“She’s being protected,” I continue. “Right now, that’s the only reason she’s safe.”
“By who?” Amber asks. Her voice is sharp, but it wavers at the end. She hates that it wavers.
I don’t answer the question. I made a promise, and I am not one to go back on my words.
Instead, I give her the truth that matters. “If you know where she is, you can be used. If you know who has her, you can be followed. If someone is watching you—and I’m not saying they are, but I can’t rule it out—then you knowing anything puts both of you at risk.”
She opens her mouth like she’s going to argue.
I lift a hand, palm down, not to silence her, but to hold the line. I’ve had to hold lines my whole life. This is an easy one.
“This isn’t about shutting you out,” I say. “It’s about keeping you breathing.”
Her eyes flash.
The urge hits me, sudden and stupid, to reach across the table and brush my thumb over that expression until it softens. To take the anger out of her mouth another way.
I don’t move.
Wanting things is how men like me lose.
Amber sits very still for a long moment. I can see the fight in her working itself out—every instinct telling her to push, every ounce of survival telling her to choose the path that keeps her friend alive.
Finally, she exhales.
“Fine,” she says, like the word tastes bitter. “But I’m not going home and waiting in the dark.”
I tilt my head. “Then what do you want?”
Her gaze locks onto mine. “We meet here every night. You give me updates. Even if you have none, you show up. I want tosee your face when you tell me there’s nothing. I want to know you didn’t disappear.”
There’s a threat underneath the demand, and I respect her for saying it plainly.
“And the second you don’t show,” she adds, “I go to the police and find the greenest cop they have. Anyone you can’t possibly have bought yet. And I bring you down.”
I almost smile.
She thinks that’s leverage.
It is, in the way a match is leverage against gasoline.
But I don’t laugh at her. I don’t patronize her. She’s already sitting across from a man she now knows is mafia, and she’s still trying to negotiate.
That takes the sort of courage that many who have walked the earth lack.
“All right,” I say.
Her brows knit. “That’s it? You agree?”
She sounds surprised. “I agree,” I repeat. “Every night. Here.”
She studies me like she’s trying to find the trick. When she doesn’t, she pushes her hand across the table.
I take it.
Her grip is firm. Her skin is warm. Her pulse is fast where our hands meet.
My thumb brushes her knuckles once. It’s barely a movement, nothing anyone else would notice, but I do. It feels like a jolt of electricity is traveling up my spine. I force myself to let go before that touch becomes something I can’t undo.
