"And so you came up with 'babe'?" he accused, sounding scandalized.
"Yeah, so? We're a couple, remember?"
Tristan opened his mouth, then clamped it shut again. He continued to glare at Cade for a few heartbeats, then let out his breath in a whoosh. He dropped his menu and fiddled with a sugar packet, and Cade knew the redhead purposely avoided his eyes.
After a couple of silent moments, Tristan spoke. "Sorry. I'm a little … off. It's just a lot, you know."
"I get it."
"What happens now?"
"We'll give the laptop to Annabeth. She'll look into the warehouse, and we'll wait at the safe house until we find intel we can act on."
"And then we'll find my sister?" Tristan seemed hopeful and doubtful at the same time.
"I hope so."
When the waitress returned with their food, Cade began to eat while Tristan fixed his coffee with cream and sugar. As Cade took a sip of his black coffee, the other man scrunched up his nose, and for a moment, Cade thought he would make a snarky comment, but the poor guy didn't have it in him.
It took Cade a while to register that Tristan merely pushed his food around his plate.
"You need to eat. You need energy to stay alert."
"Oh, right," he responded without any heat. He took a small bite of eggs, then another, but paused and looked up, his eyes fixed on Cade.
"Why are you helping me?" he asked in a small voice.
This unsure, timid version of Tristan seemed incongruous with the man who raised his chin with a gun pointed at his head, the man who had the guts to break into a home and a warehouse to find information about his sister. Cade respected that man's determination and selflessness, but this new side of Tristan triggered his protective instincts.
He wiped his mouth with his napkin and set it down. He met the other man's questioning eyes with a steady gaze. "We have a code, me and my associates."
A little wrinkle materialized between Tristan's eyebrows, and Cade's immediate impression was 'cute' before he pointedly ignored the thought.
"What kind of code?"
"To protect innocents. By any means necessary."
Tristan's head tilted adorably to the side, and Cade reminded himself, adorable or not, this man was a job.
"You mean killing people?"
"Killing bad people. People who prey on others, yes. If evidence suggests the world is better off without them, we execute them."
"So you, like, do this regularly?" Tristan asked, his eyes wide.
"Yeah. Believe me, there's no shortage of predators who need putting down."
"But murder …" Tristan argued, still clearly struggling with the new information, "Murder is wrong," he said as if reciting a commandment he learned as a child.
"Murder of innocents is wrong. Murder of monsters is justice."
They locked gazes for a long moment as the words hung in the air, then Tristan nodded and went back to toying with his sugar packet.
"You said you wanted to get information from Wilson before you killed him."
"Yeah, I was supposed to interrogate him about his partners and where he's keeping the girls."
Tristan narrowed his eyes, and Cade sensed the redhead could read his thoughts.
