But I digress. For whatever reason, Ava was here, talking to me, and I was soaking up every second. Feeding my addiction, desperate to grasp on to any way to strengthen that thread connecting me to her.
Her eyes danced. “I can hear you thinking, ‘It really is that bad, Ava.’”
“What?”
She laughed, and I felt that husky sound deep in my heart. “I believe we’ve already established that you and the word ‘rest’ don’t really go hand-in-hand.”
I barely heard her words, I was so struck by her laugh.
I hadn’t heard it in two long-ass years.
And—
If you want her to ever hang around and laugh and talk to you again, dumbass, focus and say something charming.
The mental voice was Brit’s.
Namely, because my sister had been giving me shit from the moment she’d emerged from the womb.
And also because she was normally right.
As she was in this case.
“Thanks for saving my ass,” I told Ava, giving in to the fatigue washing over me and sitting down on the bed. “I wouldn’t have made it out of there without you.”
“You’ve saved my ass more than once.” A shrug, her expression cooling, and I had the distinct impression that I’d said both the right and the wrong thing. She didn’t like it when people thanked her for simply doing her job, I knew. But I also understood that she took pride in her work and wouldn’t entirely hate having me, as a colleague, compliment her on her skills.
“How many did you take out?” I asked.
Another shrug. “Just four.”
I grinned. Only Ava would say just four. “How many shots?”
The tension left her shoulders, and she perched onto the bed next to me. “One.”
“Ah,” I said, trying to pretend that having her so close was no big deal. “You showed off your trickiness on the others.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not trickiness. It’s skill.”
“I’ll remember that next time you take me to the ground.”
A ghost of a smile. “I—”
The door opened, and she jumped, hopping to her feet, her gaze zeroing in on the person—on Olive—entering. Since I’d done the same—albeit with less hopping and jumping—I didn’t laugh at her reaction.
I was aware, however, that it looked bad for both of us for Ava to be jumping away from me when Olive came in.
How did I know this, one might ask?
Because Olive’s smug expression and raised eyebrow were impossible to miss.
The words, “It’s not what you think” were on the tip of my tongue, but since saying that would be akin to admitting to the very thing that was making Olive’s expression smug and what was most certainly the absolute last thing that Ava wanted, I bit my tongue. Saying those words aloud would probably also earn me a third bullet wound, one that would be courtesy of Ava and her prized possession, a rifle named Luna.
I’d been shot once in the last twenty-four hours.
That was enough.
When neither Ava nor I said anything, Olive closed the door and moved over to the wall of cabinets, peppering me with questions about how I was feeling while washing her hands in the sink. She shut off the faucet, pulled on some gloves, and tugged at the corner of the bandage.
“Looks good,” she said, poking at the edges of the wound.
I was barely aware of the doctor’s actions, my focus on Ava, her face going blank as she turned away from me, went to the computer, and bent to snag the flash drive from the computer.
Then she was gone.
The door shutting behind her with the barest sound.
And I was left with the feeling that I’d made both progress in getting behind those heavy walls of hers, and that I’d also helped supply her the rebar to strengthen them.
Six
KTS Satellite Headquarters
Munich, Germany
06:37hrs local time
Ava
I pushed into the gym and stopped.
“Seriously?”
Dan glanced up at me with a guilty expression, quietly setting the weight he’d been lifting down. “What?”
It had been two days since the mission. One since he’d passed out unconscious.
And approximately seven minutes since Olive and Laila had left for KTS’s main headquarters.
“This is rest?” I asked, nodding at the weight bench.
“It’s light.”
Since the thirty-five-pound dumbbells he’d been casually lifting were damn near my maximum, I simply lifted a brow and said, “Would Olive think these are light?”
A flash of temper on his face, one I saw so infrequently that it actually took me by surprise, his dark tone even more so. “I like and respect you, Ava,” he muttered. “But you’re neither my mother nor my doctor. I’ve played by Olive’s rules for twenty-four hours and will continue to do so.” He picked the weight back up and began curling it again. “I promised to do light duty for two weeks,” he said. “I’m not back-flipping over here. I’m exercising—if sitting on my ass and lifting less than half my normal weight can be considered exercising.”
His irritation should have been off-putting.
Instead, it made him more likeable.
I’d never seen him grumpy, and seeing him a little grouchy made him seem more human, especially after I’d elevated him onto such a tall pedestal for these last years. Maybe we weren’t quite the leaps and bounds apart I’d always thought. Maybe we were just two people who—
And that was the crazy talking.
Dan, as an agent, was admirable. He was the kind of even, steady co-worker who I knew I could rely on. Ego didn’t get in his way, and he wasn’t afraid to lead if the situation required it, or to step back and let others take charge.
Dan, as a man, was similar. He was smart, funny, even-keeled. And while he was confident, he wasn’t one of those guys who had to prove his dick was big—
Speaking of which . . . those sweatpants he was wearing, yo.
They were definitely pointing to the fact that he had nothing to prove on that front—it was a simple fact of nature.
He shifted and I tore my gaze away, fully aware this was dangerous territory.
Talk of pedestals and similarities and thinking we had anything more in common than our line of work was insane.
“I’m well-aware of my limits,” he said.
“You’re right,” I agreed.
“And,” he rattled off, picking up the weight and curling it again, and I didn’t think he’d actually heard me, had just expected me to disagree with him exercising, so was already prepared with his counterargument. “I also know that I can’t expect to sit on my ass for a few weeks and come out of this strong.”
“You’re right,” I repeated.
“And further that,” he began.
I sat on the bench next to him, snagged the weight from his hand. “Dan,” I said. “I just told you you’re right twice in fifteen seconds. Take the victory and shut up.”
“You—” He froze. “You just said I was right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I mock-grumbled, setting the weight on the floor. “Don’t rub it in.”