One night, after too many half-conversations and too much unsaid, I lean back in my chair and say, “Can I ask you something?”
“You already did.”
“Ha-ha. Very funny.” I knock back my drink. “How come you don’t have one of those?”
“One of what?”
I gesture vaguely. “You know. A right-hand man. A second. Whatever they’re called. The others always do. There’s always someone hovering behind them like a shadow, waiting for instructions.”
His mouth twitches. “That’s an unflattering description.”
“Accurate, though.”
He hums, considering. Takes a slow sip of his drink. I watch his throat move before I can stop myself. But the slow bob of his Adam’s apple sticks with me, enough to make me wonder what it would be like to touch it, feel the hint of beard that trails almost all the way down to it. Run my fingers over it.
Or my lips.
I kill that thought dead in its tracks.
“My second is on another assignment,” he says finally. “Has been for a while.”
I jump on the chance to distract myself. “How long is a while?”
“About two years.”
That surprises me. “That’s a long assignment.”
“It is.”
I wait. He doesn’t elaborate.
“What kind of assignment?” I press.
His eyes lift to mine, and something in them cools. Not anger. Distance.
“You need to stop prying into things that don’t concern you,” he says. “For your own sake.”
I bristle. “You brought me into this.”
“I didn’t,” he replies calmly. “You waltzed into it.”
I hate that he’s right.
“People who dig too deep end up in the dirt,” he continues. “Usually without anyone noticing they’re gone.”
The words land heavier than he probably intends.
“People disappear anyway,” I say, my voice sharper than I mean it to be. “All it takes is crossing paths with the wrong man.”
He stills.
The silence stretches between us, thick and uncomfortable.
“Has that happened to someone you know?” he asks.
My chest tightens. “Now who’s snooping into things he doesn’t have a right to know?”
I expect him to retreat.
