Nope. Danny was a merc. She may as well be another nonsexual species.
“Alright, well if you’re gonna be working on that for a while, I’m going to sleep,” she announced.
Good. I didn’t reply, because I was dangerously close to offering her a whole other bedroom activity and ditching my codes for another day.
She spent a couple of moments combing through her damp hair, then placed a loaded gun on the nightstand. In any other situation, it seemed like a crazy paranoid kind of thing to do. Especially when she then added a long hunting knife under her pillow. But in our line of work it was just sensible.
Not that I’d let anything happen to her while she slept. I’d keep her safe, just like I had for three weeks in Kraków while she healed from being shot.
Shit. Maybe I did need to go back to therapy.
Nah, my slight edge of insanity was what made me who I was. It was what allowed me to do the things I did and feel zero regret or remorse. If I lost that, I’d just be normal … and no one wanted that.
She fell asleep shockingly fast, her breathing evening out into a gentle rhythm and her facial features softening. I gritted my teeth and continued on with my decoding, though. I wanted to be done by the time she woke up, and if she was anything like me—like most mercenaries—she wouldn’t sleep for more than a couple of hours.
My attention kept being dragged back to her, though. Every shift she made in her sleep, every restless sigh or groan, and I was enraptured. Eventually I needed to put my headphones on and play music to try and block her out. Just long enough to get the job done.
Mr. Edward Gates was a nobody. He sure as hell wasn’t the key figure in an arms dealer empire that the mission had made him out to be. He was a glorified assistant, handling schedules and travel arrangements for a number of unidentified individuals with fake names.
It made me roll my eyes, thinking how crappy his world geography was when Danny needed him to say Zimbabwe earlier. Then again, most of the itineraries he coordinated were between major cities like New York, London, Sydney, Singapore and Tokyo. He had nothing to do with the countries that were typically involved in arms deals.
I saw no value in the information I decoded, but without access to the bigger picture, I was likely just missing a key point. There could be a smoking gun buried in those schedules, for all I knew.
My next point of business was going to be investigating who this job was for and what specifically they were requesting. But that could probably wait… I packaged up all the data and uploaded it to our secure assignment portal buried deep within the dark web, then tugged my headphones off.
The instant quiet of the hotel room made me still. Then Danny’s soft breathing filled my ears once more, and my pulse raced.
Like the deranged creep I was, I couldn’t seem to stop myself crossing over to the bed where she slept. For a minute or ten, I just crouched beside the bed, watching her sleep. She looked like an angel, straight out of heaven, with her porcelain skin and silvery white hair. The bruise on her cheek didn’t seem to be getting any worse, which made me happy to see.
I wet my lips, eyeing the space on the bed beside her. Perhaps I could just lie down with her for a minute. Would she wake up if I did?
Danny shifted in her sleep, making me freeze and hold my breath. She muttered something sleepily about Ted’s tiny dick, and it brought my priorities back in line. I silently went back to my computer to check that the upload had been accepted.
I needed to wait a few more minutes, then the status changed and the electronic funds payout lit up on my phone. Our assignment was officially complete.
Smiling to myself, I silently left the room and took the fire stairs up two levels.
Using the cloned keycard, I let myself straight into Edward Gates’s hotel room and let the door close quietly behind me. It was past midnight, and Ted had passed out drunk some time ago, if the stale smell in the room was anything to go by. He probably hadn’t lasted much longer at the bar after our encounter in the courtyard.
Creeping closer, I curled my lip in contempt as I peered down at the snoring man. Then I pulled a knife from the sheath at my belt and used it to slit Ted’s throat. Messy, but effective.
I said nothing, never even waking him up before he died. I just cleaned my knife on the hotel sheets, then washed my hands in his bathroom before returning downstairs to where Danny slept so peacefully.
Maybe I would lie down with her. Just for a minute. Then, when she woke, I’d let her know the assignment was complete and we’d go our separate ways.
It was better this way. She was becoming a distraction… and either she’d get killed or I would have to kill her myself. First thing in the morning, I’d place the block back on her profile.
11
S omething was wrong. I felt it before I even fully woke up. Or… maybe not wrong , but different. Odd. Unusual?
I stayed dead still, opening my eyes just a fraction to work out what had given me that feeling. But I sure as hell hadn’t expected to find someone else in bed with me. How? I was such a light sleeper. How the fuck had I not woken up when the mattress dipped?
Leon was fast asleep on his side, facing me, and shirtless. Holy hell … that glimpse I’d gotten of him in the shower yesterday was nothing on the real deal up close. For a hacker, Leon was spending a crap lot of time in the gym.
It wasn’t him being in bed with me that had given me such an uneasy feeling, though. Quite the opposite, I was perversely pleased to find him like that. No, I was off-balance because it was daylight .
I hadn’t slept more than three consecutive hours at a time in years . Decades, if I were honest. For one thing, my brain was wired all wrong for restful sleep. For another, it was an easy way to get killed on a mission. Much safer to only sleep in short bursts so I was less likely to be caught unawares.
And yet, the daylight streaming through the hotel window said I’d been asleep for at least six hours, and that was assuming it was just past dawn. For all I knew, it could be much later.
My phone was on the nightstand, but on the opposite side of the bed from where I lay. I must have been moving around in my sleep. Not a huge surprise, considering how restless my dreams often were. Blame it on being still half asleep, but for some reason, I decided to reach over Leon to check the time rather than getting out of bed.
Holy shit , nine in the morning!
“Uh, good morning,” a deep voice rumbled, and I looked down to meet Leon’s green eyes peering up at me.
“Sorry,” I winced. “I never usually sleep this… long.” I retreated back to my side of the bed so I wasn’t hovering my tits in his face any longer, but again I failed to get my ass up out of bed.
What the fuck was wrong with me? I was having a cozy morning-after pillow chat with a guy I hadn’t even had sex with? Maybe Ted had hit me harder than I’d thought.
Chasing that thought, I touched a hand to my cheek, testing the bruise.
“Does it still hurt?” Leon asked in a sleepy voice, raising his hand to cup my face. The gesture was so casually intimate that my breath caught and my heart raced. His thumb stroked over my vaguely tender cheekbone, and I needed to wet my lips before I could make words come out.
“Actually not too bad,” I admitted. “I need to get some of that magic minty cream.”