Chapter 451: Saturday. Safe House, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

SILAS HAD A CASE of the grumps.

First, he hadn't been able to sleep. He'd lain in bed tossing and turning, and not only because he worried about getting ambushed in the middle of the night. He kept thinking about his talk with Ekko. First when she'd agreed that they couldn't continue as they'd begun, then there was everything she'd shared with him and how she'd listened to him.

He jammed the power cord into the outlet a little too hard.

"What are you doing?" Ekko's sleepy voice asked.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for one fortifying moment then sat back on his heels and glanced at the woman who'd haunted his dreams. She was still wearing the skin-tight pants and long sweatshirt that hit at the top of her thighs.

"Morning," he said.

She crossed the dining room to his side and frowned at the set-up. "Morning."

"Zain thought we could use your stream to mislead the DSS."

Her brow furrowed and she frowned at him. "How?"

"Zain's going to route your signal through a place