Page 102 of Hunt Me
“Stop.” Iris squeezes my hand. “I can hear you spiraling from here.”
“I’m not?—”
“You are.” She leans closer. “We have the leverage. They need our silence as much as we need their cooperation.”
She’s right. Logically, tactically, strategically right.
But logic doesn’t account for the cold knot in my stomach. The certainty that tomorrow could go wrong in a thousand different ways.
I drain my wine and reach for the bottle to pour myself another glass.
“To tomorrow.” The words taste like ash.
“To surviving.” Iris clinks her glass against mine. “Together.”
Together.
Yeah.
We’ll come out on top. We have to.
The alternative is too hard to consider.
26
IRIS
Midnight hits, and Nikolai calls it.
“We need to be sharp tomorrow.” He stands, pulling Sofia with him. “Get some sleep.”
Dmitri nods. “Early start. Be ready by seven.”
The group disperses gradually—couples peeling off to separate rooms, the rest of us fading into the compound’s quiet corridors. Alexi’s hand finds my lower back, a silent question and a statement all at once.
Come on,” he says, guiding me toward the east wing.
His room is sparse compared to the penthouse—a bed, a desk, windows overlooking dark woods that seem to stretch endlessly into nothing. He closes the door behind us and stands there for a moment, just breathing, like he needs to confirm I’m real.
“You came for me.” The words escape before I can stop them. “You walked into a federal facility with guns blazing.”
“Of course I did.”
“You could have died.” My voice cracks. “Morrison could have killed you. His men could have?—”
“But they didn’t.” He moves closer, unhurried, like he has all the time in the world when we both know he doesn’t.
“That’s not the point.” I pace the small space. “You risked everything. Your brothers. Your family. For me.”
“Iris—”
“I’m just some hacker who breached your systems and brought nothing but chaos into your life. The government’s hunting me. Sentinel wants me dead. I’m a liability wrapped in?—”
He crosses the room and cups my face in both hands, forcing me to meet his eyes,
“You think that’s what you are to me?”
“I don’t know what I am to you.” The admission comes out small. Vulnerable. “I don’t know what this is.”
