Game of Dust and Ashes (Book Two in the Covert Operations series)

Seven

New York City Police Department, 23rd Precinct, Manhattan, U.S.A. January 27, 2021

At nine-oh-two in the morning, we stepped into the hustling centre of the twenty-third precinct of the New York City Police Department. Despite the early hour, the precinct was already busy and the door between the front lobby and the back room kept swinging open as we passed through.

Max and I hung back as Lia went to talk to an officer at the front desk. "How are you holding up?" he asked. "We haven't really had much of an opportunity to talk."

I shrugged. "As well as I can, I guess. It's not every day that people you know come back from the dead."

And then I remembered my father and thought that this trend was much more common in my life than it should have been.

"He'll be okay," Max said. "Once we make contact, we'll know what's going on for sure. Daniel will be fine."

I wish I could have believed him.

"This whole thing..." I said instead. My voice was pitched low so that our conversation could be kept semi-private in the hustle and bustle of the precinct. "It just seems so insane. For almost five years he's dead and now he's just back? I just – I don't even know what to think about it all. I mean, it's not like we were close before we lost him. We'd been apart for a long time before that but..."

"But he was in love with you."

"Yeah. There's that."

"And you never told him how you felt."

I shrugged, feeling exhausted all at once. "That's because I didn't know how I felt, Max. I still don't. When I left for Oaks as a kid I was just starting to realize that I liked Daniel as a maybe more than friends thing but then I moved on. I went to school and I made friends and decided on a career path that will probably get me killed at some point. I never forgot about Daniel but it was like he was a distant memory, another life.

"Then, all of that shit happened right after graduation and he was just back in my life. I was still processing everything else, finding out I was adopted and having my parents die. Meeting Jack and rescuing Wes. Daniel was there but we were both different. Grown up and hardened but it was still there you know? That little childhood crush I'd tried to leave behind."

Max leaned against the wall and blinked, expression thoughtful. "Do you think you would have quit? Left everything you'd been working for behind in order to be with him?"

That had never even been a possibility in my mind. "No. My life – the people trying to kill me and Jack...I could never leave that behind. It would always be there in the rear-view mirror waiting to catch me unannounced. But I can't help thinking that maybe there would have been more between Daniel and I. It felt like there was going to be that day in the mountains."

"And now?"

I laughed once, a hard bark that contained no humour, and lowered my voice. Technically, we were undercover and using fake names. We were posing as Interpol agents which was more for my safety than it was for Lia or Max. We'd decided to head Malcolm's warning about the new CIA director. The last thing we needed was inter-agency conflict. If my new alias or – god forbid my actual name – started getting dragged through the mud again we could blow the entire case.

So, for the sake of secrecy, all of my IDs said that I was Elenore Milenkovic of the GCCO.

"Now?" I said. "There is no now. Even if Daniel somehow was the same guy we lost Moscow, the situation has changed. Who I was then...that girl is gone. And besides, I've got Cedric now and he's great. Any girl would be lucky to have him. I don't know that there's space for Daniel in this new life of mine. How could there be when there's not even space for you and everyone else I love? When there's not even room for my own brother or father?"