Stepping inside the warmth of his apartment helped marginally. The place was spacious but comfortable, not too different from my own home, except Tamir had clearly been living in his apartment far longer than I’d been in mine.
“Why don’t you have a seat. I’ll make you some tea.” He motioned toward a gray upholstered sofa as he turned toward the open kitchen.
I kept my jacket on, tugging it tightly around me, and sat on the far end of the couch with my bag clutched against my chest. The adrenaline waned from my system, making my body shiver and shake uncontrollably as I peered blankly at my surroundings.
How had my life devolved so drastically in a matter of minutes? What was I going to do?
“Here, eat these. They’ll help elevate your blood sugar and ease the shaking.” Tamir handed me a napkin stacked with several shortbread cookies and placed a glass of water on the coffee table. He lowered himself into a chair opposite me. His stare bored into me, but I couldn’t meet his gaze.
“You eat cookies?” I asked. “It seems entirely too normal for you.” It was the first thing that popped into my addled brain.
“I am human, Emily.”
“Could have fooled me,” I muttered. “I figured you’d be one of those ‘my body is a temple’ kind of people who lives on spinach and kale.” I nibbled on the buttery goodness, the first bites of sugar instantly calming my nerves.
After long seconds of silence, I finally glanced in his direction.
“Are we really going to talk about my dietary habits right now?”
“Look, I don’t know what you want me to say. I just got mugged. I’m a little freaked out.”
He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees and steepling his hands together. “Mugged? Back in that alley, you told me your apartment was no longer safe and you couldn’t go back. What does that have to do with a random mugging?”
I couldn’t help the defeated sigh that escaped my lungs. “It’s not exactly random,” I admitted softly. I didn’t want him involved in my problems, but I could hardly avoid it now. He’d beaten a man unconscious for me and then hadn’t called the police when I asked him not to. He deserved some kind of explanation. “My ex-boyfriend is crazy, but I didn’t realize how bad it was until it was too late. The first chance I got, I left him in the night and ran, riding buses across the country until I ended up here.”
“That man in the alley was your ex-boyfriend?”
I shook my head. “I think he hired someone to either kill me or take me back to him. I don’t know how he did it, but he found me, and now, the city isn’t safe for me.”
It was foolish of me to have expected anything less than cool detachment from Tamir. Surprise, concern, outrage—those were human emotions. Tamir was Terminator-grade machine.
“Why won’t you call the police?” he asked.
“They can’t keep me safe from him! They’ll slap a restraining order on him, and meanwhile, I’m facedown in a gutter. No thanks. I got away once, so I can do it again. I have a friend in town who can help me disappear. At some point, either my ex won’t be able to find me, or he’ll finally give up trying.” The cookies had helped balance my system, but it was anger that brought back my determination and clarity.
Tamir examined me, breaking me down, piece by piece, and analyzing his findings. I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt so scrutinized in my life. Was he judging me? Condemning me? I had no clue what was going on in that cryptic head of his. The only thing to do was wait wordlessly in the heavy silence for his conclusion.
“Very well. You can stay here tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll work on a plan.” He held my gaze, refusing to let me go, even when the tea kettle began to shriek on the stove. When he finally severed our connection and rose, my body sagged with a bone-weary relief.
I had passed whatever test he’d been conducting and was spared further interrogation, at least for the time being.
Chapter 6
Tamir
During my ten years in the Special Forces, I received rigorous interrogation training and had participated in my own examinations that would turn the bravest of men a sickly shade of white. There were infinite ways to get a man to talk, but none of it mattered if you couldn’t tell what was fact and what was a lie. People would say anything to keep from being in pain.
My lie detection instincts had been expertly honed, and I felt confident Emily’s confession was sincere. Her fear about her situation was primal, unsullied by manipulation. Did that mean everything she’d said was the truth? Not necessarily. But enough evidence existed to keep me from turning her over to collect the bounty, for now.
I had no doubt there was still more to her story.
It wasn’t often an ex-lover put out a bounty to bring back his woman, but that wasn’t to say it didn’t happen. I knew of a Russian Vor who had hunted his lover for years because he lived for the chase. People were fucked up, which meant predicting someone’s actions and understanding their motivations could be near impossible.
Emily’s past was shrouded in a thick fog of mystery and deceit. I’d performed a background search on Emilia Reyes, which was the name given with her bounty. Even with her last name and knowing she’d originally resided in Texas, I couldn’t scrape anything together. Her digital footprint was minuscule. The birth certificate on file for her had no father listed and what appeared to be a fake name for her mother, which meant I couldn’t trace her via her family. She had purportedly earned an associate degree in finance and had a driver’s license but was, otherwise, remarkably absent from the system. No debt or hospital records. No voter’s registration or bills in her name. Not even a single social media account could be found. She was a ghost, and in my experience, ghosts had secrets.
Perhaps her secrets were unrelated to the bounty on her head, but either way, I would need more time to ferret out the full truth. I needed those answers to decide what I would do with her. I did have some semblance of a moral code. It was my own fucked-up version but a code, nonetheless. Stealing the last breaths from my victims was easy, but only after I was certain they were unworthy of life.
I wasn’t just talking about petty criminals. The men, and sometimes women, who became my targets were depraved stains on humanity like serial murderers, rapists, child molesters, and some far more creative examples of the criminally insane. My intent was never to seek out these people in a vigilante fashion, but when a contract came before me, that was my primary requirement to take the job.
Some might ask who I was to play judge and jury about another man’s worth.
I would say fuck off. No one asked you.
My employers’ reasons for wanting someone dead might not have been remotely honorable, but I didn’t care. I was only concerned with my role in a job. If I declined a job because the target didn’t meet my requirements, and the client went elsewhere, that wasn’t my problem. I simply had standards by which I worked. Would the mesmerizing Ms. Reyes tick off those checkboxes?
We would find out soon enough.
As I watched her sip her tea, I had to admit that “mesmerizing” had been an apt descriptor. Not only because of the intriguing mystery of her situation, but because of her alluring beauty as well. She was some concoction of Hispanic, but there was no telling what exact origin. The slight uptick of her eyes and prominent cheekbones hinted at a Native American ancestry. She had a regal air, even when she was covered in sweat at the gym or fighting for her life in a dark alley. If she was being hunted just for her unique beauty, I wouldn’t have been surprised.