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

Fourteen

"Sauerkraut Stud," he said lowly, a sour expression on his face.

"It really is you," I replied and I was shocked because I'd accepted the fact that he was alive but I'd let Lia and Max convince me that he was an amnesiac. That there was not a chance in hell that he remembered our past. Clearly, we had all been wrong. "You're here and you're alive and you remember me."

I lowered the gun but didn't holster it. I'd been trained too thoroughly, had endured too many people trying to kill me, to make that sort of mistake. Daniel remembered me...but he was also working for Scorpion.

"Yeah. I'm alive. And so are you. For a while I wasn't sure. You disappeared."

Which implied that he'd been looking for me.

Daniel went to sit back in the armchair. Keeping a few feet of space between us. I expected that it was more my sake than his own. Everything inside of me wanted to run to him, to wrap my arms around him and feel his own sturdy embrace back. Yet the years of loss and uncertainty had driven a wedge there that I wasn't sure I could cross.

Suddenly, I knew how he felt when I returned home after being away at Oaks. Him, thinking me dead all of those years, only to suddenly be alive. Remembered the anger and the hostility. Not understanding it then but I did now.

I stared at him, drinking in the face that I hadn't seen in years. My friend since childhood. The boy who had probably been my first love. Now standing in front of me – built of solid muscle, eyes with heavy brows overtop that made him look serious...Unforgiving. That's what he looked like. An operative who'd been in this business for a while. Unforgiving about the things that he did and the people who were hurt along the way.

And yet, the crooked quirk of his lips as he caught my eye...That wasn't the cold, calculating man I'd seen robbing that bank or even the man in the parking lot earlier. Just one blink and he reverted back to what he should have been if we'd had a normal upbringing. If terrorists and espionage hadn't ruined our lives. A young man who knew nothing of the dangers of the world, who didn't know how to rob a bank or – god forbid – kill somebody.

But he did. We both did.

"I can't believe that you're really here. I've dreamt about this a thousand times but I never really thought it would happen," Daniel admitted and the way that he stared at me was with longing. His fingers twitched on his lap.

"Care to fill me in on how this is all possible? How the hell you survived and where you've been?"

Daniel swallowed thickly. "You look the same as you did that day."

"The day you got shot."

"The first time I ever got shot, yes."

Another implied meaning. He'd been shot since. I wondered how many times.

"I think I knew when I watched you leaving that something bad was going to happen," he continued. "I had this feeling in my gut. I couldn't shake it. We were listening to the comms as you rescued your father. It was chaos. And then the connection cut suddenly. The power went out. The agent we were with went to see what happened and got shot in the doorway. Tasha was by the computers. They shot me next and I saw them fighting with her but I passed out before I saw what happened. I heard another shot though..."

"Yes, she was shot in the abdomen," I affirmed. "They tied her up and locked in her the bedroom." I cocked my head to the side. "Do you remember who shot you?"