Two Can Play (Celeste and Dominic) novel Chapter 462

I was still driving when I saw a figure on a bike coming toward me down the empty road.

My hand went to the gun before I thought. But as the bike drew closer, I recognized the shape of him, the set of those shoulders, and I let the van slow. He raised a gun of his own, aiming at the windshield, and for a frozen second we were two armed strangers closing on each other on a road in the middle of nowhere. Then he recognized me too, and the gun came down.

I stopped the van and got out, my hands still tight around the gun, and he climbed off the bike and walked toward me with a smile pulling at his mouth.

"You're all in one piece," he said.

"You too."

"And your friends?"

I glanced back the way I had come. "Let's just say they'll be asleep for a while. What happened back there? This was supposed to be a simple meeting, right? What about everyone inside?"

He shook his head, and the smile faded into something colder. "It turns out it wasn't a good day for them. They're all dead. The meeting was a waste of time. Let's go."

"Wait." I held up a hand. "I heard you mention your money back there. And the other things that belong to you. They've all been taken away?"

"Of course they have."

"So you came here just to kill them?"

"No." He stepped closer, and his voice went low. "I came to give them a chance. I've been working with them for a while, but I found out they were trying to sabotage me. So I came to give them a chance. And what did they do? They kidnapped you. They tried to threaten me using your life. But of course, I knew you could take care of yourself. I refused to give in to their threats. So, unfortunately for them, they miscalculated."

"A wing of the house." He put the van in gear and pulled onto the empty road. "You should see the knives."

I laughed, and the sound startled me, because not an hour earlier I had been in this same van with a gun barrel between my eyes, and here I was trading jokes with the man who had come looking for me.

The road rolled beneath us, flat and empty, and neither of us spoke again until the helicopter came into view, rotors ticking over in the middle of the field like a patient metal bird. He killed the engine and looked at me, and for a second his face did something I had never seen it do. It softened.

"You handled yourself out there. I knew you would."

"Then why did you scream my name like that?"