To my relief, Phil agrees, and we meet at a bar in Uptown Chicago. Only Rory is able to join us—Simon is attending a local book signing—but after we each order a beer, we settle into the same comfortable dynamic as always, with Phil launching into his weekly tour persuasion speech.
“Don’t you ever want to just chuck it all?” he says, waving his beer around. “To get something more out of life? Something invigorating and exciting?”
“Dude, you sound like an infomercial,” Rory tells him, and we all laugh. I can hear the desperate edge in my laughter, but to my relief, I seem to be the only one. My bandmates are oblivious to my growing turmoil, bantering and carrying on as though the world isn’t ending.
As though it’s just another Tuesday night.
And for them, it is—the kind of normal, predictable Tuesday night that Phil wants to escape. The kind I haven’t had in a long time, because from the moment I met Peter, nothing about my life has been either normal or predictable.
I wonder what Phil would think if he learned about that—about how my husband’s killer forced me to “chuck it all” by keeping me captive in Japan. Would he find my reluctant romance with an assassin exciting? Invigorating in some twisted way?
This outing is meant to be a distraction from my anxiety-riddled thoughts, but I can’t stop thinking about Peter, and I find my eyes wandering from one person to another, looking for that one guy who doesn’t fit… for any clue that I’m still of interest to the Feds.
“Are you waiting for someone?” Rory asks, noticing my persistent rubbernecking.
I force myself to smile and stop looking around like an idiot. “No, sorry. Just thought I saw an old friend.”
Phil immediately perks up. “Ooh, an old friend. Of the male or female variety? Because I have to say, that Marsha friend of yours is muah!” He dramatically kisses the tips of his fingers, and we all laugh again.
Marsha, Andy, and Tonya came to one of our performances a couple of weeks ago, and we all went out afterward. Naturally, Marsha hit it off with my bandmates, as she always does with men.
One of these days, I’d love to meet a guy who doesn’t fall head over heels for her blond bombshell looks—or at least doesn’t try to get into her pants right away.
“Your Tonya is not too bad either,” Rory says when the laughter partially dies down. “Is she single?”
I grin. “Yep, pretty sure.” I don’t know the young nurse that well, but I’m almost certain she doesn’t have a boyfriend—or if she does, he’s fine with her partying with Marsha from dusk ’till dawn.
“Dude, you sure you don’t want the redhead?” Phil says with a straight face. “Just think of how pretty your kids would be. Carrot tops galore.”
“Oh, fuck off. You’re just jealous I still have this.” Rory fluffs up his dramatic mane, and I nearly choke on my beer as Phil instinctively touches his receding hairline before flipping Rory the bird.
“That’s enough, you guys,” I gasp out when I manage to stop laughing. “Andy is taken in any case, and—”
I freeze, the words dying in my throat as I notice the man coming up behind Phil.
I blink, unable to believe my eyes, but the apparition doesn’t go away.
Instead, his sculpted lips curve in a magnetic smile. “Hello, Sara,” he says in the deep, faintly accented voice that haunts my dreams. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”
41
Peter
Sara’s heart-shaped face leaches of all color. She doesn’t look like she’ll be able to speak any time soon, so I turn to the two men gaping at me.
“Peter Garin,” I say, using my new identity, and extend my hand. “And you two are?”
I know who they are, of course, but if I’m to integrate myself into Sara’s life for good, I need to act like a regular citizen, not someone who does extensive background checks on every person close to my ptichka. That also means I can’t put my blade against their throats and slice deep enough that they’d never salivate over her again.
Not in the middle of the bar, at least.
The chubby one recovers first, reaching over to shake my hand. “Hi. I’m Phil Hudson.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say and resist the urge to crush the bones in that ridiculously soft palm.
“Rory O’Rourke.” The redhead’s grip is firmer, his hand nearly as callused as mine—though for vastly different reasons.
He lifts weights in the gym to win trophies, while I train to stay alive.
Trained to stay alive, I correct myself. If all goes according to plan, I won’t need to do as much of that.
Sara touches my arm, drawing my attention to her. “What—” Her melodious voice cracks. “What are you doing here, Peter?”
I’ve deliberately avoided looking directly at her, because being this close without grabbing her and fucking her on the spot is a special kind of torture. Her touch on my arm, as light as it is, is like being shot with a Taser. My whole body is vibrating with awareness, all my senses in overdrive. She’s half a meter away, and we’re both fully dressed, yet I can feel her as intensely as if she were pressed against me naked.