Dan could have cried. He could have hugged her, lifted her clean off the floor and twirled her around. Instead, he resigned himself to a nod, a wide smile stretching across his face.
“Anything. Thank you!” There really wasn’t much Dan wouldn’t do. She wouldn’t report him, and more than that, she would help him. The universe didn’t hand out gifts like that very often. He should go straight to a casino after this; it felt like one of those days where luck leaned close and whispered your name. “Of course. No one will know. I can resist torture.”
He crouched beside her chair, close enough to feel the faint hum of the machine beneath her desk, his eyes tracking the screen as the file reopened. The glow reflected faintly in his pupils.
Noah Kim.
Cop. Killed in service.
Executed.
The words hit with a dull, practiced thud.
Death was a constant in Dan’s life. an old companion that never fully left his side. Long before he learned about the vampire hunters, he’d grown up in another kind of war. Soldiers. Generations of them. His father had raised them as if the world itself were a battlefield, every street a potential kill zone. A wrong tilt of the head could lodge a bullet in your skull. A finger tightening just a fraction too much on the trigger could turn anything into a target. Anyone.
Dan survived the way he’d been trained to: by staying light on his feet, by ducking trouble when it loomed too large, by accepting kindness from strangers when it appeared, rare and fleeting as it was. And when he could, he paid it back. When he couldn’t, he ran. Tucked tail, disappeared, lived to see another sunrise. That, more than heroics or bravery, was how he’d made it this far.
The knot in his throat only tightened as she spoke, each detail of her story winding around his ribs like barbed wire. Loss layered over loss. Love ripped away and labeled collateral damage.
What a hellish combination.
What a painfully unfair past.
“I’m sorry, Bambi… that’s—” Dan swallowed. “I’m really sorry,” he murmured, his hand hovering near the arm of her chair. “Have you found them? The robbers?” His voice softened. “I could help you. If you’ll have me.”
After a moment’s hesitation, he rested a hand on her shoulder. Dan was a hugger by nature—legs slung over friends on couches, arms wrapped tight around the people he loved, affection given freely and without reservation. His sister used to call him Teddy for how easily he gave it, for how instinctive it was. But he didn’t know Bambi well enough for that, not yet, and her kindness already felt like more than he had any right to ask for.
“I’m twenty-six. I’m not a kid,” Dan chuckled quietly, an attempt to defuse the weight pressing down on the space between them. His eyes betrayed him, drifting back to the screen, lingering on Noah’s name as if committing it to memory could keep the dead from slipping away entirely. “Thank you, Bambi. I’ll repay you.”
