Page 11 of Rogue Hope
Standing near the drugstore, partially concealed by a group of tourists, a man watched their float with unusual intensity. Dark baseball cap pulled low, mirrored sunglasses obscuring his features, something about his stillness amidst the celebrating crowd caught her attention.
Then he shifted, turning slightly toward the sunlight, and Zara’s heart stuttered in her chest.
Finn.
But that wasn’t possible.
Yet the set of the jaw, the particular angle of the shoulders triggered recognition so visceral she couldn’t deny it.
She gripped the railing of the float, lightheaded. The parade sounds receded, replaced by the thundering of her pulse in herears. Memory crashed through her defenses: Finn’s laughter as they walked along the Seine, his fingers laced with hers, the devastating moment when she discovered every touch, every whispered endearment had been calculated manipulation.
Then, as quickly as she’d spotted him, the figure disappeared into the crowd.
“Did you see that guy win the pie-eating contest?” Axel called from behind her. “Six slices in under two minutes!”
Zara forced herself back to the present, drawing a steadying breath. “Impressive, stomach capacity,” she managed, her voice surprisingly normal despite the turmoil inside.
It wasn’t Finn.
It was the heat. The anonymous threats. Classic signs of operational stress, something she’d been trained to recognize during her CIA days.
Their float turned the corner onto Oak Street, where the crowd was even thicker. Zara continued waving mechanically, her mind racing behind her carefully maintained smile. Why was she hallucinating Finn now? Was it connected to the threatening texts? Had her subconscious somehow linked the current threat to Finn’s past betrayal?
“Captain!” Griffin called from the crow’s nest. “We’ve got a mechanical issue with the portside cannon!”
“Define ‘mechanical issue,’” Deke responded, not breaking his enthusiastic waving.
“It’s, uh, falling off.”
“Maintain parade formation.” Deke ordered through clenched teeth. “Ronan, Maya—strategic cannon support. Now.”
The minor crisis provided a welcome distraction, allowing Zara to regain her equilibrium as she helped stabilize the listing decoration. Physical action cleared her head, bringing her fully back to the present moment. By the time they’d secured the wayward cannon, she’d convinced herself the sighting had beennothing more than an unfortunate coincidence—a stranger with a passing resemblance to a man seven years dead.
Still, she scanned each cluster of spectators as they passed, her gaze searching for that particular silhouette. She saw nothing suspicious for the remainder of the route.
Whatever ghosts her mind had conjured, whatever threats lurked in anonymous text messages, she wouldn’t let them overshadow this moment. Her team—her family—deserved better than to have their celebration tainted by her fears.
Finn Novak was dead. And the dead couldn’t send text messages or appear in parade crowds.
Could they?
7
After the piratefloat rattled past, Finn blended seamlessly with the crowd lining Main Street. He’d positioned himself strategically—close enough to observe the parade without being conspicuous, partially shielded by a family with enthusiastic children who provided both cover and plausible excuse for his stationary presence.
The baseball cap pulled low and sunglasses obscured most of his features, and the purple bruises circling his eye, while his stance—relaxed shoulders, weight evenly distributed, hands tucked in pockets—projected nothing but casual interest. It was a carefully cultivated invisibility, perfected through years of fieldwork. Hide in plain sight, blend with your surroundings, become part of the background noise that the human brain filters out automatically.
The pirate ship float was approaching, drawing cheers from the spectators around him. Even from this distance, Finn could identify each member of Knight Tactical’s team from his research: Deke Williams at the helm, his military bearing evident despite the flamboyant pirate costume, Ronan Quinn and Maya Rowan side by side near the bow, Griffin Hawkins perched precariously in the crow’s nest, DJ Williams, AxelMontgomery, and Kenji Marshall scattered across the deck in various pirate poses.
And then he saw her.
Zara.
The world around him blurred, sounds fading to a distant hum as his entire focus narrowed to the woman walking alongside the front of the float. For a moment, Finn forgot to breathe. Seven years of carefully constructed emotional defenses crumbled in an instant.
His photographic memory had preserved her with perfect fidelity—every curve of her face, the exact shade of her eyes, the precise angle of her cheekbones, even the small scar near her left eyebrow from a childhood accident she’d once described to him. He could recall with perfect clarity the seventy-three freckles that had dusted her shoulders in the Parisian summer sun. His mind contained an atlas of Zara Khoury, mapped down to the molecular level.
But his eidetic memory had failed him in one crucial way. It couldn’t capture the forcefield of her actual presence. His perfect mental image was data only—devoid of the emotional impact that now hit him with physical force.
