He tucked her hair away from him, so that he wouldn’t roll on it as he slid out of bed.
He was physically exhausted. He could only imagine how she felt—physically and emotionally exhausted.
Only really, he didn’t have to imagine it.
He had gone through something similar at the Guild, back when they were testing him. They wanted to make certain he was becoming an assassin for the right reasons.
If revenge lurked in his past, in his trapped memories, then he could have lost control of his present—of himself—the way that Rikki had lost control when she found out who he was. When they had the discussion about that night, here in the apartment.
He hadn’t gone through that—not outside of a supervised setting, not in the middle of a job—but that was only because the Guild had insisted on the psychological work up front. Probably because of some kind of experience that he knew nothing about.
He ran a hand through his hair, which was still damp from that shower. He had to find his clothes. And then he had to find a message board in the apartment. Because he knew there was no food here. He didn’t want to risk delivery, not since he had compromised her security network. So he needed to bring back groceries. He had found a good place between his hideout and hers. He would come back and cook her something delicious, and then he would wake her up.
Most of his clothes were in the kitchen. His boots had gotten into the hallway, and he didn’t remember that. In fact, the last thing he remembered about his boots was taking the knife out of its hiding place. He had been concentrating a lot more on her and their encounter than he had been on himself.
He also picked up the weapons, stopping for a moment to look at that small thing Rikki had taken from the seam of her pants. The thing wasn’t much bigger than his thumb and it seemed to have a multipurpose. If he pressed it, a small sharp blade came out. But there was another button that he recognized. The small thing had a small laser as well.
It was an ingenious little weapon. He would have to ask her about it.
He left her weapons on the counter and took his, along with his clothes, into the bathroom. Once there, he dressed, and replaced the weapons. Then he found the message board built into the mirror, and recorded his plans. As he froze the frame in the entire mirror, so she would notice the message, he noted that he looked a little more flushed than usual, his lips as bruised as hers had been.
He smiled at the memory.
Then he finger-combed his hair, double-checked the weapons to make sure he hadn’t done something stupid, and let himself out of the bathroom. He felt a bit muzzy-headed, not from any chemical, but from the complete shift in his perspective.
He had been furious with Rikki, and then he had felt compassion for her, and then that lust returned, even more powerful than before. And now that he was up and moving, the lust was there, in the background, but so was a tenderness he wasn’t sure he had ever felt before.
He slipped silently down the hallway. The apartment looked different from the inside. It was pretty clear that those bearing walls were a bit longer than they needed to be, just a bit wider. The illusion only existed for someone looking into the apartment through the windows, not for someone walking past them.
As he got to the entrance, he stopped. Another door was open. It was probably the door leading to the steps that took Rikki to the apartments she owned on the lower level.
He was half-smiling as he peered inside, wanting to check his theory.
The view of the interior was so different from what he expected that he actually made a soft sound.
Usually he didn’t go into places without having seen the schematics. He usually didn’t have to guess what was behind one door because he knew.
He hadn’t known here.
What he thought was a small staircase enclosure leading down a few flights was actually a workspace. Weapons covered the walls like decorations. There was a counter that went all the way around, drawers and cabinets, and, yes, an extra space toward the back that might indeed lead down to the lower apartments or might provide an excellent second hiding space.
In the center of the room was a large, soft couch-like thing that someone could stretch out on.
It was clear that Rikki had been doing just that when her food got delivered, hours ago. It seemed like it had been days ago, though, the way that he had changed, the way that she had changed. What they had discussed, what they had been through.
What they had
done
.
He smiled softly.
He was about to turn away from the room when he noticed five tablets on the couch-thing. They all had images on them, probably future targets.
And one of the images looked familiar.
He frowned, and walked inside. His heart was actually pounding. He knew this was a violation of the trust he wanted to build with Rikki, but he couldn’t stop himself.
He would just double-check, make sure everything was fine, and then he would go get food.
His hand hovered over the tablet. His breath caught.
That face was familiar.
It belonged to Kerani Ammons, the director of the Assassins Guild.
Misha’s head was spinning. That couldn’t be right. He couldn’t be looking at Kerani Ammons’s face. Because if he was looking at Kerani’s face, then maybe Liora had been right. Maybe Rikki was with the Rovers.
His stomach twisted.
He picked up the tablet and it immediately shut off at the touch of his fingers. He cursed silently, then heard a slight sound behind him.
He turned to see the door closing.
He leapt for it, tablet still in hand, and managed to stop the door from sealing. He didn’t want to have it close while he still had the tablet. He needed to re-jigger something so that he could put the tablet back down where he had found it, without getting trapped.
Dammit. What was this all about? Had Rikki been using him all along? Was she trying to get into the Guild by playing hard to get?
Because, after all, only a nonaffiliated assassin would have an excuse—a reason—to get into the Guild like this. And a nonaffiliated assassin would have to meet with Kerani before the final acceptance into the Guild.
Misha closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the door. Dammit, dammit, dammit. He didn’t want to think like that. He didn’t want to make that kind of assumption.
Dammit.
There was no proof that this tablet was anything other than an informational device. He was the one who had assumed he was holding a target image.
He needed to get the tablet working.
He needed to fix the door, put the tablet back, and get breakfast.
He needed to trust.
That was what he had vowed to do. That was what he would do.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Rikki’s voice. Low, menacing. He had never heard her sound like that.
He opened his eyes, raised his head, and looked into the hallway. She was standing near him, feet splayed, laser pistol pointed at him. Her hair was messed, her eyes shadowed, but she wasn’t shaking. She looked strong.
She was also naked.
The way she had her arms, her hands holding that braced pistol, pushed up her spectacular breasts. He could see every muscle, every part of her, and dammit, he could feel himself growing hard.
“Okay,” he said, trying to sound calm. “I know this looks bad.”
Hell, it looked terrible. He was wedged between the door and the jam, the door vibrating as it continued its quest to shut. In his right hand—the hand in the hallway—he held her tablet.
“It doesn’t look bad,” she said, her voice still low and ferocious. “It just proves that I should have listened to my doubts. You’re a hell of a con man, Misha. I actually believed everything you said.”
“I wasn’t conning you,” he said, but stopped himself before saying
I
can
explain
this
. He could explain it, but he’d heard that sentence so many times from clearly guilty people or people whose guilt no longer mattered, who were going to die anyway, that he couldn’t, in good conscience, say it himself.
“Then you want to tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you?” she asked. Her face was impassive. He would have been happier if she had been angry.
He wondered if this was her professional face, the one countless people had last seen before they died.
“You’ll damage your door,” he said.
She shrugged, moving her breasts ever so slightly, which then made his breath catch. She was beautiful. Hair down, splendidly naked, gun in hand. He wasn’t sure he had ever seen a more beautiful woman.
“You’re already damaging my door,” she said.
“I’d stop,” he said, “but I can’t move.”
She looked at the door, then looked at his face, then looked at the exterior control panel. At least, he assumed that was the exterior control panel.
“Tell me what you were doing in there,” she said. “And don’t lie.”
He licked his lips. “Did you see my message in the bathroom?”
“No,” she said. “I heard the alarm, I grabbed my gun, I came here. I didn’t have time to pee. And you know what? I would really like to pee. So get to the point.”
He would have smiled at the irritation in her voice if it had been appropriate. But it wasn’t. His heart started beating harder, and it wasn’t just because the woman holding that gun on him was hot.
He was starting to get the feeling that she would pull that trigger if he gave her the slightest excuse.
“I was going to get us breakfast,” he said. “I left you a message to that effect. Go check if you want. I’m not going anywhere.”
Her eyes narrowed. “If I go, you’ll figure out how to disentangle yourself and then you’ll be gone before I get back.”
Now that she had shown him where the entrance controls were with a single glance, she was probably right: he could do that. He could free himself and leave in the time it took to get to the bathroom and back.
But he didn’t confirm her hypothesis.
He continued, “I came down the hallway and saw the open door. Honestly, I’d been wondering about these walls. I thought they were the wrong size to be simple bearing walls. I figured they were hiding a small staircase—”
He stopped himself before he added
to
your
other
apartments
. In her mood, those words would probably not have the desired effect. She didn’t need to know how thorough the background check he had done on her was.
“—or some other escape route from the apartment. I just wanted to if I was right.”
Her expression didn’t change. He couldn’t tell if she had caught his near slipup or not. He couldn’t tell what her emotion was.
And here he’d been thinking she wore every single emotion she ever had on her face. He had been very wrong about that.
“I looked in,” he said, “and I was quite frankly surprised at the room itself.”
“So you stepped in and started looking through my files.”
He almost said
no
, which was ridiculous considering he was half in and half out, holding onto one of those files. It was just his instinct—and not a very good instinct—that made him want to deny it.
He smiled at her—his most charming smile, a sheepish smile, a forgive-me smile, one he had used in cons and preps for jobs.
The smile didn’t seem to have any impact on her at all.
“I wouldn’t have,” he said, “except you had left these tablets scattered and I thought I recognized one of the people on them.”
“Friend of yours?” she asked in a decidedly nasty tone.
“Actually, yes,” he said, and he waved the tablet up toward her. “I know this woman. I know her really, really well.”
He had succeeded in distracting her. Damn him, he seemed to know exactly how to get to her.
Rikki stood across from him, feet planted, pistol braced. She was cold and probably covered with goose bumps, and she felt oddly exposed. Or maybe not so oddly, since she was naked, after all.
But she had learned a long time ago that she usually didn’t feel naked when she was holding a weapon.
“You know her well, huh?” Rikki asked. “Who is she?”
“Get me out of here first,” he said. “We have to talk.”
She didn’t like the way the door was groaning as it kept pressing on him. But she wasn’t sure she could trust him either.
She moved the pistol to her left hand only and extended her right. “Give me the tablet.”
His lips thinned. He didn’t want to, which was interesting. Did he think he had some kind of advantage by holding it?
“I’m not getting you out of there until you do,” she said.
He extended the tablet toward her. She took it and it automatically came back on. The tablet only worked when she touched it. If someone else held it, it went blank. It also sent her an alarm, warning her that someone else had picked up the tablet.