"Dammit."

I was sitting alone in the small hotel room I was renting while I was in the country. It was within walking distance of the docks, though it was a bit far, and it was cheap. I paid in cash and no one asked questions. I was waiting on some information.

I'd gotten quite a bit more once I'd come in, including that tidbit about the man selling Luke out. I couldn’t get a name, not even from the friend of the family I was already speaking with, the one I'd gotten close to that gave me the personal information about the family.

But everything seemed to have dried out.

Greco had holed himself on his island since the last party. It hadn't been that long in the grander scheme of things, but I almost regretted missing the chance to get on his island and have him in my sights. There was no way I would have come out of that situation alive, but I still regretted not taking it.

I received news he was heading out, though, finally. I didn’t know where he would go, but I could catch him when he got back to the docks later. I wasn’t sure of the exact time, but since he was getting out after dark, I was planning to go over by midnight. Hopefully, he wouldn’t have made it back, and I would have time to find the best hiding spot to wait for him.

I'd just have to find the right place to hide. I could always have gotten on a boat and gone to the island, at any time in the past few days. It wouldn’t have been safe, but it would have gotten me there. The man himself had given me an invitation, after all, I’d just have to call it in. In all honesty, though, I was waiting for Luke to contact me, but he'd only called me once the day after the party to tell me he'd skipped.

But I was getting tired of waiting. I was ready to go and kill Greco once and for all. The man had been a thorn in my side for four years before I even got to see a picture of his face. For the sake of my dead mother, the grandparents I wasn’t allowed to grow up knowing all because of that bastard, I wanted him dead and gone.

I was already dressed, just wondering how I was going to walk around with weapons on me. I didn’t like carrying around anything bulky, which left me walking around with a clutch purse, but considering the distance from the docks where I could hide, would I even get a shot?

A knock on the door distracted me, and I growled to myself. I glanced around to make sure I didn’t have anything incriminating out. But just in case, I took my gun with me, holding it behind me. It was too late for it to be someone from the hotel, and I hadn't told anyone my whereabouts. There really wasn’t anyone to tell, and Luke hadn't asked.

I took a breath, unlocked the door and grabbed the handle. I pulled the door open, but the smile on my face froze when I saw who was on the other side.

"Luke?"

He was dressed casually for the first time since I'd met him, dark jeans, a T-shirt, and hoodie, sneakers on his feet. The hood was pulled up over his head, but I didn’t have my shoes on yet, so I was looking up into his face. For a moment, I was frozen, but I snapped out of it quickly.

I stepped back, opening the door wider and letting the hand with the gun fall to my side. He caught sight of it and his eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t say anything. He stepped inside, and I closed the door and locked it. I turned back, leaning against it, staring at him as he walked a little further into the space, tugging the hood of his jacket down. He glanced around the room, and then finally turned to look at me.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I asked, for lack of anything better to say.

He smirked. "At a hotel, or specifically in your hotel room?"

"I didn’t tell you where I was staying."

"Well, no, but you gave me your number, and I assumed you'd stick around. It wasn’t that hard to find you."

I wanted to ask just how he'd done that. Did he just go around asking about my description until he got a hit, or what? Before I got a chance to ask, he spoke.

"You don’t have to go."

I paused, mouth still open, and arched my eyebrows at that. I titled my head, showing my confusion. He waved his hand to encompass the whole of me and then pointed at the gun I still held in my hand. I locked the door behind me, made sure the safety was on and set the gun on the small table. It put me a little closer to him in the small room, but he had moved far enough that there was still some distance between us.

"You look dressed to head out. I can only imagine what for." He shrugged. "I just thought you should know that you don’t have to, anymore. I've done the job already," he added.

That last bit cleared my confusion. Instead, I became suspicious.

"You don’t know what I really came here for, though. Or what I was about to go out and do."

He smirked. "True, but if your goal was to kill Greco, it's been taken care of."

I blinked at him, wondering if I'd heard him right. But he didn’t retract his statement, and I wanted to open my mouth and tell him to repeat it. But I was looking right at his eyes, and I could see the truth in them. His body looked relaxed, but his eyes were still on edge. The look in them reminded me of how my own eyes looked a few hours after I did a job.

He wasn’t lying to me, or joking.

It took me a moment for that to sink in, and then I felt myself sway a little. His eyes narrowed, lips pursing in sudden concern, but I shook my head to let him know I was fine.

"He's…"

I couldn’t continue that thread of thought, but Luke knew what I wanted. He took a step closer to me, nodding.

"He's gone, Elda. I don’t know what he did to you, or what you wanted from him. You were right, your intel. He was dumb enough to meet up with the General a week after I stood him up." He finished that last bit with a wry twist of his lips. "I guess he thought I would play loyal dog till the end."

"And they're both…"

"Dead," he finished, taking a step closer.

The man I'd been after for the past four years, and he was gone without me being there, after all the effort I put into it. I was glad he was gone, that was the end goal and I was glad, though I probably shouldn’t be quite so happy that a man was dead.

But Luke could have at least told me he'd be there.