“Do you want to sleep in the car in this neighborhood?” He sifted through the Walmart bag and pulled out his toiletry purchases.
“I’m not even sure I like the car being left out in this neighborhood.”
“Me either,” he grumbled. “I’m jumping in the shower. Do I need to tie you up to make sure you’re still here when I get out?”
“No.” I threw myself onto the bed and stared up at the blotchy water stains on the ceiling.
“Just to be sure, I’ll take this with me, along with the keys.” He shook my wallet in his hand, shot me a wolfish grin, and disappeared into the bathroom.
“How the…?” I sat up and stared at my bags, completely dumbstruck at how he’d pilfered my wallet from me. He’d either taken it when I was asleep in the car, or he was magic. It was all a great mystery, as was everything else about the man.
If I thought he’d rendered me speechless with his little snatch and grab trick, it was nothing compared to my response when he exited the shower shirtless minutes later.
His dark brown waves clumped heavily with water that dripped in fat droplets down his taut chest, over the ridges of his sculpted six-pack, and soaked into the low-slung waistband of his joggers. I could almost feel his smooth skin against my tongue as I collected beads of water like a game of connect the dots.
I’d never been so thirsty in my entire life.
I was two seconds from sexually assaulting him when I noticed two patches of marred skin—one at the top of his left pectoral and the other slashing across his right side. Scars. Gnarly, painful-looking scars.
It was the reminder I needed that this man was an unknown. A predator in his own right. He claimed to be on my side, for now, but would that always be the case?
He would be the worst kind of enemy. Intelligent. Unpredictable. Deadly.
I didn’t have much choice but to stay on my guard and hope for the best.
Chapter 11
Tamir
Emily took her turn in the bathroom, but only after I agreed to hand over the keys and give back her wallet. The minute the door was closed, I slipped outside the room to make a call to an old friend. Some days, I considered him my closest friend. Others, I swore I’d never speak to him again.
Uri and I went way back. We’d gone to school together before we were ever in the service together, and our years of active duty only brought us closer. He was far more proficient with computers than I was, so I had asked him to help dig for information on Emily.
“Tam, you sort out your little runaway?” Uri answered after a single ring.
“Not even a little. To make matters more complicated, she ran again.”
“No shit,” he huffed. “You chasing her down?”
“Even better, I’m running with her.”
He huffed. “I suppose that’s one way to keep an eye on the mark.”
“You able to find anything more about her?” I wasn’t interested in his input about my methods.
“No, she’s a ghost. I’ll keep digging, but it’s not looking promising. You going to tell me what the hell this is all about? You’ve never once put this much effort into the front end of a job. If the waters are murky, you walk away. This? This isn’t like you.”
“Why don’t you just say whatever the fuck it is you want to say?” My fist clenched around the phone, wishing it were his neck.
Silence.
“I want to know if this is still a job or if it’s becoming personal.”
“Not that it’s any of your fucking business, but it’s a job. She’s a payout, like any other; I just need to get the facts before I decide if I’m taking her in or walking away. That clear enough for you?”
He grunted, and I took that as the cue that our conversation was over. I hung up and took a second to lean against the railing, watching cars come and go on the access road.
I understood why Uri was concerned about my actions. Wives and children didn’t exactly fit into our type of lifestyle. Quitting was always an option, but I didn’t want to quit. I loved what I did, and I was good at it. I liked to think I helped balance the scales of good and evil, one payday at a time. No messy red tape. No long, drawn-out legal proceedings. Just me, my mark, and a mountain of sins.
That was the way it had been for years, and that was the way it would stay.
***
We turned the lights out as soon as Emily finished her shower. She curled up on the far edge of her side of the bed after building a pillow blockade between us. It was actually more of a pillow speedbump. Had we been at a quality hotel that provided a full array of pillows, she would have had more to work with.
I had no plans to attack her during the night, so her efforts were wasted. Even if I had, I wasn’t sure what she thought the pillows were going to accomplish. It was kind of adorable, which annoyed me to no end. I didn’t want to find her adorable or attractive or any of the things that stirred when I looked at her. She was a job, exactly as I’d told Uri, and nothing more.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to dwell on it long. The military had taught me to be a light sleeper, but it had also taught me to sleep in any conditions. I was out in a matter of minutes.
Something stirring in the room woke me early the next morning. The sun wasn’t even up, but Emily had insisted on leaving the bathroom light on with the door cracked so there was light in the room.
She had annihilated her own pillow blockade and crossed over into enemy territory. She was fast asleep, curled up against my side. I rolled gently to face her, listening to the cadence of her breathing and appreciating the soft lines of her face in sleep. Most of her body was under the covers. Only her face, top shoulder, and her arms were visible. She wore her watch on her bottom wrist, and in the dim light, I was able to see the hint of a tattoo peeking out beneath the metal clasp.
I lifted my hand and gently slid the watch aside with the delicacy of defusing a bomb by hand. In pale script was the letter Z. The scrolling ink was faded enough that I guessed she was in the process of having it removed. Could that have been her ex-boyfriend’s initial? As desperately as she tried to hide it, I doubted she’d want to discuss it.
It was intriguing—as if there was anything about the woman that wasn’t intriguing. People had tattoos they regretted all the time, so it wasn’t like a Z was particularly telling. I’d seen any number of tattoos that were far more regrettable than hers. So why had she hidden the mark like she was ashamed of it?
Everything I learned just produced more questions, like fighting my way out of a pit of quicksand. The more I struggled, the deeper I sank.
Sometimes a target was tricky because the magnitude of his or her sins floundered on my line of judgment. Rarely did I encounter someone with so little background that I couldn’t even gauge their guilt. It was rare, but it had happened. In those cases, I simply passed on the job and left someone else to dole out the judgment.
Not knowing the details of their past had never bothered me, but in Emily’s case, I didn’t want to walk away without an answer. I could say it was because of the money or that it was also a point of pride, but it was more than that. More than I was willing to admit. I felt an unrelenting need to lay my eyes on all of her coveted secrets, to learn the extent of her corruption and see how it compared to my own.