“You know me better than that.”
“I used to think I knew you.”
Silence fell until she whispered, “I can’t ignore what I found.Please help.I need someone I can trust.”
“Trust.”He let the word hang.
“Someone who doesn’t freeze when things get ugly,” Sable insisted, ignoring the atmosphere between them.“Someone who knows how I work.”
“Someone who shared your bed?”
“Don’t twist this?—”
“Any more than you have already?”
Her lips thinned.“Take us out of it.This is business, Elijah.”
“Glad we got that straight.So, what’s the intel?”His sweeping glance told her the church was empty for now, but wouldn’t stay so for long.
“I’ve got everything we need to burn their operation.Names.Faces.Routes.Contacts.But…”
“They’re watching you,” he concluded as she hesitated.“Which means they’re watching me.We can’t talk here.”
“Where?”
“My yacht.TheSeraphimis moored in Grand Harbour.”
“Your space.Your rules.”
“I’m still alive,” he pointed out.
“When?”
“Follow me out.Say a prayer first.From the sound of it, we’ll need all the help we can get.”
He slipped through a side door, back into the sun and the reassuring bustle of a busy street.She would follow.The mission mattered too much for Sable to run now.
Did he want her to follow him?Did he want to wake the past?
Fuck it!
Why not?The cause was bigger than both of them.
CHAPTERTHREE
She did as he asked, and even said a prayer, though it seemed impertinent to ask a supreme being she wasn’t even sure she believed in to help her succeed in the mission, but it couldn’t hurt to ask for help on others’ behalf.God knew they needed it.“Help the captives survive until we get there, and restrain the cruel hand of the slavers.”
Now she only had Elijah to face.
Great.
Leaving the hard wooden pew behind, she walked swiftly and silently to her prechosen exit.The main thing to remember, she reassured herself as she stepped out into the heat of the busy street, was not to flinch or beg for his help.Not a single flicker of doubt must cross her face.If Elijah knew how terrified she was at the thought of confronting this particular band of slavers, he might question why she’d come back, putting him and his team in danger.
It was a risk she was prepared to take to save Anna Marie and others like her.
That was only half the picture.Missing Elijah had been hell.Seeing him again for any length of time would be worse.On a personal level, their relationship had been purely physical.Apart from his promise of a ring.That had been his one and only gesture of something more than sex.And how short-lived had that been.Chasing his brutal ghost had only made her more frustrated.
It wasn’t all about sex.We laughed together too.
