could only take my hand and hold his face. “You’re lucky I love you,” I said, kissing him.
“It was supposed to be a surprise, because we’re a married couple and we should be seen together,” he said, batting his lashes. “And I speak about you a lot. I tell people you made money on the stock exchange, and so now you’re like semi-retired and just cook.”
He was so adorable. I could only kiss him again and again, each time trying to get some of his intelligence to rub off on me. I needed to think about what to do—obviously, we’d have to go to the ice hockey game. I was sure he’d bragged about taking me to his friends in town.
“Let’s clean up, get the car ready, and we can go watch the game, but we’re out the moment it’s over,” I told him. “That means anything you leave here, it might be left here forever. But fingers crossed this is all over quick, because I really like it here.”
Ezra looked around and sighed. “We’re gonna have to pack all that meat.”
I laughed. “I will,” I told him. “You go take care of your things. Keep Mr. Thimble on you.”
He nodded. “On it.”
Since the call, I was on alert. If any of the neighbors tried coming over, I feared they might end up with a bullet in their body. Each of my safe houses had stores of cash, which meant my transactions couldn’t be traced and nobody would know where we were. Obviously, that didn’t stop the FBI from figuring it out. It made sense when I thought about it as I packed the smoked meats into Tupperware. They’d put a tap on Ezra’s legal team, and that gave them a direct link here.
***
I’d been to hockey games before. I couldn’t enjoy myself too much, but I encouraged Ezra. He was screaming in support for the team. They were playing against the Lexington Leopards. I’d never heard of either team before, and they played rough—they played like there were no cameras, and there weren’t. These people were thrashing each other against the boards and whacking the pucks at speeds I thought would’ve burned a hole in their nets.
“Which one is the NHL player?” I asked Ezra through the loud screaming.
“Slayton,” he said. “Twenty-two.”
The speedster. He was in the action, with three men guarding him it seemed, back, front, at the side. He wasn’t just the obsession of the fans, he was the obsession of the team too.
The Sharks won, and before they could even finish getting off the ice, I’d taken Ezra’s hand and we were out of there. But it was too late. People knew where we were. They were here. At the exits. We paused in the hallway while Ezra was all giddy about how aggressive the guys were. My look must’ve attracted him.
“Stay right there,” I said.
People were beginning to get out of their seats.
The two men at the end of the hallway saw me and approached. “You don’t have to do this,” I said.
“Reaper,” they said in unison.
“Come on, there’s people here,” I said. “Let’s do this outside.”
“Come with us,” the one on the right said.
“We need to take him in,” the one of the left said.
“That’s where we’ve got a problem,” I said. “Who are you with? Sanctum? You have a line to Mercy in that earpiece?”They shook their head. “Who?” I continued. “Zodiak? Illumine?Sorena? Which organization?” I scanned their faces, looking for something to tell me who they were working for. “Government? FBI?” I shook my head. “If you know me, you know I have no issue with getting my gun out and putting a shot between each of your eyes.”
They both stared at me. I could hear the sound of people moving closer. Their voices getting louder as if they were about to be in view of this.
“Come with us,” they said.
They’d tried that one before, and I wasn’t going to kill them. I popped one of them with a punch between their eyes, and the other got an elbow in the side. Both dropped like sacks. The second one had got my elbow nerve acting up with a slight tingle. “Fucker,” I grumbled. “Kitten.”
Ezra ran toward me and we raced off out of the building. “What happened?” he asked.
“Just knocked their heads a little,” I said, as we made our way out into the parking lot. More people were there, looking through car windows. It was much darker now, but the occasional shine of a torch caught my eye. They were looking for our car—specifically, any sign of Ezra.
“Who were they?” he asked.
“Keep low,” I whispered, dipping behind a car. “I’m not sure. They could be FBI. They’re potentially an agency. They didn’t give anything away.”
