Page 52 of Allegiance

Saint and Raphael nodded.

Then, Ethan and Dakota sat there in silence. It was time for Blackhawk to let the show go on.

It only took five minutes, and if Dakota thought the silence made him uncomfortable…

He had news for him. He’d been broken in by a woman who thrived on uncomfortable silence.

Bring.

It.

On.

When a delivery truck pulled up, Dakota went on alert. It had to be someone coming to grab the woman in the house. Maybe he’d been off his game and read this whole situation wrong.

Beside him, Ethan sat there and said nothing.

Why?

He knew who lived in that house, and what was going down.

They were keeping an eye on Eve Knight because she was important to Elizabeth.

Why?

Because she was important to Dakota.

While their relationship, the sexual one, ended years ago, Elizabeth was loyal to a fault.

Ethan wasn’t watching the house.

He was watching the man beside him.

Oh, and it was clear when he figured it out. There was a myriad of emotions on his carefully neutral face.

When Dakota saw the front door open, it was a sucker punch to his chest.

He actually gasped.

It was Eve.

What he couldn’t believe was that she was two blocks from him, and he never even knew it.

Maybe, that had been for the best.

“Oh, my God.”

Yeah, he could say that.

Ethan kept going.

“It appears as if she’s getting a delivery for some reason,” Ethan said. “I wonder what?”

Dakota watched the two delivery guys and that need to protect her rose up, making it increasingly difficult to breathe.

There was no doubt in his mind that he’d rush them if he believed for a single second that she was in danger.

When they opened the back of the truck, and Eve turned sideways, that’s when he saw it.