“I wasn’t planning on him following me home,” I growl.
“He’s not stupid, Eleanor. He will know you lied. How likely is he to find your true identity?”
“Less than fifteen percent.”
“And if he’s successful, will that lead him to your past?”
“No. My last name was never Austin.”
“Eleanor’s hardly a common first name. Why keep it?”
I release a sigh. Logically, I should have changed my entire name, but there are numerous reasons I didn’t. I give him the one driven by logic, the one least damning of my past. “Changingyour first name runs the risk you don’t respond to it like you should, raising suspicions and attracting attention.”
“I’m sure you could have managed to keep it together.”
True. I take a sip of my coffee. “It’s the only thing my mother gave me that survived.”
Charlie nuzzles my free hand at my side. The ever-present terror I feel around dogs is almost non-existent with this particular pooch. There’s something about those soulful eyes that coax me into believing he isn’t going to harm me.
“That’s understandable. Being ripped from the world you grew up in, no matter the wrongness, oppression, and horror of it, is still a wrench.”
“It’s how I ended up in the military,” I confess. “I needed the rules, routine, and discipline to help me navigate the strange world and customs I found myself in. I needed the security of that space while I figured out how I fit into wider society.”
“What did you learn?”
“That I don’t fit. I have since learned fitting in is overrated and impossible. I can fake it by blending into my surroundings and being unmemorable.”
“Not sure you could ever be unmemorable, Eleanor.”
My lips tilt up as my hand runs over Charlie’s head. It feels nice. “My gut tells me Christopher is covering his tracks. Jonathan’s famous retreat isn’t scheduled for another month, and they take a lot of work and money to plan, so an impromptu gathering seems unlikely.”
“Then we flush him out.”
I finish my first pastry and eyeball the chocolate one. Hunter puts it on my plate while giving himself the twin.
My lips twitch. I’ve already figured this part out, but I’m curious what Hunter thinks. “How would we flush him out exactly?”
“Easy. We dry up his funding, and like rats on a sinking ship, he will surface for air. They always do.”
“That’s something you can do?”
“Can you get me into his bank account or emails?”
“I can do emails in my sleep. Banks are a little trickier, but doable.”
“Email is all I need to cause his company a little financial chaos, ensuring his attention is on saving his own ass and not chasing yours.”
Interesting. I don’t dabble in the financial markets due to the fact I have zero clue what I am doing. I have a guy that looks after my investments portfolio and a lawyer who knows what to do with it when the time comes.
“Don’t you have motorcycle club shit to attend to?”
“I’m on leave for the next two weeks.”
So that’s why he was in Miami; he was catching some downtime. I feel a slight twinge of guilt that my crisis meant he cut his vacation short, but he didn’t have to do it, and he certainly didn’t need to become my shadow to Chicago. Or insist I come to Texas to hide out at his home, in his town, with his dog.
“Whoop-de-doo. Hunter in my face twenty-four seven.”
“Technically, you are now my girlfriend, so that’s not unreasonable.”
