To my surprise, the half-cup of coffee I drank doesn’t keep me up. When I return to the house, I find a note from Alice:

---

I’m old.

Don’t get old.

Off to bed.

See you in the morning.

---

It’s written in an old-fashioned hand, the kind people say Millennials can’t read, cursive with a practiced steadiness that makes the writing almost a work of art.

By midnight I’m in bed.

At some point, my eyes close and my subconscious drifts off, leaving me with a second dreamless night’s sleep.

Maybe–just maybe–my life is improving.

The burst of sunlight that greets me when I wake up is blindingly simple. It’s just light. The sun came up. The world didn’t end. My problems are just that–problems. I am not a problem, though.

The guest wing at Alice’s ranch has a lovely kitchen in it, and as I walk into the living room I smell the telltale scent of perfection.

“Coffee?” I ask, my head pounding from caffeine deprivation.

Silas pulls the nearly full pot from the coffee machine and pours me a mug. “Cream and sugar on that tray,” he says, motioning toward the table. A few bagels, some cream cheese, and a small bowl of oranges grace the tabletop.

“Thanks.”

“Alice says that’s not a proper breakfast, so not to eat too much. We’re expected for brunch at eleven.”

“This is a big breakfast by my standards. I usually just drink coffee until lunch.”

Silas smiles. “Same here. Intermittent fasting?”

I shake my head. I’m not even sure what that means. “Too lazy to cook.”

The laugh he offers is much appreciated. So now I get friendly Silas. Nice.

Seriously.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” he asks me.

“You tell me. You’re in charge.”

“I’m not the boss of you.”

The air feels different with those words, his intensity out of place, eyes burning for me as he says them slowly. There’s a double entendre I don’t get, but it instantly drives a pulse between my legs, my skin exquisitely sensitive everywhere, my arm brushing against my nipple and making me struggle not to show my arousal.

We’re looking at each other, and I keep thinking he’s about to say, “But I want to be.” An impulse so strong, I can barely control it washes over me, trying to make me take the next step, push this forward, be bold.

But no.

I can’t.

I just... can’t.

“Jane,” he says, his voice so rough, so layered. He takes a step toward me and my hands fly up to my hair as it dawns on me I must be a mess.

“Silas, I–”

He’s next to me, his face impassive, eyes full of emotion as we stand, suspended in place, trying to find our way to each other. As seconds roll by, he moves closer.

I can’t. I can’t bridge the distance between us. I can’t take the chance and be rejected.

I just can’t.

It would kill me. Like a car bomb, it would burn me to the ground before I even knew what happened.

He moves, though, an answered prayer, a ray of sunshine on a dismal day, a double rainbow in the distance after a storm. We’re inches from each other and he touches the back of my hand, his mouth starting to move to ask a question.

Or maybe to come in for a kiss?

Bzzzz.

I jolt, flailing so much I dump my coffee on its side, Silas looking away and digging in his pants pocket quickly. He looks at his text. The expression on his face is so filled with disgust.

All the attraction, the ripe potential in the air between us moments ago, is gone. He’s flat again, all business.

What was in that text?

“We need to get back to California. I need to take you to The Grove.”

“What? Why?”

“Need-to-know basis.”

“Well, I need to know!”

He shakes his head. “Duff will get everything ready.”

“This isn’t another psycho physical exam they’re making me do, is it?”

He ignores me, his attention on his phone.

“Silas?” I go to grab his arm, to tug on his shirt, to make him look at me, but he moves out of range.

His phone is buzzing like crazy.

“No. But we need to go. I have to transfer you to a new team.”

“Why? Can’t you leave me here with Duff?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

He doesn’t answer.

He just walks away.

Twenty minutes later, Duff’s carrying my tiny bag and Alice is hugging me goodbye.

Again.

“I do not understand why I need to go back, Silas. This is really unfair.”

He gives a tight-shouldered shrug.

Alice frowns at him, then turns to me. “Something’s wrong.”

“I know!”

“No. I mean with him. Whatever those texts are, they have nothing to do with you.”

“Then why am I being made to go with him? Why can’t I stay here?”

“Probably orders. You know how it all works. He has to hand you off to someone with enough seniority or security clearance or–or–or–”

“Or they’re all just being assholes,” I declare.

“Then there’s that,” she agrees. Her face changes, going contemplative. “Look, Jane, I had a talk with Silas while you were asleep. He’s a good man. It’s very hard for me to call him a man, given that he looks like a twelve-year-old to me, but then again, so do you. I’ve been alive for nearly seven decades longer than you, and everyone seems like a child.”

I laugh in spite of myself.

“But he’s a good one. Whatever has gone on this past week, it seems to be changing his view of you from the wrong one to a bit closer to the right one. Time is what people need to see the truth. Time with you is showing his true character. But he also has a mission. Men who do what Silas does are married first to the job.”

“You’re thinking about Milt, aren’t you?”

She gives me a saucy look. “You were listening in.”

“You knew I was there?”

She taps the bone behind her ear. “Hearing aids pick up ambient sounds.”

“You little snoop!” I giggle.

“I’m not the snoop. You are!”

“So when you asked Silas about sex, that was–”

“That was an old lady being nosy.”

Silas taps on the main door frame. “Time to go. Your bag is packed.”

“What bag? I don’t own anything.” I roll my eyes.

“Come back again,” Alice urges. “The door is always open.”

One more hug and I’m out the door with Silas, arguing as I try to match his fast pace while we walk around to the main house where the SUV is waiting.

“I don’t understand why I couldn’t be left there with a different team. Duff is–”

“Not part of our team.”

“What? Duff is perfectly fine.”

“On what basis do you make that determination? Because he’s ‘nice’?” Silas uses finger quotes. “Nice people do some of the worst damage.”

“You don’t trust Duff?”

His face twists with frustrated fury. “Look,” he says, grabbing my arm hard and pulling me aside. “Someone killed the driver who was transporting your lab samples. All the samples are gone.”

“I know. You told me. I -- ”

“The full report came in just now. Drew said it was done in such a professional way that it took more than twelve hours to figure out it was deliberate sabotage.”

“Sabotage?”

“I shouldn’t even be telling you this.”

“Why not?” I match his outrage.

He gives me a flat look. “Why do you think?”

“Because you think I had something to do with it? You’ve been with me the entire time, Silas! You monitor my phone, my movements, my everything. I haven’t touched a computer since I’ve been here. I’m under 24/7 surveillance by you–physically! And you still think I’m plotting behind the scenes, in a way that killed a delivery driver so the bloodwork the doctor took yesterday can’t be processed?”

He just blinks.

“If I had that kind of power,” I say through gritted teeth, “you idiot,” added for good measure, “do you really think I would be standing here arguing with you? You’d be dead already.”

“I know that.” We’re at the black SUV, Duff in the driver’s seat, the vehicle running already. Silas jerks the back door open but I ignore him, moving around his big body and grabbing the passenger seat door.

I open it, climb in, and slam it for good measure.

“Hi, Duff,” I say, smelling his aftershave, the brisk scent of lemon and old wood a nice change from being surrounded by acrimony and deceit.

“Hello, Ms. Borokov. Back to The Grove?”

Silas is in the back seat, his door closing with a quiet, controlled snick.

“I have no idea where we’re going, Duff.” I close my eyes as he pulls away, down the long, lonely driveway toward the airport. “But wherever it is, I’m sure whatever’s going on is all my fault.”

---

When it’s you plus a person who thinks you can order other people to kill lab couriers, a pilot, and a co-pilot, and that’s it on a plane, a few hours in the air with nothing to do and no way to sleep feels like being a little kid at the oil change shop, bored out of your mind.

Mid-flight movie? A suspenseful Jason Bourne flick that hits too close to home.

Books? More military thrillers.

Conversation? Let’s make that a solid no.

Silas sleeps half the time, seated in the other cluster of chairs on the plane, a thick down throw blanket over his shoulders. I’m livid, and I shouldn’t care, but I have to admit that he looks so sweet when he’s asleep. I’m assuming the vigilant part of him that needs to protect nonstop feels safe falling asleep at thirty-five thousand feet, in a plane filled with just us and the pilots.

And then I stop and think about that for a minute.

If I’m so evil, would he let his guard down like this? If he really thinks I’m some part of a plot where I enacted a plan that led to the murder of a lab courier, would Silas really fall asleep in front of me, leaving himself defenseless? I could kiss him right now, if I wanted to.

Kill. I meant kill.

I laugh and shake my head at my own wandering mind. What is wrong with me? First of all, I’m the last person anyone wants to get entangled with, and second, he’s the last man I should get involved with.

And third, he’s hot.

Wait. That’s not a reason to avoid him.

He stirs, makes a funny little sigh, then slowly wakes up, eyes squinting with sleep. Quickly, I move so he can’t see me. My pulse leaps forward.

Nearly caught.

“Where are we?” Silas asks, scrubbing his face with his hands, looking around the plane with a strange anger, as if the plane itself has offended him by being the holding place for his nap.

“On a plane.”

“I mean, where? How close to California?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a pilot,” I tease. “But I’m guessing half an hour.”

“I slept that long?”

“It seems to be a trend.”

Bzzzz.

With a weary sigh I’ve never seen from him before, Silas lifts his butt off the seat, hips arching, to find his phone in his pants pocket. I look away and take a sip of my lukewarm tea.

He answers the phone for a call. “Gentian. Yeah. What? What do you mean, Drew? She’s what? Does the senator know? Where else are we supposed to–okay, okay, a hotel, but that needs to be secured in advance, and after what happened with the lab courier, you know we’re in–”

Silas stops talking suddenly. I can hear Drew’s voice rising, a firm, clipped tone making my stomach clench. Whatever’s happened is bad.

“Fine.”

He looks at his phone, and as Drew speaks, an extraordinary expression fills Silas’s face. It’s more than surprise, slightly less than chagrin.

“Got it. Will do.” He hangs up on Drew, then taps over to another call on the same phone.

“Mom? Why are you calling on my work phone? How did you–” Hysterical crying bubbles out of his phone speaker, his eyes going panicked. He walks over to the other side of the plane. There is no privacy here. He’d have to hide in the bathroom, and even then I could hear everything. The jet is smooth and quiet.

“She’s what? And where is Kelly?”

My heart goes numb.

“Okay, okay. Kelly’s safe. Good. And which precinct?”

Precinct? Why would his five-year-old niece be at a police station?

“The Narcan didn’t do it the first–what? How many times? Oh, Mom,” he says into the phone, his voice a mix of compassion and grief, fear and anger. “Right. I’ll be there. You start booking your flight. Use the credit card I gave you for emergencies. This is definitely one.” He pauses, voice hitching. “I know. I love you, too. I’ve got this. Don’t worry. It’s all going to be okay. It will. I’ll get her and we’ll make sure she’s safe and fine. I’ve got this. Don’t you worry.”

Click.

Narcan? That’s what you give someone who overdoses on opiates to revive them. Heroin addicts need it, when they overdose. Why is Silas talking about Narcan with his mother?

Before I can ask, he immediately taps his screen, utterly focused on movement and action.

“Drew?” he says into the phone. “I have a personal issue I need to attend to and you’ll have to assign her to a new team.”

I assume I am “her.”

“What do you mean, no? There is no no here. I’m not fucking around.”

I’ve never, ever heard Silas speak this way to Drew.

“She what? The senator’s new admin did what?” Fuming, Silas starts pacing, body language so aggressive, I’m sure he’ll punch the wall any second now.

“Not a single guy is available? They’re all stuck in decontamination? Fucking hell, Drew. You’ve got to be kidding me.” He takes a short, sparse breath. “I’m sure you don’t like it, either. Anyone sick from the powder?”

“What happened?” I whisper.

He ignores me.

“Damn it. I can’t. I can’t. It’s about my sister. She finally...” He looks at me, uncertainty coating his face like a mask, then finally he gives in to some sort of inner struggle. “She OD’d. The police have my niece. I need to go get her and establish temporary custody. Now. She’s being held with a social worker, and my mom is halfway across the country.”

My hand flies to my mouth in shock, his words penetrating my heart in a way that makes me ache for the little girl at the heart of this crisis. I know he’s not talking to me, but I can’t help but react.

He nods in response to something Drew’s said. “Right. No choice. Got it.”

Silas ends the call, turning to me with anguish all over him, in his eyes, along the thick ridge of muscle in his shoulders, in every muscle twitch, each reflex.

And then he asks, “Exactly how good are you at Candyland?”