She was halfway through analyzing the best places to kick him while he was down when he arched one eyebrow at her, a look of wry disbelief, as if he couldn’t believe she was still calculating the most efficient way to murder him.
Odd. He’d seemed rather intelligent in his file.
Ava had no intention of letting his amusement distract her from risk assessment. “I’ll assume even Knox is smart enough to have dealt with the passive trackers. What about radioactive isotopes? The military bases out west inject those to track their genetic experiments.”
He made a quiet, mildly disgusted noise and gestured behind her. “What’s in the bag?”
She didn’t take her eyes off him. “A debt I owe. Stop dodging my questions. I understand Knox is too soft to eliminate a threat to his family, but I’m not. Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you now and get it over with.”
For the span of several heartbeats, he merely stared out at the patchy lights of the city. “Do they ask you that?” he said finally. “Every time you show up, unannounced, to be creepy all over their idyllic existence?”
She couldn’t argue with his characterization of her activities. It felt like a profoundly accurate assessment. “Only the smart ones. Mostly Dani. That’s why I like Dani.”
“Fair.” He nodded decisively. “I make it a point never to lie, so I’m not going to answer your question—if that even qualified as a question. You do whatever you have to do.”
It would have been nice if he’d given her an excuse. Or at least a plausible explanation for Nina. If she shot him now, while he was just brooding on the roof …
Her finger drifted toward the trigger anyway.
And he moved.
His speed was uncanny. He had the gun out of her hand before she realized he’d lunged. Ava didn’t fight to keep hold of it. She slammed the heel of her hand toward his nose, assessing his response even as he swung up an arm to block. She used his distraction to kick her gun out of his hand and barely escaped large fingers closing around her ankle.
He fought dirty. No testing feints or honor, and he knew where to jab to make it hurt. She barely avoided a blow that would have numbed her arm to the elbow and jammed the hard heel of her boot down where his instep had been a fraction of a second earlier. There was no style to assess here, no thought or strategy behind his movements.
This was pure feral instinct. Cunning and ruthless. So damn fast. Survival in its purest form.
Nothing was deadlier. She should know.
It was over in seconds. His massive hand closed around her throat and she let it, absorbing the impact as he slammed her back against the wall. Her boot knife was already in her fingers, and she let the lethally honed edge kiss the skin beneath his Adam’s apple. When he swallowed, a tiny, red line appeared.
“So,” she said, studying him curiously. “You do care if you live.”
“Do I?” Casual words, devoid of anger or fear or even exertion. “I thought I was proving a point.”
“I’m sure you did.” His grip at her throat was precise. A casual, efficient warning. She likely wouldn’t even have bruises. She supposed a medic knew exactly how much pressure was required as a threat and how hard to squeeze to incapacitate. “Not everyone cares, you know. Not right away. Richter must have had you, what? Eight months, at least? Plenty of time to carve the will to survive right out of you.”
“Ah, the voice of experience.”
“Not particularly. It wasn’t the pain that broke me. It was what I did to make it stop.” She raised one challenging eyebrow at him. “What did you do to make it stop, James Mason?”
For the first time, he eyed her with something that almost looked like … sympathy? “The point is that I’m in control now. If that changes, I’ll reassess. Either that satisfies you, or…”
Her pulse beat a little faster against his palm. Not because of the physical threat, but the damnable pity in his eyes. Choking her out was fine, but if he thought he could feel sorry for her …
She locked her elbow to keep her arm steady, mostly to keep from slicing his throat to escape that look. “Or what?”
“Or we resolve this now.” The arm not raised to her throat flexed, and the dull edge of a blade pressed against her left flank, just over her kidney.
She glanced down. The knife had a familiar hilt, twin to the one she was holding to his throat. He’d gotten her second boot knife at some point, and turned it against her.
Impressive.
Not impressive enough, granted. No matter how surgical his strike, she had a better chance of living long enough to get treatment for a kidney laceration than he did of surviving a slit throat. She had the tactical advantage and, at this point, all the rationalization she needed to follow through on the kill. Surely Nina couldn’t argue that a knife jabbed in her kidney wasn’t provocation enough for self-defense.
Except … Nina might. Because Nina would never believe Ava had been helpless. Nina wouldn’t make the so-often-fatal mistake of underestimating her. Nina would know Ava could have resolved this without killing Mace and would expect her to do so unless vulnerable lives were on the line.
Not disappointing Nina really was exhausting.
She eased the blade from his throat and let her arm fall away. “I’m going to scan you for radioactive isotopes. And passive trackers. And everything else I can think of.”
“Not even planning on buying me dinner first? Shameful.”
She couldn’t tell if he was mocking her or hitting on her. The latter would be continued evidence of self-destructive tendencies, which made it plausible. She used the flat of her blade to shove away the hand still holding a knife pointed at her kidney. “I’m not the sister who feeds strays.”
“Duly noted.” He flipped her boot knife and offered it to her, hilt-first. “Welcome home.”
She could still feel the ghost of his fingers at her throat. That would be a good reminder not to forget he was dangerous. She accepted her knife and sheathed both of them, using the familiar movement to ground her. “It’s not home,” she started, but when she turned she realized she was addressing an empty roof.
Mace had vanished. Whether silently through the door or just by vaulting over the side she couldn’t be sure.
But for the first time she understood how irritating that was.
Ava shook off her annoyance and retrieved the bag. Her usual point of entry beckoned, but breaking into the place felt childishly performative now that Mace had already seen her. Especially when Nina had pressed the access codes on her in spite of her protests.
The keypad beeped softly in the night—proof that Mace couldn’t have used it to escape. Ava frowned as she slipped into the shadowy hallway and silently descended the back staircase. She could have vaulted off the roof and compensated effortlessly for the several-story drop upon landing, but she was in peak physical condition. The medic certainly hadn’t appeared to be.
Perhaps she should have stabbed him after all.
The second floor in Nina’s apartment was silent. No lights shone from underneath Maya’s or Dani’s doors. Ava paused before Nina’s and rapped her knuckles gently against the door—three soft knocks, repeated three times. Their childhood signal.
The knob turned, and Nina peered through the crack in the door. “When did you get here?”