Chapter 1
Access Point: Professor Nicole Chesney (49) – Wife
Location: Southampton
Hobbies: algae, first edition books, social media, shopping, pilates
Mr. Chesney stared. “An orphan? How did she even meet him?”
“He’s one of her students, sir.”
At the abject shock (mixed with some distaste) on his boss’s face, Patrick wanted to add, I hear even orphans can go to college.
But he had been Mr. Chesney’s personal aide for fifteen years—the longest the man had ever been able to retain an aide. Patrick took pride in that. He was a professional.
Besides, he had become accustomed to Mr. Chesney’s casual cruelty fourteen years and three months earlier.
Patrick still kept tabs on Mr. Chesney’s son. He had barely known the kid but had overheard the argument that morphed into being disowned for being trans. Even though he had been just another staff member in the other room—present because Mr. Chesney had been unwilling to take the full day off—Patrick also couldn’t unhear it. And he had never forgiven himself for not saying something, for not quitting. But the salary had been more money than he had ever thought he would see on a paystub, and he’d had his own problems that the money could very much solve. And had.
The feeling that he was rubbing up against filth by working for Mr. Chesney never went away. But it got easier to ignore over the years.
“Pull,” Mr. Chesney said.
Patrick nodded to the attendant, and a clay pigeon launched into the air. Mr. Chesney liked to hesitate before raising his rifle. He said a “real skeet shooter” mentally calculated the trajectory of the disc before drawing his weapon.
Patrick didn’t know what the hell a fake skeet shooter was.
Mr. Chesney snorted. “This is why I wanted her to accept that position at Mount Holyoke. Fucking co-ed colleges.”
“Yes, sir,” Patrick murmured. Idiot.
“What’s his name again?”
For the fourth time, Patrick said, “Nathaniel Gross. Mrs. Chesney calls him Nate, I believe.”
“And our background team couldn’t find anything on him?”
“No, sir. Nothing other than school records and a request for emancipation to leave the foster system.”
Mr. Chesney swung his rifle in a way that made Patrick distinctly nervous. “You said he’s coming for dinner tonight?”
“Yes, sir. Mrs. Chesney arranged everything.” Patrick had learned in his first week to never refer to Mr. Chesney’s wife by her title—Professor Chesney, Dr. Chesney, the professor—only Mrs. Chesney. “Cocktails at six, dinner at seven. The chef is preparing a honey-glazed—”
“I don’t give a shit. Keep it in the kitchen, Patrick,” Mr. Chesney said with a bark of laughter.
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Chesney’s phone vibrated loudly in his pocket, and he held the rifle out without looking. Patrick took the weapon with ginger fingers and engaged the safety.
Patrick didn’t think that the blanket they had placed around his shoulders was to ward off shock. He didn’t think he was in shock. He was confused, yes, but that was understandable given the evening’s events. And he was lucid. Were people in shock lucid?
The blanket had been offered to him because his jacket and shirt had been covered in “evidence” according to the crime scene workers.
Blood was evidence. That made sense. He nodded to himself again.
Both had been collected by someone wearing a mask and gloves. Each item had been placed in its own translucent plastic bag and marked with Patrick’s name, the date, the location, and Mr. Chesney’s name. His full name, Robert Chesney, Jr.
The sight of Mr. Chesney’s first name had made Patrick start. Only his wife and inner circle were allowed to call him by his given name. Automatically, Patrick had opened his mouth to warn the crime scene worker not to call address him as Robert, but then Patrick had remembered that Mr. Chesney wouldn’t be screaming at anyone anymore.
The paramedics had handed him a blanket to keep the night’s chill at bay while Patrick answered the detectives’ questions. That was what the blanket was for.
He watched the ambulance drive away, the blanket scratching at the skin of his shoulders. Lights flashed against the large pond that the gravel driveway encircled, throwing lily pads into spotlight and then shadow, spotlight and shadow, spotlightshadowspotlightshadow—
He blinked and looked away. No one got murdered in the Hamptons. Certainly not on Gin Lane.
The police had asked him if he could think of anyone who wanted to harm Mr. Chesney, and Patrick had stared at them a beat too long before bursting into high-pitched laughter.
“Everyone who ever met him,” he had said, then he had started crying.
For heaven’s sake. He had never even liked the man. Why had he sobbed?
Patrick supposed no one was murdered in the Hamptons because none of the neighbors deserved to have their throat slit. Whereas Robert Chesney, Jr. most certainly did, didn’t he? Patrick knew too much about the Chesneys to not wonder if this wasn’t merited retribution.
But Patrick hadn’t deserved it. He hadn’t deserved to walk into the library and find his boss sitting in the armchair behind the desk, throat leaking dark red preserves onto his cashmere sweater. If Patrick hadn’t forgotten the file when he left for the evening, if he had simply remembered to put the weekly portfolio in his briefcase—
In the fifteen years he had worked for Mr. Chesney, Patrick had never forgotten the weekly portfolio on a Friday evening.
Professor Chesney’s eyes were blank as the police handcuffed her, still in her nightgown. Patrick swallowed hard against the bile. He knew their marriage had been for show—and Mr. Chesney had enjoyed at least three affairs—but they had never loved each other to begin with. She had been a beautiful young trophy wife who had provided the added benefit of lending Mr. Chesney credibility in biotech circles. He, on the other hand, had been a deep pocket that would fund whatever research she wanted to conduct. That had always been obvious to Patrick because, frankly, they hadn’t been subtle.
He never could have imagined the professor would kill her husband, though. Mr. Chesney had funded his wife’s lifestyle without question, and she had always looked the other way when an affair became too obvious. Patrick wouldn’t have imagined she cared enough to kill him.
But the professor had been the only one in the house when he had died—murder, Patrick corrected himself, Mr. Chesney had been murdered—with no sign of a break-in. Who else could it have been?
He shivered and wrapped the blanket tighter around himself.
Teddy watched the lights of the ambulance—a predictable pretense, he supposed. Chesney had been very, very dead before he’d wiped his knife on the man’s sweater and left the library.
He glanced at the neighboring mansions, confident at least a dozen pairs of eyes peered out from between their blinds and curtains. Chesney had been dead on arrival, but rich people paid for empty comfort. Of course the ambulance ran the lights.
A handcuffed Professor Chesney was led to a squad car from the front door, and that was Teddy’s cue.
Satisfied his part was done, he tucked his hands in his pockets and walked away from the crowd. He hated the beach. He would smell like salt and sand for days after this job.
Chapter 2
Access Point: Pietro “Peter” Abramov (25) – Son
Location: Manhattan
Hobbies: Gambling, clubbing, pickleball, craft beer, parties
“Seems fishy,” Sergei said, staring at the sheaf of pages his brother had handed him.
“Fishy?”
Sergei tossed the pages onto the table, watching them spill across the polished wood. “Has Peter ever met an orphan before?”
Dimitri crossed the room and handed Sergei a small glass of clear liquid. “Are you asking if orphans are a fairy tale, Sergei?”
Dimitri’s voice was mocking, even under the heavy accent. He had never been able to shake it, despite insisting their entire family speak solely in English for the last thirty years. Sergei had gotten his ears boxed whenever his older brother had heard their native Russian slip from Sergei’s tongue.
We’re in America now! Speak American!
His brother was a dick, as they said in American. But he was a strong dick. Sergei was partially deaf in one ear.
“No,” Sergei said. He tipped his head back to take the shot in his glass and nearly choked on the unexpected flavor. “What is that?”
“Soju.” Dimitri gave him a quelling look.
Sergei set the glass aside. “What’s wrong with vodka? Tequila?”
“Fewer sugars,” Dimitri said. “Better for my diabetes.”
Sergei chose not to comment. “All I’m saying is that this person comes out of nowhere, but suddenly he’s all Peter can talk about. They have everything in common. They go everywhere together like teenage girls. Now Peter wants this Caleb to move in? He’s never wanted a roommate. And this Caleb has no people we can look into? Fishy.”
Dimitri’s gaze was hard as he stared Sergei down. “I agree.”
Sergei wasn’t sure why he felt so surprised. Dimitri was an ass, but he wasn’t a stupid ass.
“Which is why I need you to follow him. Get a read on him.”
Sergei stood. “Should I prep Alexei?”
“Did I say we need wet work? No. He’s a college kid, not a mafioso. Christ, Sergei. I said follow him.”
“Got it.”
“You don’t need ideas. You just need to do what I tell you.”
Teddy’s burner had three voicemails from Peter. He erased them all, then wiped the burner clean and took a magnet to it. Then he smashed it against the side of a brick building. Satisfying.
He walked the seventy blocks downtown. It was a nice, chilly autumn evening, and it gave him a chance to drop each fragment of the mobile in a separate trashcan from the Upper East Side to the Financial District. Spreading the pieces across the city was overblown and unnecessary, but it was a ritual he carried out after every job. He found it soothing.
Normally, Teddy watched the aftermath of his work in person. While various emergency services scurried about, he lingered in the shadows to make sure nothing appeared out of place. After five years with the Agency, he had stopped asking why the faces appeared in manilla envelopes. He preferred not to know, didn’t need their grotesque sins laid out in black and white. Sometimes, though, if he searched the faces of those left behind, he could see the fissures, the clues. He would begin to see the pattern, make an educated guess at the series of events that had led him to his target’s doorstep.
He considered watching the aftermath the habit that made him the best freelancer the Agency had. But he didn’t enjoy it, and Dimitri’s younger brother walking into the bathroom in the middle of Teddy drowning Dimitri had been a surprise.
Two corpses equaled a mess.
He set his jaw and shoved his hands in his pockets. He hated messy.
Chapter 3
Access Point: Claire Argosy (23) – Niece
Location: Ann Arbor
Hobbies: Indoor gardening, languages
Teddy stared in the mirror, examining his sideburns, turning his face to one side, then the other. They looked the same length. But he should probably measure.
The phone on the nightstand rang once, the usual signal. He met his own gaze, irises temporarily hazel thanks to the brown contacts over his natural green, and stifled a sigh.
He picked up the little black burner and tried to remember if this one was a touchscreen or a slider. He pressed one of the volume buttons on the side and watched the screen come to life. Touchscreen, he determined.
He tapped the notification to call the unfamiliar number back. It was always different with every call. He only had one number for the Agency, and he was only supposed to use it if shit went sideways to the point that he couldn’t salvage the situation.
Like it had, for example, with the Abramovs. The “suicide” that turned into a double homicide.
“Problem?” the Voice asked.
“No.”
As always, the Voice was calm, composed. It was robotic enough to be ambiguous. Still, in his mind, the Voice was a woman. He had no idea what he was picking up on that told him that. Maybe the speech patterns.
She said nothing else. But he knew her well enough to hear the irritation. He was running behind schedule.
Though she had never said as much, he knew the Agency had accepted that the Abramov Mess was unavoidable. If the powers that be had minded, Teddy would be dead. The math on that was simple.
“I couldn’t make contact before she went out of town,” he said, eyeing the sideburns again. “But she’s back now. It’ll be done soon.”
The Voice didn’t respond, but his phone beeped in his ear to signal the call had ended. He set the phone on the counter and peeled the left sideburn away from his skin. The glue was stubborn, and he watched the skin pull taut before letting go of the silicone backing of the fake hair. Narrowing his eyes, he adjusted it a millimeter lower.
The file, this time around, was useless.
Indoor gardening seemed like a stretch. He had spotted a few succulents in Claire’s windows, but succulents barely need watering. They just kind of sat there. If they called that a hobby, the research team really needed to get out more.
And languages… he supposed that could be a hobby. But which ones? He spoke four—did they overlap at all?
One point five hobbies was really all they could dig up on Claire Argosy?
Everyone had hobbies. Even he had hobbies, and Teddy was never the same person from one day to the next. His choices were a bit eclectic, dictated by his nomadic lifestyle. Like the model airplanes he routinely lost in bodies of water across the U.S. But they were hobbies all the same.
Then he started following Claire Argosy and decided he needed to eat crow on this one. Claire didn’t even appear to have friends, let alone anything as weak as a hobby. She lived alone in a large, one-bedroom flat six blocks off the University of Michigan campus, and he marveled at how her life operated on veritable clockwork.
From his vantage point (in an apartment the Agency had rented across the street and down one building) he watched Claire wake at seven every morning and do twenty minutes of yoga. She would leave the apartment at seven-thirty to procure a bagel with peanut butter and coffee—two sugars, no cream—from the shop two blocks away. She spent most of her day on campus, returning between seven and seven-fifteen every evening where she cooked her own dinner. He watched her study for two hours, then she would tidy up, shower, and get in bed. Her lights went out at ten p.m. sharp.
On weekends, from eleven-thirty to three-fifteen, Claire studied at the same coffee shop where she purchased her morning bagel and coffee during the week.
The perfect place, he decided, for Simon Stafford to introduce himself.
Chapter 4
“Do you mind if I sit down?”
Claire looked up from her tablet. Her brown eyes landed on his chin before skittering away to glance around the shop. Teddy could see she was surprised to find all the other tables were full.
“Oh, of course,” she said, moving some of her belongings so he had more room.
The ease in her voice was a surprise. She was so deliberately alone most of the time that he had assumed she was anti-social, awkward or both. He dialed back the flirtatious smile to friendly warmth.
He watched her slide two textbooks in her messenger bag before sitting across from her. “Much obliged.”
She gave him a vague, polite smile, eyes somewhere near his shoulder. Then she turned back to her book. As he unpacked his own supplies, he watched her highlight a line with short, sure strokes.
He knew that she kept her textbooks in a neat line on a shelf over her desk, sorted by both alphabetical order and semester. That particular book was at the front of the line, within easy reach, despite not being filed correctly. A favorite, Teddy assumed. He pulled an identical copy out of his bag.
“Linguistics 112, right?”
Her eyes flicked to the book he placed on the table. “Yes.”
“Professor Garrett is hilarious.”
She made a non-committal sound in the back of her throat. Her eyes had returned to her textbook. But her hand hesitated before it resumed its strokes with the highlighter.
“I’m Simon, by the way.”
“Claire,” she said, addressing her book.
“If you highlight the whole book, how do you know what’s important?”
The joke was lame, but he meant to put her at ease. She offered another polite smile.
“I have a confession,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning close. “I recognize you from lecture.”
Her brow crumpled in confusion. “I see.”
“You really seem to know what’s going on.”
“I like linguistics,” she said, as if this excused her proficiency.
“I’m completely lost.” His grin was self-deprecating.
“I’m sorry.”
He knew none of his confusion showed through the grin. He looked relaxed and confident. He was well-practiced at it. But this usually worked with shy women. Good-looking, confident young men with British accents were alluring—a well-known fact. And awkward women generally leapt at the chance of moving closer to him if he made it obvious enough that he wanted them to do so.
By the tilt of her head, he could see that Claire was interested but offering him nothing. So, he took the next step for her.
“I’m putting together a study group,” he said. “I was wondering if you wanted to join us. It’ll probably be two or three people from lecture.”
Claire stared at his chin, eyes large and doe-like behind her oversized glasses, and said, “No, thank you.”
In his brain, a buzzer sounded. Wrong again.
She wasn’t interested. She was polite. She had been waiting him out before telling him to fuck off. Why was this girl so hard to read?
He regrouped and forced a throaty laugh that sounded genuine. “You don’t like study groups?”
“No.”
“Not a people person?”
She shrugged and the damn highlighter started moving again.
“I guess you probably don’t need much help,” he said, keeping his voice deep.
“Not really.”
He dealt with rude, spoiled people all the time. He could handle one college girl. But there was a voice in the back of his head telling him Claire wasn’t spoiled. She wasn’t rude. She simply didn’t like him.
And he couldn’t imagine why. Simon was perfect. His characters were always perfect.
“Well,” he said, knowing it was time to retreat. “If you change your mind, here’s my number.”
He slid a post-it across the table and under the edge of her book. Claire looked at it but made no move to pick it up.
“All right.”
He stayed for an hour to really sell it. Like her, he highlighted the textbook directly. Unlike her, he didn’t have a tablet to take notes in. He had decided that Simon wasn’t posh. He was a scholarship kid.
Two days later, Claire cornered him outside of the campus library.
“You’re following me,” she said without greeting.
His insides wanted to jump out of his skin. He pressed a hand to his heart, using the surprise to his advantage. “Good Lord, you scared me.”
“You’re following me.”
He crinkled his brow. “No, I’m not. I go to school here, remember?”
“You’re not in Linguistics 112.” She shook her head. “Or you weren’t until two weeks ago.”
“I transferred—”
“No one transfers in the middle of a semester,” she said.
He injected some annoyance into his voice. “—from 132. Are you always this suspicious?”
“Yes.”
Interesting.
“And why’s that?” he asked, surprising himself.
“I’ve never been wrong to be suspicious.”
She turned and walked away before he could formulate a reply.
Very interesting.
He followed her home that evening. She didn’t notice him, of course, and he should have retreated to the apartment. Instead, he swung soundlessly up the fire escape to lurk outside her window. He watched as she unloaded her books neatly into their spaces on her desk. Then she took off her jacket, and his head tilted.
There were scars on her arms. Not across her wrists, but farther up, the lengthwise scars of someone who not only wanted to kill themselves but had studied up on the very best way to ensure success.
A nasty taste appeared on the back of his tongue. Claire Argosy had been grossly miscalculated.
She slid into the seat beside him before the next lecture.
“Good morning,” he said.
She sighed. “Look, you’re clearly after something, and I really don’t care what it is.”
You would if you knew, he thought, and wondered where the hell this woman had come from.
“I just want you to go away,” she said. “But if you’re determined to stick around— which, clearly you are—then at least have the decency to stop lying to me.”
“I can’t.”
For once, she looked surprised. But not as surprised as he was. Shit. Why would he confirm that?
He tried to rewind. “I’m just a British—”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m… not?”
He most certainly was. At least, Simon was, and, in the past year, Matthew, Jack and Phillip had been, too. Nathaniel had been Midwestern, Caleb a Canadian, and Pedro had been from Spain, but Teddy preferred a British accent. Americans didn’t question a British accent much; it took so much less thought as a cover.
Claire gave him that patented, unruffled stare. The one he had seen in the coffee shop as she fended off Simon’s advances. The one that managed to make her look both apathetic and tired of his bullshit.
God, you’re interesting. He couldn’t help the thought. She wasn’t normal for Christ’s sake. He had never met anyone like her.
For the fun of it, he didn’t drop the accent. “Why do you think I’m not British?”
“Your ps. And your gerunds are unnaturally precise.”
“My ps?” he asked, incredulous.
“I’m a linguistics major, remember?” She pulled out her notebook. “I’m guessing Alabama. But I could be wrong. You’re masking well.”
His jaw was agape, and he was from Louisiana. Forcing his mouth shut, he considered his options for a rebuttal.
But then Professor Garrett began to speak, and she was fixated on the front of the room for the duration of the lecture. Afterward, she turned back to him.
“I’m going to the student union for lunch.”
He blinked at her. “Okay.”
“If you’re going to follow me anyway, you might as well come have lunch with me.”
Once Claire started speaking, she really went all-in, didn’t she? “Simon” made a show of his enthusiasm as he stood to follow her. She waited until they were outside before continuing the interrogation.
“Why are you following me?”
“I’m not following you. We just happen—”
“To have the same taste in cafés and majors. All of a sudden. In my third year at UM. Got it. Doesn’t explain why you followed me home, though.”
No. Professional pride made him grit his teeth. Absolutely not.
He would have known if she had made his tail. People were obvious when they noticed being followed, and he had been trained to spot the signs. They either deviated from their route, found a public place, or picked up speed.
She had exhibited none of those behaviors. She couldn’t possibly have noticed him… unless she simply hadn’t cared that he had been following her.
Interesting, he thought again.
“I didn’t follow you home,” he tried.
“Uh-huh.”
Her dry disbelief made him want to smile. Teddy. Not Simon. Fuck.
“Why linguistics?” he asked, trying to regain control of the situation.
“It’s just what interests me.”
“How so?”
She frowned. Not annoyed, just thinking very hard about her next words. He liked that about her—how much thought she put into everything she said.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the way people control their reactions, their feelings, through speech. My uncle paid for speech therapy to modulate his tones.”
The Agency had put Teddy through similar training to help him play his roles more convincingly. It had the added effect of erasing who he had been. (Or so he had thought, until he met Claire.) After a couple of weeks, he had driven that trainer mad by copying her accent and speech patterns exactly. He enjoyed sinking into a new personality through a voice alone.
“Why?” he asked. Though he could guess.
“So that he never loses his cool on the campaign trail.”
“He’s a politician?”
“Yeah,” she said, with a look that told him she would not be speaking on that subject. “He’s gotten so good at hiding everything that I never know when he’s telling the truth anymore.”
“Are you close with your uncle?”
She scoffed and shook her head. “I lived with him and my aunt after my parents died. But I left for college at sixteen, so it was only a few years.”
“I’m sorry about your parents,” he said.
“It’s been a long time.”
Which meant fuck all about how much it hurt, he knew. Losing his mother at twelve had been the catalyst for a lot of things, and it was still a deep wound that he couldn’t get to close.
But not once had he experienced the urge to say that to anyone else. Other than Claire. He swallowed it down. He had decided Simon had lovely parents who supported his choices.
“So, D.C. is home, then?” he asked. “I mean, when you’re not at school.”
“I’m always at school.”
“Sure. But for holidays—”
“Not since I got the apartment. I don’t visit anymore.”
According to her file, Claire had purchased her apartment at twenty-one when she had come into the trust fund her parents had left her. That meant it had been close to two years since she had gone to the Senator’s home.
Why wasn’t that in the file? This would have been useful to know. And how was he supposed to use Claire to get close to the Senator if she never fucking saw him? Was the Voice’s research team getting lazy?
Then a thought occurred to him. Maybe he was being punished for the Abramov Mess. Or, worse, tested.
“You don’t like D.C.?” he asked, genuinely curious about someone else for the first time since he could remember.
“My uncle stopped making me come back.”
He remembered the scars on the insides of her forearms. “Why not?”
She shrugged. “I got too old. He wasn’t interested in me anymore.”
Simon Stafford, the charming, well-adjusted college student, would have missed the implication. But Teddy was not Simon Stafford. And Teddy had seen too much in his twenty-six years of life to not know exactly what Claire meant.
His eyes sought hers, and, for the first time, she met and held his gaze. He knew she was assessing him, waiting for his reaction. Or, more accurately, she was waiting for a lack of reaction, the clue that he was, indeed, a normal, self-involved college student.
“Thank God for that,” he said, voice a low growl.
Her eyes flashed, the first sign he had seen of approval from her.
Teddy began to plan all the ways he was going to make the Senator hurt.
Chapter 5
“Come in,” Claire said, gesturing at the stairwell.
Teddy had broken into her apartment twice. The first to set up a few cameras—nothing pervy, not his thing. One in the foyer so he could watch her come and go. Others focused on each of her windows in case she had any other visitors—Agency or otherwise. And then in the usual spots: living room, dining room, kitchen.
The second time had been to search for a better “in” after his initial salvo hadn’t been well-received. He had searched through her books (textbooks, poetry, and a small set of photography coffee table type books) again, as well as the floor-to-ceiling shelves of vinyl records in her living room. Neither time had he used the front door. How novel to be invited into someone’s home.
He hesitated and reminded her, “I am a handsome stranger who appears to be stalking you, Claire. Should you be inviting me inside?”
“You’re not going to hurt me,” she said, mystified. “And you already know where I live. Aren’t you the one that broke in a few days ago?”
This woman continued to deliver shock and awe. I really like you.
Not a useful sentiment when he was supposed to kill her only remaining family member. Or, at least, the file had said the Senator was her only remaining family member. But this particular file hadn’t been the least bit helpful thus far.
“All right then,” he murmured.
She led the way up the stairs, unbothered to have him at her back. He, on the other hand, kept his eyes moving between the landing and the front door to the street as they climbed. Keeping alert for threats had become second nature for him. He had only run into interference on three of his twelve jobs over the last five years. Two of whom had been hired security easily avoided. The third, Sergei, who had been easily killed. Bile licked at his throat.
Teddy told himself, not for the first time, to stop obsessing. He killed people. That was what—and who—he was. A guardian for the world, taking out threats so damn awful that neither justice nor redemption were possibilities.
He had always trusted the Agency’s judgement. His trust in them was implicit and implacable. If someone appeared in a manilla envelope, then they were the scum of the earth and deserved what they got.
But Sergei hadn’t been in the file, hadn’t been sanctioned. The Agency hadn’t determined that the only way to protect the world had been to remove him from the chessboard. Sergei had been collateral damage.
Collateral damage was a tragedy. And, in five years, Teddy had never been the cause of collateral damage.
Stop, he ordered himself.
Bringing his attention back to the problem at hand—a very cute problem with light brown freckles across the bridge of her nose—Teddy followed her inside the apartment.
“Tea?” she asked
He slipped his shoes off without prompting. “I thought you preferred coffee?”
“I do. I also drink tea.” Then she wrinkled her nose. “About twice a year, I get a craving for lemon tea with honey.”
“That sounds lovely.”
“Are you ever going to drop the accent?”
He trailed after her into the kitchen. “I haven’t decided yet.”
To his surprise, a smile blossomed across her face at the admission. And, with dawning horror, he felt his heart stutter.
From the pictures the Agency had provided, Teddy had thought Claire plain. Her features were fine. Thick auburn hair, peachy skin, brown eyes, straight nose, strong chin. Individually, they were each attractive, he supposed, but they hadn’t seemed alive in photos. Capturing life and movement in a two-dimensional photograph was a difficult art most photographers never learned—certainly not the tails the Agency had on retainer who were focused on speed and efficiency. But Claire sort of blended into the background of every shot in her file, as if she wasn’t the main subject.
Seeing her in person, Teddy’s assessment hadn’t changed. Her face lacked emotion or expression. She walked through the world with a face so serene that it seemed like a mask she put on every morning. She was neither fat nor thin. She wasn’t particularly curvy, but she wasn’t flat-chested, and she did appear to have some hips under her loose-fitting clothes. There was nothing visually arresting about her.
Claire’s smile, though, changed everything. She lit up from the inside. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkled, her lips had a distinctly coy curve to them.
Hello.
“I think your string of pearls is dying,” he said, jerking his gaze away towards the plant as soon as his heart started beating again.
She hummed out a response as she flipped on her electric kettle. “I found it on a park bench. I think someone was hoping it would be rescued. I’m not sure mine is a better home, but I thought I’d try.”
He needed a moment to recenter. Walking to the window, he pretended to study the plants lined across the sill. With a few deep breaths, his heartrate evened, and he was able to turn back around.
An honest-to-goodness teapot was sitting on the counter, and her long fingers dropped four tea bags in.
“Cute,” he said.
“It was my mother’s.”
Any trace of her previous smile was gone. Her face was that serene mask again. The kettle clicked off.
“How did you know I broke in?”
She gestured towards the windowsill next to the fire escape. “I don’t dust that one.”
He thought of the way he had carefully disturbed the dust to smudge away voids his gloves had made. “Are you telling me you could tell the dust had moved?”
“I just… notice details. Always have. Cream?”
“No, thank you,” he said, watching her pour the hot water into the pot and replace the ceramic lid.
She gathered the pot, a ceramic bee, and two sturdy-looking white mugs onto a tray. Before he could offer to carry it, she picked it up and walked into the sitting area in front of her floor-to-ceiling windows. There, she hesitated, eyeing the small sofa.
Claire Argosy did not host guests. He knew this for two reasons: first, he had been watching her for almost a month; second, her sofa was only large enough for one person to sit comfortably.
Without a word, he stepped around her and settled onto the floor, facing the problematic piece of furniture. Her shoulders immediately loosened, and she set the tray on the coffee table between them. Sliding onto the couch, she crossed her legs yoga style.
And then he watched, enthralled, as everything about her began to relax. She melted back into the velvet cushion of the loveseat, and her eyes fluttered shut as she tipped her face up towards the sunshine streaming through the windows. Her face—her serene expression—drifted into something that looked more natural. It was like watching someone rip a sheet off a work of art. He suspected he was one of the few people who had ever been given permission to watch her do it.
She didn’t speak for several minutes, and he contented himself with the warmth of the sun at his back. He rarely sat with his back to windows, not windows large enough for a human to sneak through. It was nice. Relaxing. As was the silence in the room.
Claire stirred and sat forward to reach for the teapot. He wondered if an internal timer had gone off inside her.
“So, to recap,” she said, after she had poured them both a mug. “You’ve been following me, you broke into my apartment, and now you’re stalking me in my classes. What do you need from me?”
The question was so exhausted, so bone-tired, that unexpected sympathy spiked through him. Emotions generally made him uncomfortable. They buzzed around in his chest and brain like wasps that might explode out of him at any provocation. But after what she had told him about her uncle, these feelings—her exhaustion, his sympathy—were easy to contain.
His brain whirled, looking for the right excuse for Simon. Something about being in love with her. Every lonely woman wanted to believe a man was so smitten with them that he would… break into her apartment? No. Maybe not that.
“I’m supposed to kill your uncle,” he heard himself say.
Well, shit.
He scowled at the floor. Where did that come from? Great. He was going to have to kill her now. Once her uncle was dead, surely she would be able to describe “Simon” to the police.
Only… she wasn’t panicking. Normal people would be panicking, trying to laugh it off like a sick, twisted joke. But Claire looked thoughtful. Not horrified or even scared, just ponderous.
Then she said, “Okay.”
Finally, he dropped the British accent. “I’m doing a great job right now.”
“Louisiana!” she crowed, triumphant.
A laugh burst out of him. “Yes.”
Delighted, she squinted at him as she bit her lip. “Not New Orleans,” she decided after a moment. “North. And closer to Texas.”
“Yes,” he said, resigned.
That spectacular smile was back on her face. He could tell that meeting his eyes was becoming less difficult for her. Not easy, by any means, but less hard. The knowledge made him want to preen under the attention of her full-contact gaze.
He had told her too much, of course, and the Agency would figure it out. They always figured out mistakes—according to the Voice anyway, who liked to tell him light anecdotes about her previous freelancers and their demises. Teddy would have to go into hiding because in no world could he kill the magnificent creature in front of him.
But that was fine. Teddy was sure he could slip the Agency for the next sixty years or so. He was already twenty-six, and his chosen profession was a physical job. Most hired killers retired by the time they were fifty. Or died.
The point was that on the run he would probably live longer than if he stayed in the Agency’s employ, if the Voice was to be believed. Which, weirdly, Teddy did. So far, she had never steered him wrong.
The whole on-the-lam idea was starting to appeal, really. Maybe he could disappear to the Falkland Islands. He liked sheep, and he was pretty good with sharp blades. Shearing sounded relaxing.
“How are you so calm about this?” he asked.
“Unless it’s a pair of wet socks or a too scratchy piece of chalk on the board, I’m probably not going to have much of an immediate reaction to anything. I might get upset later, once I’ve had a chance to process. But I mostly don’t unless I’m already overstimulated.”
He could relate to that. “You are an extremely interesting person, Claire Argosy.”
She stared at him, blank. “No one’s ever thought so. Do you want to stay for dinner?”
“Sure,” he said, pleased. He picked up his tea and blew on it.
“What’s your name?” she asked. “Your real name.”
He took a deep breath. He hadn’t spoken his real name out loud in years. The Voice used it every once in a while, when she was particularly irritated with him.
“Lawrence,” he said, which was technically true and the smarter answer. But he couldn’t help giving her a hint. “My mother was a big fan of Little Women.”
“Then she must have called you Teddy,” she guessed.
He swallowed. Hard. He really liked this woman. “She did.”
Chapter 6
Teddy insisted on helping with dinner. It was only polite.
He was assigned the task of chopping vegetables, while Claire got to work tenderizing the chicken. As the pan heated on the stove, Claire paused to watch his fingers chop the bell pepper.
“You’re very good with knives,” Claire said.
He froze, blade hovering over a few slices of pepper. Then he looked at her. Her eyes sparkled.
“You’re teasing me,” he realized.
“Yes.”
Disbelief forced him to say it again. “You’re teasing me about my knife skills. After learning I’m a hired killer.”
She hummed and turned back to the pan to begin searing the chicken. He finished the peppers and laid the knife aside. Then he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned a hip against her counter to watch her.
“Who hired you?” she asked. “To kill my uncle.”
“I don’t know,” he said, truthfully. “I’m just the contractor. Whoever it is hired the agency I work for.”
Aw hell.
Something about this woman loosened his tongue to the point of ridiculous. Was he just trying to gain a reaction? See how far he could push her before she cracked?
No, he mused. I just… want her to know me.
This was very not good.
She couldn’t have seemed less interested in the existence of a Murder Agency, though. She nodded, pensive. “It could have been anyone, I guess.”
“Not anyone,” he said, taking a chance on teasing her in return. “Not everyone on the planet wants your uncle dead.”
“That’s true. There are people who haven’t met him yet.”
He barked out a very inappropriate laugh.
“How did you get into…” she trailed off, gesturing vaguely.
“Murder for hire?”
“Yes. That.”
“I was recruited,” he said.
“What’s the feeder major for that?”
She was kidding. It was an obvious joke. But her expression never changed.
His smile felt crooked and giddy on his face. “I was still in high school.”
That surprised her enough that she looked at him.
“I was in a special,” was the word he chose, “high school. For troubled teens. Who had… done some things. I was a bit of a thorn in the state’s paw.”
He watched her brilliant mind try to parse that. “Not juvenile hall?”
“No. It was a pilot program. The governor was trying to ‘disrupt the pipeline of foster care to prison,’” he quoted from memory.
She blinked. “How is that a pipeline?”
“Foster kids—especially kids who enter the system older—don’t have a lot of ways to get out of poverty. No safety net after they leave the system.” When she still stared at him, he translated, “No home or parents to go back to if they fuck up. At the time, the odds of foster kids aging out of the system and ending up homeless was astronomical.”
“College,” she said promptly. “Scholarships.”
“Which was the governor’s point,” Teddy told her. “The kicker is that for the school strategy to work you need to be book smart. Not everyone is book smart.”
“But you were,” she guessed.
He nodded slowly. “I was,” he admitted. “But I had also been arrested for aggravated assault.”
“Oh. What happened?” she asked.
He marveled again at how nothing seemed to faze her. “One of the foster homes I stayed in had this lech of a dad. Royce. He’d grab all the girls. One time, I caught him alone with one of the younger girls, Abigail. He was…” He stopped himself from the description, knowing she had been through worse. “I sixteen and already bigger than him. I intervened.”
When Teddy had been arrested, he and Abigail had both been covered in the asshole’s blood. And Teddy regretted no part of it.
He thought it might be his favorite thing in the world—having Claire hold his gaze with hers. He was learning that everything she felt played out in her eyes, easy to read once he knew what to look for. He felt a spurt of pleasure at the approval he saw there—even if that approval was for beating a man half dead, which was not at all a normal reaction for a twenty-three-year-old woman.
“Good,” she said, firm.
“The judge seemed to agree.”
He grinned at her, letting his blood thirsty edge show. He wanted her to see it, how he reveled in making these monsters pay for their sins. He wanted to feel her accept it like she’d accepted everything else so far.
“Mother of three girls. She especially appreciated that I stapled his dick eleven times.”
Claire’s brows rose, and he was honestly pressed to decide which had shocked her—the foul language or the act itself.
“Inventive,” she said.
“He’d forced her into his office. I mean, the stapler was right there. How could I not use it?”
“Why eleven?” she asked, tilting her head inquisitively.
Not shocked, then. Interested.
“I was going for fifteen because Abby was fifteen. Felt poetic. But the police arrived before I got the last four in.”
“Bad luck,” she said. Her voice got quiet. “I’m glad Abigail had you.”
Because Claire hadn’t had anybody. He could see the truth of that on her face. No one had protected her or avenged her. The knowledge made him want to scream in rage.
“He’s going to pay,” he promised, wishing he could go back in time for her. “I’m going to make it hurt.”
She swallowed, the sound audible even over the sizzling in the pan. “Go back to the pilot program.”
It took his brain a moment to reorient away from the rage he felt towards her uncle.
“I pled guilty. I wasn’t ashamed. But it put the judge in a tough spot. She couldn’t let me off, and she didn’t want to send me to juvie. So, she pulled some strings to get me in the program. It was a boarding school out in the bayou. Twenty-one teenage boys, all with criminal tendencies, all without families.”
“Lord of the Flies?” she asked.
He barked out a laugh. “Not exactly. We had a whole staff watching over the school. And most of those kids weren’t violent, just desperate. They had stolen food or clothes, broken into vacant homes for a night indoors. I was by far the worst of the bunch. But it’s how the Agency found me. One of the school administrators was a former fed. He told me he saw potential in me. Then sold me a story about his government contractor friend training me in high tech stuff. Surveillance systems. Cybersecurity. I didn’t know what any of it meant, but I heard dollar signs when he talked about it. So, I called his guy.”
“And it wasn’t that?”
She had been cooking while he told his story, and he watched as she plated their dinner. Then he picked up the plates before she could and took them out to the table.
“It was at first,” he continued when she joined him. “But after a year and change I got poached to this other firm. They threw me into field recon, and that’s when they realized I had a penchant for disappearing and very little empathy for strangers. They sold my contract to the Agency, and here I am.”
He remembered his initial confusion so clearly. His boss at the time—the one who had personally recruited him—took Teddy to coffee, informed him they had sold his employment contract, wished him luck, and left. A few days later, money had appeared in his bank account, and Teddy had found the first envelope on his dining table. Inside had been a travel itinerary, a fake ID, a rental car booking, and an address that ultimately led to a warehouse. For two months, it was him and a series of tutors, who had received instructions the same way he had and all of whom called him by his fake name. Joshua.
The Voice had been the first one who had referred to the Agency. And after training, he had never seen another face. Just calls from the Voice and envelopes on his table.
Her brow furrowed for a moment. “Disagree.”
Amused, he asked, “Which part?”
“You have empathy.” She said it like she was pointing out an indisputable fact. She didn’t wait for a response before asking, “What happened to your parents? Why were you in the foster system?”
The words stabbed him. No one had mentioned his mother, or even the inevitability that he must have had one at some point, in over a decade. No one had cared to. He hadn’t let anyone close enough.
“Sorry,” she murmured. She was studying his expression, her own neutral. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No,” he interrupted, trying to stay gentle as the grief grabbed at his chest. “You surprised me is all. I never knew my father. He might still be alive, but fuck if I know. And my mom… she was great. Incredible. But we were poor, and she had cancer. She died when I was twelve.”
He shrugged, despite the squeezing of his lungs because it was what it was. Nothing he ever did could change it. C’est la vie.
Her lips thinned, and then she spoke. “My parents were in the train crash. The big one about twelve years ago,” she told him. “We lived in Manhattan, and they used to take the express train down to see my aunt and uncle. I was at school, and they went down for a daytrip, and they never came home.”
He wanted to pull her close, press a kiss against her temple, smooth his hand down her hair. But he suspected that touching Claire without invitation or even permission was too much too fast for her. And the last thing he wanted to do was make her nervous around him.
“I’m so sorry,” he told her.
She tilted her head to one side, eyes on his mouth, then his throat. “Thank you. I’m sorry about your mother.”
They had both finished eating, and Teddy rose to gather their plates. Silent, they rinsed and loaded the dishes in the washer. And then Claire led him back into the dining area.
“Thank you for dinner,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
It was almost a question. He wondered if she was going to tell him to stop stalking her, to fuck off, to head straight to her uncle’s vacation home in the Outer Banks and get it over with.
Instead, she asked, “Where are you going?”
“This is your study time,” he pointed out.
She looked amused as she picked up her glasses from the desk in the corner. “You can stay. I just want to take a quick look at my notes for the test tomorrow.”
“That’s tomorrow? Shit.”
She tilted her head, inquisitive. “How long have you been watching me?”
“About a month.”
She frowned. “But I was in Vegas at the beginning of the month.”
“Yeah, that wasn’t so convenient.”
She giggled. An honest-to-God giggle and Teddy wasn’t sure any sound in his life had made him happier. He knew he was grinning like an idiot at her.
As her humor faded, she studied him, eyes slightly enlarged by her glasses. Her eyes were a deep brown, like mahogany. Teddy didn’t remember ever being particularly drawn to brown eyes before. A shame, really, because hers were mesmerizing.
He liked the feel of them running over him. They were hot, like she was holding a match near his skin everywhere they landed. He told himself not to flex, that she would notice. She was too keen not to call him on it, too.
How had Teddy ever thought her plain? She was gorgeous, enchanting. She made his blood effervescent.
“I’d like to have sex with you.”
He froze. Had he said that out loud? No… no, wait. She had.
“Are you amenable?” she asked, watching him with careful eyes.
“Very,” he told her.
“Great.” She hesitated, and to his fascination a slight blush appeared on her cheekbones. “I need to shower first. It’s… a thing.”
“Okay,” he said, easy. “Is that a solo adventure?”
“What?”
He smiled at her. “May I join you? In your shower.”
“Oh,” she said, perplexed. As if no one had ever in her life suggested that two people might shower together. “You may.”
Without another word, he stood and pulled off his shirt. Her lips parted with her surprise. Then, as his hands landed on his belt, she stood, knocking her chair over in the process.
“I’m going to…” She pointed towards the bathroom and, after a small delay, began moving in the direction of the door.
“Claire,” he said.
She spun to look at him, and then, seeing that he was sliding his belt out of the loops on his jeans, she looked anywhere else. “Yes?”
“Glasses.”
Her hand flew to her face, pulling the glasses off and setting them carefully down on the desk in the corner. Then she marched towards the bathroom with a straight spine.
Knowing he had flustered her, he lingered in the dining room, pulling off his clothes piece by piece and folding them. He preferred to roll his clothes, but he wanted to give her enough time to regain her composure. He didn’t want to dawdle so long that her nerves took over. With Claire, that might be a fine line.
The water went on in the shower, and he counted to ninety. Then he walked to the bathroom and pushed the ajar door open. She was already in the stall, face tilted up to the spray, body a watercolor image obscured by the decorative glass.
He took a few minutes to remove the contacts and sideburns, rubbing the glue away as best as he could. When he was inside of her, he wanted to look like himself. He wanted her to see him. Only him.
As he stepped into the stall behind her, she turned to look at him. He could see discomfort in her face and those nerves that had worried him. She had told him she wanted him there. And he had the impression that Claire never said anything she didn’t mean. But his gut told him that she wasn’t this bold with anyone but him.
He liked that he brought it out in her. That she was comfortable enough with him to be bold. His libido liked it even more than Teddy did.
“Okay?” he still asked, eager to be one-hundred-percent sure.
She jerked out a nod, but she couldn’t seem to look at him.
“Claire?”
“Yes,” she said, faint. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Yes, I want this. I’ve just never… showered with a man.”
A flash of possessiveness made him smirk. He could work with that.
“Face the wall,” he told her, wanting to give her relief from having to avoid his eyes.
Without question, she turned her back to him. He crowded closer to her, his chest pressing against the soft skin of her back. He heard her sharp intake of breath as his lips brushed her ear.
“Put your hands up on the tiles.” He watched her brace them at shoulder height. “Higher. Over your head.”
Once that was done, he smiled. “Good girl,” he said, then bit her earlobe.
She whimpered—a high-pitched sound that sent a shiver down his spine. Then he sank to his knees and got to work.
Chapter 7
Teddy kept Claire awake until nearly dawn. The way he saw it, he had been gifted a single opportunity to ensure she never wanted him to leave her bed. That meant giving her as many orgasms as he was physically capable of, balanced with what he was capable of replicating in the future. No way could he risk disappointing her in night two. That would be catastrophic. Abject failure.
“The file I got on you did not mention you were so bendy,” he told her after round four in the bed.
“I’m not sure why the Murder Agency would know about my preferred sexual positions,” she said.
He chuckled, still slightly out of breath. He pushed himself up on his hands, muscles shaky but holding firm, so that he could stare down at her. She didn’t try to cover her nakedness from his eyes. The self-consciousness she had displayed in the shower had ebbed as soon as he had put his mouth on her, and she stretched like a cat as his eyes roamed over her.
“Is sex with you always like this?” she asked him.
“Probably not,” he admitted. “I’m trying really hard.”
She laughed at the ceiling. “Are you always this honest?”
“With you I will be.”
She hummed, rolling her head to look at his chin. “Good. Once more, please, and then I need to—”
His mouth was on hers before she could finish the thought. He wondered vaguely if he would ever find an end to the overwhelming lust he felt for her. Then her tongue swept inside his mouth, and he decided he would die trying.
The burner buzzed once in his pocket, and he fished it out with a sigh as he heaved his suitcase onto the bed. The number, as always, was new. He tapped the notification to dial the Voice back and unzipped the suitcase.
“What’s taking so long?” she asked.
“Don’t worry so much. I’m in,” he said, feeling dirty as he said the words. “She’s guarded. It took time.”
During his training, he had been encouraged to use sex to gain access to the people he needed. He never had. It hadn’t felt like the right thing to do, which he did recognize was somewhat illogical given his ultimate goal of murder. He told himself his murders were morally grey, given the targets.
But if they were watching him, if this really was a test after Abramov, then they already knew he had spent the night in Claire’s apartment.
Insinuating that he was using sex to lure Claire in was a plausible excuse. A disgusting one, but plausible. And anything that kept Claire safe was fine with him.
“Good. Pick up the pace. Our client is eager to have this dealt with before the assembly.”
“What assembly?”
“The UN General Assembly,” the Voice said. “The Senator is one of the U.S. representatives this year.”
“Got it.”
“Do you follow the news at all?” she grumbled.
“God no,” he sneered. “The news is depressing.”
“You know,” Claire said later that day, as they walked down one of the paths in the university’s main lawn. “You didn’t need to take the exam. Passing the class isn’t part of your assignment.”
“I’m method,” he said. His heart jumped when he saw a flash of amusement cross her face. “Besides, the class is fun.”
He was a bit surprised by how much fun, if he was being honest with himself.
“Why didn’t you ever pursue a degree?” she asked. “You clearly love school.”
“Love is strong. I get bored easily. I don’t have the attention span for four years of college.”
“You said your longest stakeout was seventeen hours. That sounds like staying power to me.”
“Yes, but that’s a short burst.”
And it hadn’t been a stakeout. He had been lying in wait to jump a man. He didn’t correct her.
“My turn for a question,” he said. His stomach fluttered as she smiled at him.
“Okay.”
“Why’d you go to Vegas?” he asked. “I can’t think of a place less likely for you to want to visit.”
“You didn’t follow me?”
He shook his head. “Following you to and from campus is one thing. It’s easy to hide.” Then he gave her a wry look. “Usually. But the longer you follow someone, and the more locations you follow them to, the more likely you are to get spotted. So, I just hunkered down and waited you out. You were coming back eventually.”
When she turned her pensive expression on him, he could see deep curiosity in her dark brown eyes. “What did you do while you waited?”
Encouraged by the eye contact, he crowded close to her. She let him herd her off the path and up to a nearby tree. He leaned her back against the trunk and ran gentle hands down to her hips to give the slope there a squeeze.
“I read six whole books. And no one interrupted me. It was glorious.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and stood on her tip toes to kiss him. It was the first time she had initiated contact—sexual or otherwise—and Teddy thought his heart might burst. He let her lead because her lips were moving softly against his, with palpable affection. Meanwhile, he wanted to crush her to his chest and was battling his body’s need to turn her sweet overture into scorching passion. Right there on the campus meadow, in plain sight of dozens of students. Claire would hate that.
The world was fuzzy and warm when she pulled away. Teddy only just managed not to groan in disappointment as their mouths parted. He pressed a kiss to her nose.
“CES,” she said.
“Huh?”
She straightened his shirt where her fingers had apparently wrinkled the fabric. Not that Teddy had noticed.
“Consumer Electronics Show. That’s why I went to Vegas.”
His brain was sluggish from desire and infatuation. “Why did you go to a tech conference?”
“I pursued a master’s in electrical engineering,” she said. “I still find it interesting.”
His jaw clenched. That had also not been in her file. Surprise, surprise. “That explains the coding textbooks on your shelf.”
“Mm-hmm,” she hummed, nonchalant about his casual reference to his invasion of her privacy.
“Your file was extremely light,” he told her.
“Didn’t even name my favorite sexual positions,” she said, deadpan. “I didn’t complete my thesis, so, technically, I don’t have the master’s.”
“Why not?”
She hesitated. “My uncle decided I needed to come home while my aunt was dying. I concentrated on taking care of her. When she passed, I would have had to repeat a year. And… I just wanted to start fresh, forget everything.”
She was tense under his hands, and he let them drop from her body. He stepped back to give her space.
“How old were you?” he asked.
“Twenty. But I looked younger.”
He cleared his throat. “Is that when you… got the scars?”
She flinched. “Yes.”
She didn’t want to talk about it. Her eyes had flitted away to stare at something over his shoulder.
Deliberately, he turned and held his hand out to her. She slid her fingers into his until their palms kissed. With a gentle tug, he walked her back to the path, and they continued on to her flat. Teddy swung their clasped hands between them.
“I have no idea what to do with my life,” she admitted. “So, I keep going for another degree and another degree.”
He nodded, giving this admission the consideration it deserved. He was sure she had never shared it with anyone else. If pressed, he would have guessed that Claire had her life planned out in year-long increments. He was relieved to find she was just as lost as the rest of humanity.
“You could leverage any of the three into a job,” he said.
“Four,” she told him. “If you count this one and the master’s I almost finished.”
His brow creased, and he counted them off. “Bachelor’s, master’s, and now another bachelor’s.”
“This is my third bachelor’s.”
“You have three?”
“Including this one,” she said. “Linguistics, computer science, and French literature.”
Languages, he remembered under hobbies in her file. For fuck’s sake.
The Agency had to have been messing with him.
“So, electrical engineering, computer science, linguistics, and French literature,” he reiterated.
She nodded. “None of those industries interest me, though. Not really. And the idea of sitting in a room with the same people all day every day is excruciating.”
The idea made him shudder. “Same.”
“Thus,” she said, dry, “I refuse to leave the hallowed halls of higher education. I thought about landscaping. I like being outdoors. But I seem to have a black thumb. My plants all die eventually.”
“No go on the gardener,” he agreed, amused.
They turned the corner onto her block, and she let go of his hand to dig in her bag for the keys. She paused before sliding the key in the lock, though, and said (mostly to the door), “I don’t know why I can tell you the things I tell you.”
Relief washed over him. “Thank fuck it’s not just me.”
She smiled at the door and then turned the key. “I think Simon should shave his sideburns.”
“What?” Teddy asked, hands coming up to rub against the fake hair as he followed her up the stairs. “You don’t like them? I think they’re sexy.”
“Maybe in the 1970s,” she said, in that serious way that made him want to ease every worry she had ever had.
“Fine,” he groused, pretending to be put out. “I’ll peel them off when we get inside.”
Except she didn’t give him a chance. Once he had slipped off his shoes, he turned to find she had untied the little spaghetti straps that held her loose sundress on and let it slither down her body.
“No bra,” he said, spellbound. “Nice.”
He was fairly certain his kept his tongue in his mouth while he trailed after her down the hall to her bedroom. He had to maintain a modicum of self-worth. He couldn’t just follow her like a puppy everywhere she went.
In her doorway, she peeled her panties down her legs, leaving her naked.
Scratch that. Yes, he could. He one hundred percent could.
Chapter 8
“How do they tell you about a new job?” Claire asked, voice soft in the dark.
Teddy stirred in the bed next to her. “They leave a manilla envelope and a burner phone on my dining table.”
She looked rumpled and relaxed. Without thinking about it, he reached out and brushed his thumb over her nipple. She always welcomed touch more easily after sex, he had found. She hummed, an encouraging noise, so he leaned over to lick her collar bone.
“You just come home, and it’s there?”
He grunted an affirmative, mouth too busy to respond.
She petted his hair as he trailed wet kisses over her skin. “Where do you live?”
“Chicago,” he said, the word muffled as he sucked on her hip bone.
“And you have no idea who they are?”
His mouth left her skin with a pop. He levered himself up with an arm on either side of her ribcage to study her face.
Her head was tilted to the side in that way she had. Almost like a bird hearing a noise they were trying to understand. Cute. Adorable, really.
He was swamped by the urge to make her come again, screaming his name. She looked too composed, too in her head. He wanted ruffled, relaxed Claire back. But she was trying to have a conversation, and he wanted to respect her boundaries.
“None,” he said.
“You never tried to track them down?”
“I did,” he admitted. “When my contract was sold to them, I tried to do some background research. I got nowhere. My trainers were either amazing actors or had no idea who had hired them. And later there was just a voice on the phone and envelopes that appeared out of nowhere.”
“Huh,” she murmured. “I bet I could figure it out.”
Teddy’s eyebrows rose as he hovered over her. “I don’t think I’m comfortable with that idea.”
“Why not?” Claire asked, nails dragging lightly down his back.
“Because they consider murder a business model,” he pointed out.
She was certainly smart enough, though. Her brain seemed to run on a faster processor than the rest of the world. Just watching her think turned him on.
“You have a really nice body,” she told him.
His attention skittered to the side and zeroed in on her hands as they squeezed his biceps then ran back up over his shoulders. Her fingers traced feather-light over his collarbone and then down the middle of his chest to his abdomen. His abs contracted at the tickled of the too-soft touch.
Teddy’s life depended on staying in shape. He was an attractive guy. The fact that he was a universal ten was part of the reason he had been recruited. He knew that. The Voice had been almost caustic about reminding him of it, especially that one time he had shaved his head.
Apparently, women loved his hair. Who knew?
But the fact that his body appealed to Claire was something for which he was deeply, deeply grateful to the universe.
“You’re trying to distract me,” he realized.
Her eyes laughed up at him. “It started that way,” she admitted. “But I just like touching you.”
He grinned at her. “I’m going to kiss you now.”
“Oh. I’d like that.”
After they had thoroughly wrecked each other for the nine hundredth time that week, he squinted at her, trying to remember what they had been talking about.
Tracking down the Agency.
“How would you find them?” he asked.
She licked her lips. “I have a few connections.”
What? “What kind of connections?” he asked, suspicious.
“I’ve been trying to figure out a way to blackmail my uncle. I’ve made a few contacts on the dark web that specialize in that kind of thing.”
He sat up straight, heart pounding with fear.
“Fuck, Claire,” he said, scrubbing his hands over his face. “That is not a good idea.”
The image of Claire, giant glasses sliding down the bridge of her freckled nose, stumbling into the wrong corner of the dark web sent a bone-chilling shudder through him. Panic pulled at his chest, making it hard to breathe.
Fucking hell.
Who had she spoken to? Who knew who she was? Where she was?
She pointed at him, as if to say, I’ve connected with you.
“I’m different,” he growled.
“How are you different?”
He pointed at his chest. “I’m in love with you.” Ignoring his own admittedly shocking admission, he leaned over her, trying to get her to understand. “But no one else is safe around me. Just you. Fuck. You should be running far, far away from me, Claire.”
An extra burst of panic flooded his veins.
“Please don’t do that,” he added, forcing himself not to grab her.
“I won’t,” she said, calm.
“Thank God,” he muttered as he maneuvered his brain back on course. “The people doing the kind of work that I do are not good people. We’re all psychopaths.”
She gave him a disappointed, scolding look. “You are not a psychopath, Teddy.”
Ignoring that, he said, “You need to tell me exactly who you’ve spoken to. I want to see the messages.”
“Okay,” she said.
She sat up, gathering the sheet under her armpits in a show of self-consciousness that he hadn’t seen since he had fucked her in the shower. He suddenly hated that sheet with a viciousness that made him want to growl again.
“You can look at them now, if you want. But the people I found work for a nonprofit that tries to expose pedophiles, not murder them.”
Some of his panic receded, and he could breathe again. “Show me.”
Teddy was further relieved to see she hadn’t used her everyday tablet. Instead, still draped in her sheet, she stopped by the hall closet and pulled out an older computer that required three separate passwords to access the proper user interface.
He thought, once again, about how much he loved his girlfriend’s gigantic brain. At least, he hoped she was his girlfriend. The fact that she hadn’t even acknowledged his confession was eating at his insides.
He wanted to define the relationship. He wanted to DTR her until she agreed out loud that they were soulmates and belonged together. He was never going to find another person like Claire, who accepted his darkest facets without hesitation. Who still trusted him, despite… well, everything about him.
But if he wanted to lock her down, they were both going to have to live. And that meant making sure she wasn’t already compromised.
After scouring her forum exchanges and private message threads multiple times, Teddy was still uneasy but ready to concede that the messages seemed… fine. Other than the topic (doxing pedophiles), the exchanges were business-like. The people on the other end went by handles, not names, but most people did on the dark web—the parts he was familiar with anyway.
“Nothing concerning,” he admitted. “Have any of them found dirt on your uncle?”
“Not yet. Nothing I can use. But they send me updates as they come across new sites and clubs and distribution lists.”
He was impressed. He didn’t want to be because he didn’t like that she had dipped into some of the darkest pools of the internet.
No, he thought, she didn’t dip. She cannon-balled into the middle of it all.
But she had taken precautions. The right precautions. And for someone who had led such a sheltered life, he couldn’t imagine how she had figured it all out.
“Were your parents as brilliant as you?”
She looked pleased. “My mother was a physicist and a professor at Columbia.”
“What about your dad?”
“He was a photojournalist.” She gestured towards the bookshelves. “I have a few of his books and prints.”
“I wondered about those,” he said, clicking back over to one of the earliest messages. “You didn’t seem the type to keep photography books lying around. He went by a moniker?”
“His first name. I don’t know why. I never had a chance to ask anyone.” Before he could react to that tug on his heart, she guessed, sounding amused, “Spotted them when you broke in?”
“Yes. Every other time I’ve been in your flat, I’ve been a little busy making you come, you insatiable minx.” He clicked the link at the bottom of their message, and a chat board came up. “I think this one might be helpful.”
Claire leaned down to read over his shoulder, “’Cleaning up after one pervert at a time.’ I remember them. I reached out, but they don’t do recon.”
“That’s because they’re cleaners.”
His eyes flitted through the messages on the board. All the right words were there—a “mop up in Cleveland” particularly stood out to him. The server owner had responded to that one saying to direct message over the exact needs, and they could send recommendations.
“Cleaners?” Claire echoed.
He almost groaned. He really, really didn’t want to explain this to her. Reminding himself that nothing had fazed her so far, he squared his shoulders.
“Freelancers have very specific skillsets. Namely, murder in various ways. Most of us? Not so good at cleaning up after ourselves. And, despite what you see in the movies, murder is very messy most of the time.” He pointed back at the message board. “Mop up means wet work. Bloody. I can’t tell if they were looking for a clean-up, or a recommendation on a freelancer, though.”
Her eyes were wide, pupils blown. He waited for the freak out. But Claire continued to exceed his wildest hopes.
“So, you think these people may have been hired by the Agency before?” she asked, eager.
“No, the Agency is well-resourced. They have their own cleaners. But it’s a small field,” he explained. “And if these guys are giving out recs for freelancers, they must have heard about the Agency at some point.”
“It’s worth a try,” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
He backed out of the message boards and the server that gave her machine access to the dark web. “I need some time to come up with a message. Something vague enough that keeps you as far out of it as possible.”
Closing the laptop, he turned so that she was standing between his spread knees and put gentle hands on her waist. She tilted her head to the side, even as she rested her palms on his shoulders. No longer held up, the sheet slithered to the floor.
Resolutely, he kept his eyes on hers. “You would tell me if you tried to hire someone like me?”
She blinked at him. “You think I hired you?” Then she corrected herself. “Well, not you specifically.”
“No,” he said, rubbing her waist. “But if you thought about it… I’m the last person who would judge you.”
They breathed together in the silence for long minutes.
Finally, she spoke. “I want… I need,” she corrected herself, “to make sure it doesn’t happen again. To some other little girl. He’s around kids all the time, and…” She bit her lip.
He started to reassure her. “Wanting justice is—”
“I want revenge.” The words were rough, as if they had been dragged from her body. “But…”
“But what, baby?” he asked.
He pulled her closer, and her arms went around his neck in a loose hug. He let his chin rest between her breasts, still staring up at her, so that her big, mahogany eyes could drift to his if she wanted. And when they did, her gaze looked bruised in a way that made him want to rip her uncle’s dick off.
“Killing him doesn’t feel like revenge,” she admitted.
He nodded, waiting her out.
“I want to watch him suffer. For years.”
Like I did.
The words, unspoken, lingered between them.
“You know that the court of public opinion doesn’t always side with the victim, right?” he murmured to her. “Neither do the actual courts.”
She grimaced. “I know. It’s why I was trying to gather more evidence. Something other than me. I’ve waited too long to speak up—”
“You were traumatized,” he said, protective and reassuring all at the same time.
Her arms tightened around him. “I know. But people who haven’t gone through… this won’t understand why I didn’t speak up. Why I didn’t try to get help. Why I didn’t report him.”
Teddy growled, low in his throat. “Fuck them.”
“Yes,” she said simply. “But if they won’t believe me, what’s the point?”
He knew she was right. The idea of putting herself through a secondary trauma when it would ultimately be futile couldn’t be easy to stomach. He knew his soul rioted against the idea. He couldn’t imagine how hers reacted.
She pulled away, hands trailing over his shoulders before she stepped back out of his arms. He could feel her shutting down.
“I need a few minutes,” she said, already moving towards the bedroom.
He wanted to smash his fists into something, tear down walls. Instead, he kicked the offending sheet out of his way. Then he cleared up the old laptop and its cords, shoving it back in the hall closet while he turned over options for the perfect message.
Teddy had been ordered to make the Senator’s death look accidental. It was Teddy’s specialty—though he was equally proficient in framing people or setting up “suicides.” But he wanted the Senator to suffer for long, long hours. And there were ways to achieve both. He would need a meticulous plan.
The problem was that Teddy was no longer sure he would be able to look Claire in the eye afterward, knowing murder wasn’t what she wanted.
Chapter 9
Over the following days, Teddy kicked wording around. He eventually settled on an imperfect but serviceable option: I have a couple of jobs I can’t handle myself. I heard you might know an agency that outsources international talent.
The cleaners messaged back on the board within seconds. Sorry. We’re domestic. Don’t have any recs.
Then a private message came through. Try these guys.
Teddy hesitated before clicking the link they had included. The link could lead him to something he could use to trace his employers. He might be one click away from finding them.
He had told himself he wasn’t curious about who was behind the Agency for so long that he had believed the lie. He had forced himself to never try to find them because he knew they would know he had. And he had always suspected that would be a death sentence.
Once he clicked the link, if it was the Agency’s website, they would be able to trace him. He knew it like he knew how to breathe.
“We need to talk,” he said to Claire.
Across the dining table, she glanced up. Teddy watched her drag her attention from the textbook to him. She was the most adorable thing he had ever seen.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“This might be them,” he said, pointing at the screen. She started to stand, and he shook his head. “But, if it is, there are going to be consequences.”
“What kind of consequences?”
“The kind that put me on the run.”
She stilled, and he could see the gears whirring in her mind. “Immediately?”
“Once I click this link, I have to disappear.”
She accepted that with a thoughtful nod. “Can I come with you?”
He wanted to pump his fist in the air in triumph and happiness. But big shows of emotion usually made her shut down. Teddy had kept himself fiercely under control his entire life, so he could keep his feelings on a tight leash.
“I’ve never wanted anything in my life like I want you to come with me,” he told her. “But, baby, it means leaving everyone and everything behind.”
She gave him a look. “Everyone who, Teddy? You’re the only person in my life I care about.”
“We’ve only known each other for a few days,” he pointed out. “Leaving with me now is a life sentence.”
“Good,” she said prim.
He chuckled. “I’m serious, Claire.”
“Me, too,” she said. “You’re the only person who understands me. Who has ever understood me. I can’t lose you.”
Everything inside of him melted. He must have looked as gooey as he felt because she smiled and walked around the table to stand over him.
“I suppose the question is… what would you do if you leave?” she asked.
“How do you feel about sheep?” He was almost joking.
She tilted her head to consider it. “Generally positive. Is that who you want to be? A sheep farmer?”
He still liked the idea. It sounded peaceful. Physical labor was honest, satisfying work, and being able to live a few dozen miles away from the next person was highly appealing.
But he just wanted to be with Claire. If she wanted a city life, he would figure out a way to make that work.
I’ll be anyone, anything you want, he thought, wistful.
“Who do you want me to be?” he asked.
She looked down at him, very serious. “Just you.”
Relief spread through every cell in his body. “We can go wherever you want,” he told her.
“A farm sounds nice. No people.”
Exactly, he wanted to scream.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked her, one last time.
“I love you,” she said with a shrug. “I just want to be where you are.”
His brain flatlined. Once he had rebooted, he said, “I love you, too.”
She brushed some hair off his forehead, seemingly unaffected. He watched her, and she smiled at him, calm.
“I’m going to fuck you now,” he warned her.
“Oh. Yes, I’d like that.”
“Excellent.”
He grabbed her by the waist and seated her on the dining table. Then he shoved the laptop out of the way to give them more room.
That night, Teddy returned with just his backpack. Everything else, all the high-tech gadgets, were traceable. And what did he need wigs and contacts for? He was a farmer now. A regular joe, making his living the good old-fashioned way.
Her bags were packed and in the foyer. “That’s it?” he asked, pointing at her suitcase and backpack.
“You said to pack light.”
“Sure, but…” he looked around the apartment. Almost nothing looked disturbed. “What about your books? Your dad’s prints? Your vinyl?”
“The vinyl is a tragedy,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “But I packed the books I want, and the prints. Besides that, I don’t really need much.”
“Okay, then,” he said. “If you’re sure.”
She met his eyes, full contact, and he could see the excitement in them.
We’re going to be ridiculously happy together, he realized.
He hadn’t thought he would get a happy life. Comfortable, yes. But happy? Absolutely not. Any chance at happiness had died with his mother. For fourteen years, Teddy had felt like he had died with his mother. He had been a zombie wandering through a collage of apathy and anger and dark, disconnected moments. Then he met Claire, and she somehow, by some miracle, resurrected him. He would spend his life worshipping her, and it would still never be enough.
“Okay, then,” he repeated instead of telling her any of it. They had time. “Are you ready?”
“Click it, Teddy.”
The link opened to a splash page for an average-looking corporate website.
“Blue Horizons?” Claire read over his shoulder. “That sounds so innocuous.”
Teddy studied the page, and he knew in his soul. “That’s them.”
“It’s probably a shell company,” she said. “But now we have two names. The one on your direct deposits and this one. I can work with that.”
Lighter than he’d felt in a decade, Teddy turned to her. “Do you have a hammer?”
“To kill that, right?” she asked. At his nod, she disappeared into the kitchen. “I pulled out a few options. I have a mallet, a regular hammer, and this.”
She returned holding the hammer and mallet in one hand, and what looked like a miniature circular saw in the other.
“I love you so much,” he said, knowing his face was sappy.
“Uh-huh,” she said, holding out the tools. But her eyes twinkled at him.
Chapter 10
The third time the Agency sent someone to kill him, Teddy decided he needed to show up on the Voice’s front porch for a heart-to-heart.
It hadn’t taken Claire long at all to track the Agency down, hopping from internet café to internet café throughout Europe and, later, South America while Teddy purchased land in the Falkland Islands and made sheep connections. Once she had determined who owned the Agency and identified their shell companies, figuring out who worked for them had been a breeze. From there, it had been a process of elimination to find Teddy’s handler, and Claire came to find him in the barn as soon as she had the name.
He felt vindicated to find that the Voice really was a woman. A woman named Sally of all things. Who would have guessed anyone named Sally ordered around hitmen? It was just… odd.
When he shared that sentiment, though, Claire said, “It’s just a name. Names don’t dictate who people are. If your name dictated who you were, you’d be a stuffed bear.” When he looked unconvinced, she added, “And you were a hitman.”
He swallowed his grin. “I knew what you meant, baby. But I’m not anymore,” he said, wanting to be specific.
She liked being specific.
“Not anymore,” she agreed, with that sparkling smile that made his insides gooey.
“And I only killed bad people.”
“Really bad people,” she emphasized. “And those three that tried to kill us.”
“Yes, but I’m retired. Because now I raise sheep.” He paused. “And chickens.”
She raised an eyebrow. “We’re not getting chickens. We eat chicken.”
“We wouldn’t eat our chickens.”
“But they would see us eating chicken,” she said, serious. “And they would know we’re chicken murderers. And then they would hate us. I can’t go through that.”
He laughed.
“So, are you going to pay Sally a little visit?” she asked, teasing again.
He snorted. “Yes. In broad daylight. Outside. I’m not going to touch her.”
“I know,” Claire said. She pointed down the row of stalls. “Maude needs her stitches out. Can you handle it? I want to get dinner in the oven.”
Fuck.
Maude had been their first purchase. He didn’t think he was crazy in thinking that she lorded it over the other sheep. She was definitely their ringleader, and she had zero respect for his and Claire’s personal space or boundaries. Plus, she kicked like a donkey when she was pissed.
Claire laughed at his dread and dropped a kiss on his head before turning to leave the barn.
“I love you,” he called after her.
He left for the States the next day on a circuitous flight path with three layovers and two plane changes. Flying regional to regional was wicked.
He hiked out to the property. Claire had given him very specific directions that she had printed for him, then made him memorize. The third time she had quizzed him, he had pressed a kiss to the tip of her cute little nose.
“Okay,” he had said with a beleaguered sigh. “I’ll let you write them on the inside of my underwear in marker.”
And then he had needed to explain the concept of summer camp to Claire.
Just the hike up Sally’s driveway—more of a dirt road situation—took forty-five minutes. He was lucky he beat her home. But when she returned, he was sitting on her front steps.
She stared at him through the windshield, then held up one finger. The universal sign of wait right there. When she finally climbed from the car, she had both hands up to show him she was unarmed. Her cellphone was in one hand, and, when she was sure he had seen it, she turned and threw it towards one of the pastures on the other side of the driveway. His eyebrows rose as he stood, brushing off the seat of his jeans as he watched the phone arc through the air and fly… and fly… until a tiny dot finally landed on the far side of the pasture.
“Damn,” he said, honestly surprised. “Nice arm.”
“College softball,” she said.
He made a show of looking around her farm. “I honestly expected you to live in a suburb.”
Sally gave him a tight smile. “I guess we have something in common.”
Teddy nodded as he pulled the passport out of his back pocket. Well shit.
Her facilities were much nicer than his and Claire’s. Sally’s farm looked profitable. He wondered what she thought of his and Claire’s starter shop, then decided he didn’t care.
“I’ll make this quick,” he said, tossing the passport to land between her feet.
Not taking her eyes off him, Sally stooped to pick up the passport off the hard-packed dirt and then opened it. The confusion dissipated. “Ah. I see.”
“Yeah,” Teddy said, scratching the side of his nose. “My condolences.”
“How’d you take him out?”
He grinned at her. “Trade secret.”
She scoffed and slid the passport into her own pocket. “Anything else?”
“You can relax, Sally. I’m not here to kill you. I’m retired.” He emphasized the word, dragged it out long and slow.
She tilted her head to one side. “You haven’t asked who finished the Blumfield job.”
Teddy and Claire had caught the news story about her uncle’s drowning in Hurricane Jessica while they had been passing through Amsterdam. The channel had been turned, inexplicably, to BBC America, who had reported that authorities believed the Senator had slipped on flooding in his kitchen, hit his head, and then stumbled into the yard, where he had drowned in the swimming pool.
To their shared surprise, Claire had started to cry.
Later, when she had been able to process, Claire had shared with him that she didn’t think it had been sadness for the man or his passing. Teddy knew Senator Blumfield had been Claire’s tormentor for too long to receive that kind of grief. She thought maybe she had been crying for the loss of who her uncle could have been in her life, the role he could have played, that she wished he had played. Or it might have been grief for the innocent little girl who hadn’t been given a chance to survive.
Either way, Teddy hated the man even more for being able to torment her further from beyond the veil.
“Don’t really care,” he spat. “Can we get back to the point?”
Irritation flitted across her face, and she said, “You had to know how this would end.”
“I’m telling you how it’s going to end,” he said.
He let his mask drop, face settling into the steely mein he had worn for every job during the five years the Agency had employed him. Sally’s jaw clenched, and he saw her throat contract with a swallow.
Good.
“I’m done,” he said. “I’m out. And you’re going to leave me and my wife alone.”
“You know I can’t do that, Lawrence,” Sally said. Then she crossed her arms and collapsed back against the hood of her SUV. “Do you think I like this? We take out evil guys and perverts. You’re neither. I don’t want you dead.”
“Then leave us alone. Easy.”
“I’m not the top of the food chain, kid. The order to kill you wasn’t mine.”
“You can keep sending guys after us,” he said. “And I’ll just keep killing them.”
“We’ll get you eventually,” she said.
“Not likely.” Then he sighed. “Okay, let’s say you do eventually take me out. I’ve killed three of your best, right?”
Her neutral face said yes. Yes, he had.
“Which means that whoever is at the top of this food chain is going to get pretty tired of losing their best talent long before I’m dead.”
Her lips quirked to one side.
“Oh,” he said, pleased. “They already are.”
“He’s livid,” she confirmed.
“I had a proposition that I think would solve this little problem. But it sort of hinged on the Agency not knowing where I live,” he admitted. “So—”
“They don’t,” Sally said.
He blinked. “But you do.”
“Yes.” At his questioning expression, she explained, “The first guy, Rosco, tracked you down and reported the location back to me while he was en route.”
“Standard protocol,” Teddy said.
“Yes. Except I didn’t tell anyone.”
His eyebrows rose. “So, the second guy…”
“Had to start from scratch.”
“You’ve been slowing them down. I’m flattered.”
She sighed. “I never did like how they pulled you in. You gave us five years. You should be allowed to go.”
“But that’s not how it works.”
“Nope,” she said with a grim smile. “Not how it works. Tell me your proposition.”
“Ah, yes. See, the thing is, I was very struck by the resemblance between myself and Francis.” He gestured at the passport in her pocket.
She squinted at him. “Francis was Latino.”
“But he was also dark haired, six-one—”
“You’re five-ten.”
“—and about one hundred and eighty pounds,” Teddy finished through clenched teeth.
She eyed him up and down. “You’ve gained some weight, huh?”
“It’s really creepy that you know my body measurements off the top of your head,” Teddy told her. “But we’re close enough to fool people. Once we scorch his body and transport it to Ithaca.”
“Ithaca? Why Ithaca?”
“Because it’s not easy to get there. They’ll be distracted searching the closer locations while I slip away into the sunset.”
She gave him an exasperated look. “Make it somewhere in Canada.”
“Why Canada?”
“The Agency can pay anyone off, but they’re nationalists. Their international connections are light. Canadians will work with us, but we’re unpleasant. They enjoy tying us up in red tape. Plus, I have connections in Vancouver.”
“Canada it is.” He did some quick math in his head. “I can have the body there next Thursday.”
“That’s a little slow,” she said, and he could hear some of the censure that used to float down the line to him over the years.
“I need the time for… things.”
“Fine. Next Thursday. Vancouver.”
She stalked to the car, yanked the door open, and her torso disappeared from view. When she straightened, she was writing something on the back of what looked like a business card. She held it out, expectant, and Teddy sidled closer to take it from her fingers.
Up close, he could see Sally was pretty. An all-American kind of pretty, with bright blue eyes and honey brown hair, that must have been very girl-next-door appealing when she had been young. But the set of her mouth was grim, and her eyes were sad.
“My guy will be ready,” she said. “Bring blood and teeth. However many you’re willing to spare.”
“I know how to fake a death,” he said, defensive. “I’ve done it, like, six times.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, unimpressed.
He began down the drive, hoping he would never see her again. Then his feet trailed to a stop. Turning, he found her on the porch, watching him. He cupped his hands around his mouth so she could hear him.
“Why blood? I’m burning the body. All the blood would—”
“I have ranch hands,” she called to him. “And they have ears. Go away.”
Teddy laughed and turned to disappear into the growing twilight.