Page 143 of Slashed Bonds

“Are you going to look into her ex-pack?” He’s watching my profile. “And who we’re killing?”

I smirk.

I try not to get distracted by what his mouth’s doing. Dissatisfaction, pulling at the corners. The look of a man who wants a body on the ground and has been told to wait.

“You know I’ve already got what I need.”

I let that land.

“Waiting on Cap.”

I told him Monday. The 2:13. The burner bought eleven days before the barn. He listened the way he listens to a scouting report, no reaction, and at the end he said one word, which was good, and then he said not yet, and that was the whole conversation.

Not yet is the hardest sentence in the language for me. I’ve been living in it for twenty hours.

The names are in a folder on a laptop that doesn’t connect to anything. Four of them. Addresses. Vehicles. A training schedule that’s public and a practice schedule that isn’t. The time a certain center leaves a certain gym on Thursdays and the route he drives home.

And a fifth name, which I didn’t go looking for and found anyway, on a donor plaque in the lobby of a rink in Halbrook, three lines down from the top.

Vance. The father. Two thirds of a program’s funding, and a daughter who checks a gold watch.

I haven’t told Cash the fifth. I’m learning from him. Not yet.

Nikolai stares at me. His eyes narrow. And that makes me smile, which I don’t do, and I lean in until our lips brush, barely, the ghost of a thing.

“I’m being dead-ass,” I say, and I take his bottom lip between my teeth and tug. “I’ve got their names. One search and it’s over. But Cap probably has more interesting plans. Hmm?”

His eyes drop to my mouth.

And the look that builds between us is the one that always builds. Tension, then something under it, and the gravel and the brick and the dead building across the road start to seem less relevant than they were.

“At this point, I’ll come back after you two fuck it out.”

We blink.

Look forward.

Cassian’s standing on the path with his headphones sliding down off his ears to his neck, and Knox is sitting at his feet, upright, panting, pleased, which means the two of them have been standing there for a while, watching.

Oops.

“Nah,” I say. “We’re not fucking.”

“Nah,” Nikolai says. “When the fuck are we all fucking Mori?”

Cash and I both look at him.

He already knows what we’re going to say. He shrugs before either of us says it.

“Yes. I’m possessive as fuck.” A pause. He pouts. “But I can make exceptions.”

Another pause.

“Maybe.”

Knox barks. Once. Panting happily at Cassian’s feet like he’s weighed in.

“See?” Nikolai gestures. “Pup approves of me.”