Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
This is bad, I think distantly. This is really fucking bad.
I can hear her breathing on the other side. Slow and steady—she’s asleep. Or pretending to be. With her, I can’t tell anymore.
Go back to bed.
I don’t move.
She’s a spy. An assassin. She was sent to evaluate you. To decide if you needed to be shot like a rabid dog.
I know.
She doesn’t care about you. Everything was fake.
I know.
Then why are you standing outside her door in the middle of the night like some lovesick teenager?
I don’t have an answer for that.
My hand drops from the knob. I force myself to turn around, to walk back to my bedroom, to lie down on sheets that still smell faintly of her from before everything went to shit.
I don’t sleep.
The morning comes, grey and cold and wet with rain. I’ve been up all night, leaving briefly at four a.m. to assist the police in stopping a high-speed chase in Newark, before coming back here to revel in my discontent.
I shower, trim my beard, dress, make coffee I don’t drink. Check my watch—no other urgent alerts, no crisis requiring Vanguard’s attention. The city is quiet for now.
Good. You have work to do.
I make breakfast. Eggs, toast, fruit. Enough for two.
When I unlock her door, she’s already awake, sitting on the edge of the bed in my too-big clothes, watching me with those big dark eyes that see too much.
That have always seen too much.
“Breakfast,” I say, setting the tray on the dresser.
She doesn’t move, doesn’t even look at it.
“You need to eat,” I tell her, hoping she doesn’t pull this hunger strike shit again.
“Why? So I’m healthy enough for whatever you’ve got planned?”
“So you don’t pass the fuck out when I’m trying to have a conversation with you.”
Her mouth twists. “Is that what we’re doing? Having conversations?”
I cross my arms and lean against the wall, keeping distance between us. “You could make this easier on yourself.”
“I could but I won’t.”
“Why?” I practically growl, the frustration rising. “What’s the point? Your cover’s blown. Your team knows you’re compromised. Whatever mission you were running is over. So why not just tell me?”
She tilts her head, studying me like I’m a puzzle she’s trying to solve. “Would you? In my position? Would you betray everyone you’ve ever worked with because some man you fucked asked nicely?”
Some man you fucked.
Whoa.
Those words hit like a knife between the ribs.
“That’s all I was to you?” I say, trying to keep my voice as calm as possible. “Just some man you fucked?”
She stares at me for a moment, so many things swimming in her eyes like fish in a dark pond.
“No,” she says quietly. “That’s not all you were.”
“Then what—”
“It doesn’t matter.” She looks away. “None of it matters now.”
I want to grab her, shake her, force her to look at me and tell me the truth—about her mission, about her feelings, about any of it. But I know it won’t work. She’s been trained to resist interrogation. It makes me wonder how many times she’s been in this situation, if her captors were worse than me, if they hurt her and…
I stop myself from thinking that. Now is not the time to make this more complicated than it already is.
Regardless, she won’t break from pressure.
So I’ll have to try something else.
“Eat,” I say again, pushing off the wall. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
“For what?”
I pause at the door. “To try again, little killer.”
The second interrogation goes worse than the first.
I ask questions. She gives me nothing. Not a word, not a flash, not a single goddamn tell that I can use.
It’s infuriating beyond words
It’s also, in some sick way, impressive.
“You’re good at this,” I say, pacing in front of her while she sits on the bed, spine straight, expression blank. “The silent treatment. The resistance. They trained you well.”
Nothing.
“What do they do at spy school, anyway? That’s where you went, right? The Rookery? Like James Bond? They teach you how to withstand torture? How to keep your mouth shut no matter what?” I pause. “I have to say, we aren’t so different in that regard. In SERE school, the Green Berets are taught to resist, too. So, I know exactly what I have to do to break you.”
Still nothing.
“Or maybe it’s simpler than that.” I stop in front of her, close enough that she has to tilt her head back to meet my eyes. “Maybe you just don’t care enough to break. Maybe I never meant anything to you at all, so there’s nothing I can threaten that would—”
“Stop.”
The word is barely a whisper, but it cuts through my monologue like a blade.
“Stop what?”
“Stop trying to convince yourself I didn’t care.” Her voice is steady, but I can see the cracks now. The strain around her eyes, tick in her jaw. “You know that’s not true. You know it. Deep down, you do.”