Love Op: A Spicy, Cat-And-Mouse, Thriller Rom Com (Love and Other Jobs Book 5)

9. Mattie

Arhythmic tink, tink, click, tink, tink, click penetrated my restless, feverish sleep. I rarely slept well to begin with, but having a fever made the experience downright bizarre. I’d gone down my own rabbit hole and fallen into nightmares of ticking clocks and spinning teacups. Only, I wasn’t Alice, and this wasn’t Wonderland. I was the rabbit, and this was Hell. It burned me up from the inside, and even though cool hands touched my face now and then, and someone fed me potions that made me three times too big, and then ten times too small, the fires still licked at my skin.

Tink, tink, click. Tink, tink, click. The annoying sound stabbed my ears over and over again until my dreams popped through the surface of my consciousness. I took a breath like I’d been in a boiling lake. My eyes opened, and Kael’s bedroom came into focus. I remembered getting here, but the whole experience had run into my dreams like melted crayons swirling together. His safehouse had been built on the second floor of an industrial building that looked like it could have been a factory at one point. And his bedroom hung suspended over a second kitchen at the far end of the long space. It was a loft-style bedroom, but walls of glass encased the sides that looked out over the open living space.

I remembered liking it. I remembered thinking that the sleek, masculine furniture and dark, distressed wood matched Kael. Like a modern pirate. Like him.

Tink, tink, click.

I lifted my head from the navy-blue pillow, blinking bleary eyes around the room. I found Kael seated near one of the glass walls in a rounded armchair. He had one leg cocked up on the arm of the seat and a laptop balanced on his knee. In his hand, he played with something idly, like a fidget toy or something. His other hand clicked away on the trackpad as his eyes frowned at the screen in thought.

Tink, tink, click.My eyes followed the movement of the metallic, gunmetal gray thing in his hands. And then I realized it was a knife. It was one of those butterfly knives that snapped out of its casing in a flash before clicking back inside of it. Kael was skilled enough with it that he could flick it open, twirl it around his hand, and click it closed without even thinking about it. Fear seized the rest of my thoughts, squeezing so tightly, I had no room for logic. Each beat of my heart tapped in rhythm with every tink of the knife. Run, my heart whispered like a desperate metronome. Run, run, run.

I sat up fast, pressing my back against the black leather headboard. I’d never truly felt more like a rabbit with my heart beating fast and light and my instincts screaming. Kael paused, and his eyes found me. His expression shifted, pulling together with concern as he sat up in his chair. “Hey, Bunny,” he said cautiously.

His voice returned some reason to my scattered thoughts. I tried not to stare at his hand, but my eyes couldn’t seem to help themselves. The knife had been sheathed in its metal casing, and he held it loosely in his hand. “Hey,” I breathed.

His gaze strayed to his hand, and then back to me. “Not a fan of knives?” Even though his tone was teasing, he tucked the knife into his hand so it wasn’t visible.

Too close, I thought as my hammering heart calmed down. Sanity scrambled to catch up with my thoughts. He’s too close to seeing the truth. Rein it in. I forced my shoulders to relax. “I’m not a fan of irritating sounds,” I countered. I meant it to come out plucky, but my voice came out thin and strained.

Kael’s features settled into a calm, knowing look. The kind that said he saw straight through me. “Yeah, but annoying you is my hobby.”

“I thought that was freaking me out.”

“I like to diversify my interests,” he replied, smiling faintly as he stood. Behind his banter were two hawk-like eyes that were peeling open my layers.

It was enough to make me want to scream. I watched him cross the reclaimed wood floors, and I took in his appearance for the first time. He’d changed his clothes and wore a black, long-sleeved shirt with buttons going down from the collar to his chest. He’d left the top two open, and the collar folded over his rigid collarbone like an invitation to touch his skin. A leather bracelet wrapped around his left wrist, and he wore a smartwatch on the right. All the black he wore set off the shock of silver at his temples and matched the shadow of growth along his sharp jaw.

I forced myself to see things more rationally with him approaching me. He wasn’t going to hurt me. The knife wasn’t for me. It wasn’t going to slice along my skin and open a thin stream of blood that puddled and splashed…

I swallowed hard against a sore throat. I sucked at being rational, apparently.

Kael came to sit on the edge of the bed and reached over to place the back of his hand against my forehead. “You still feel like a pizza oven.”

“I like pizza,” I said solemnly.

“Right, but you don’t need to roast the pizza on your face,” he clarified, letting his hand fall. “You were pretty out of it for a while, there.”

“If only someone hadn’t chased me into a river,” I shot back. I clutched his heather gray comforter, resisting the urge to devolve into panic. Somehow, I’d been fully duped into walking straight into my captor’s house. Like it had been my idea. And now I was absolutely certain that if he thought I was lying, or he wanted to give me over to my parents, then that was exactly what would happen. Somehow, I’d allowed myself to be completely at Kael’s mercy and on his turf. I must have been way loopier than I’d thought.

“I had a perfectly respectable plan to stab you with drugs and cart you off like a dignified hostage,” he returned, totally non plussed. “You were the one who went rogue.”

I coughed, and it wrenched my lungs, burning as it was expelled from my body like a fucking exorcism. Admittedly, I knew this was a particularly bad case of influenza or worse, and if I hadn’t jumped in a sub-zero river, I might have fought the thing off better than I was now. Kael patted my back before reaching over to a floating shelf beside his bed and handing me a bottle of iced tea. “Consequences, Bunny.”

I glared from over the crook of my elbow where I had smashed my mouth. Still muffled, I said, “I’m uncovering my mouth next time.”

“Wow.” Kael pulled a fake, affronted face. “Biological warfare is a little dark, even for you. And here I thought we were getting along.”

I lowered my arm, taking the drink from him and unscrewing the cap. “Are we, though?”

“Yes.” Kael tilted his head a fraction, his gaze focused on me in a way that made it hard for me to swallow. “I believed you the first time, you know. But I did confirm your allegations while you’ve been asleep.”

I swallowed sweet tea, grateful for the burst of sugar and soothing liquid on my dry throat. I also took a moment to digest what he’d just said while I gulped the drink. He did believe me? Hope expanded in my chest like a solar flare. “Why are you making that sound so simple?”

“It only took me five minutes to dig through SynthoCare before I found what you were talking about,” he replied with blithe indifference. “They’re manufacturing cathynol and distributing it to criminals. Right?”

I blinked several times. “How did you figure that out?”

“You pointed me in the right direction,” he reminded me. “I just followed the evidence. I already knew about cathynol, and then I did a little digging into their ‘experimental’ operations.” He tapped the back of my free hand that rested on the bed. “You saw the chemical make-up in one of their unnamed, but weirdly profitable experimental drugs. Right?”

I nodded. “It’s cathynol, but they called it something else.”

“And they’re masking it so they can distribute it to all the,” he paused, thinking, “right channels. For them. But they’re illegal channels, regardless of how profitable for them.”

I nodded silently again. “All I did was ask why their experimental drug had the exact same makeup as cathynol. Because cathynol is dangerous, and they’re supposed to sell it in controlled, monitored amounts to labs for research.”

He winced. “And you outright asked them about it? A bit clumsy for a smarty pants like you.”

“I’m aware,” I said dryly. “But I didn’t know my parents were criminals. I just thought it was a mistake.”

“Do yourself a favor and assume everyone is a criminal.” Kael picked up the thermometer gun and aimed it at my forehead. “Most people are.”

“No, they’re not,” I frowned. “You just don’t meet nice people, Ghost.”

“And you do?” The thermometer beeped, still fast and angry, and he frowned at the result. “Is this thing broken?” He pointed it at himself. It beeped once and lit up green.

I sneezed, and he handed me a tissue. I took it, blew my nose, and leaned my head back against the supple black leather of his bed. “My body always does this. I get fevers forever. But I swear, I get over illnesses faster because of it. I’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

“Science,” he mocked gravely as he stood.

I smiled faintly. “Science.” My eyes tracked Kael as he crossed the room. I liked how his tattoos peeked out from his collar and the tugged-up sleeves on his forearms. Did they go all the way down his chest… down his abs? If I traced my finger down the ink, would my finger go all the way to—

Whoops, stop right there, stupid. I lifted the iced tea bottle to take a drink and distract myself from my dangerously wayward thoughts.

He went to the glass-framed doorway that opened up to the stairs and leaned out of it. “Tab!”

A voice drifted up from somewhere in the expansive space. “What?”

“Will you nuke one of those breakfast burritos?” I snorted mid-sip. The iced tea splashed onto my face and down my chin. Kael gave me an over-the-shoulder glance. “You good?”

Coughing, I nodded, fighting a laugh. Breakfast burritos. Funny. After swallowing another mouthful of sweet tea, I watched Kael as he grabbed his laptop and plopped himself back in the armchair. I frowned. “Are you just going to sit there all day?”

“Oh, definitely,” he confirmed without looking away from the laptop.

I squinted. “Why?”

“Because I want to.”

“Yes, but why?” I probed. “Are you seriously still guarding me? And for that matter, what did you decide? Am I still a prisoner, or what’s happening with that?”

“You are…” he answered slowly, clicking at something on his screen, “… a complication.”

I tapped my finger on my thigh in thought. “A free complication or a hostage complication?”

Kael’s eyes flicked to mine. “I don’t know yet.”

Sighing in disgust, I threw his lightweight comforter aside. It was exhausting to be continually surrounded by money-grabbing, selfish people. If my parents hadn’t tried to enslave me two years ago, I would have left their reach soon after, regardless. It was why I had graduated from high school two years early and escaped to a college campus as soon as humanly possible. I hated their world. I hated the two-faced millionaires and their pretty words laced with petty venom.

But since being away from them, I’d met just as many “normal” people with the same trait. Maybe Kael was right. Maybe I should have just expected the worst of him and assumed that no matter what he found out about my parents, it wouldn’t be enough to deter him from cashing in on his target. Two million dollars was a lot of money. I could offer him more, but if he assumed everyone was a criminal, then he wouldn’t trust me, anyway.

As I got out of bed, Kael stood, setting aside his laptop. “Where are you going?”

“Bathroom,” I muttered.

He blocked my path by cupping my elbows and gently pulling me to a halt. “Mattie, I didn’t mean—I’m not handing you over to your parents.”

I looked up in surprise. “But you said—”

“I said you were complicated,” he clarified. He angled a look down to me, and something in his eyes gentled a touch. “I don’t think you should go wandering around outside by yourself. That’s all I’m saying.”

I swallowed hard, bouncing a look over his expression. “I’ve done fine on my own.”

“No, you haven’t,” he argued softly. He reached up a hand and traced a half-moon under one of my eyes. “And you’re not telling me the truth, still.”

My back went painfully rigid. I forced my face to stay calm and unaffected. “I’ve told you the truth about my parents.”

He clicked his tongue in censure. “We need to work on your interrogation skills. You’re abysmal.”

“You need to work on your communication skills,” I volleyed back. “What was I supposed to think when you said that?”

Kael’s temper lashed out visibly. “You’re supposed to think your ass is staying here, and you’d better not go running off to join a group of Medieval Times jousters or whatever bizarre job you had in mind next.” Kael’s face had hardened again, and his grip tightened on my elbows. “Especially not if you’re going to keep lying to me.”

Anger blossomed in my stomach and nearly puffed through my nostrils like I was an enraged dragon. “You do not get to tell me what to do.”

He leaned in close, pulling me into his body and surrounding me with the scent of mint and eucalyptus. “Try me.”

A knock sounded on the glass behind Kael, and I looked around him to find Tabitha standing there with a burrito on a plate and her eyebrows pulled all the way up to her hairline. “Hey there.”

“Sit down,” Kael glared at me.

“You sit down,” I snarled.

“This is charming, really,” Tabitha continued, crossing the room to bring the plate to the floating shelf next to the bed. “We should take hostages more often.”

“I’m not a hostage,” I argued hotly, stepping away from Kael and plunking myself down on the bed. “I’m an employer. I offered him four million dollars to help me, but he’s being stubborn.”

Tabitha’s dark eyes swung from me to Kael. “Oh?”

“You are not an employer,” Kael replied dismissively. “You’re a compulsory guest, and neither Tabitha nor I answer to you. Eat your burrito.”

“Did you come out of the womb this bossy?” I asked, leaning back against my hand and feeding coal to my snark machine vindictively, “or did you wait until they cut your cord to demand they powder your ass?”

Kael’s eyes went grim reaper dark. “That mouth is going to get you in trouble someday.”

My mouth got me in trouble every day, but I didn’t bother to mention that. Plus, my body decided to hack up half my lung, and I bent over double while I waited for the coughing spasms to recede.

Tabitha folded her arms and ping-ponged a look between us. “Okay, but boss, she has a point. What’s the plan, here? She offered you four million dollars, and you’re ignoring it?”

I sat up straight and grinned with sharky teeth. “Yeah. Explain your logic.”

Kael rolled his eyes, sitting back in his curved, white armchair. “Don’t give her ammunition, Tab. Just don’t.”

Tabitha waited expectantly, watching her boss. She wore a soft, well-worn band T-shirt over athletic-style leggings, and her neon yellow shoes looked like professional running sneakers. Her hair had been braided into two perfectly tight French pigtails, and from the way her toned thighs fairly burst out of her spandex, I was pretty sure the chick worked out a lot. Which made sense, given what line of work she was in.

“Excuse me.” I raised a lazy hand. “Hired goons? A word? I have a brilliant plan that will solve all our problems—”

“You don’t even know my problems,” Kael cut in.

“—and stop my parents from being global assholes.” I aimed a pointed glare at Kael’s apathetic face. “If you would have asked, I would have told you.”

“I’m not asking,” he intoned.

“I’ll bite,” Tabitha said. “Let’s hear it, Mattie.”

“Turn me in,” I announced.

Kael rolled his eyes. “You’re going to Trojan Horse your parents?”

I glared. “Don’t be insufferable. Look, if you show up with me in tow, and I seem like I’ve lost all hope with you as my captor, they’re going to be fucking ecstatic. I escaped four different bodyguards before I finally hopped on a plane and went dark. They know I’m untamable.”

Kael got a funny look on his face. “Debatable.”

“Anyway,” I glowered, “if it looks like you cowed me into submission, I guarantee they’ll offer you a semi-permanent position. At least until they… well, anyway, they’ll let you stay with me.”

Tabitha nodded. “Go on. I’m following.”

“So, if I’m in their house, and you’re with me, then I can snag their shipping records. They don’t like digital records; they like paper ones. That’s how I came across information in the first place, because they were careless with it in my dad’s study. I can prove that they’re shipping more cathynol than they’ve been approved to manufacture, and voilà.” I swept a hand out in front of me. “They’re busted. Even if we get caught or something, you’ll be there.” I searched Kael’s gaze, hoping against all the odds that he gave enough of a shit to hear what I was saying. “Like… you’d help me if there was trouble. Right?”

Kael was silent for a beat, his expression inscrutable. Finally, he said softly, “Right.”

“It’s straightforward, it’s uncomplicated, and I think it’ll be the best way for me to escape their constant attempts to control me. I would have outed them a long time ago if I’d thought the authorities would listen.” I sniffed, coughing lightly. “Plus, I’ll pay you an ungodly sum for doing it.”

“Four million is ungodly,” Tabitha admitted. “Bunny Foo Foo isn’t playing around.”

“Did you all decide that was my nickname or something?” I asked scathingly.

“Yes,” Kael and Tabitha said together. Kael scratched his upper lip, thinking. “I’ll need to think this through. This plan assumes a huge amount of risk for you, Mattie.”

“It’s my risk to take,” I reminded him. “And even if it goes south, you’ll be there to go Rambo or whatever.”

Kael scrubbed a hand down his face. “Rambo.”

Tabitha cackled. “I want it to go south. It’ll be so fun to watch on your cam.”

Kael gave his employee a silent look of suffering, and then snapped his laptop closed. “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s a yes,” Tabitha told me.

I perked up. Kael shot her a withering scowl. “Out.”

“I’ll draw up a protocol directive,” Tabitha promised me. “It’ll take a little work, but nothing crazy. Trust me, this is basically retirement for him.”

“Out,” Kael reiterated. Tabitha obeyed, chuckling slightly to herself and pulling a phone out of her pocket to dial someone as she walked.

I gave him an innocent fast-blink. “Why are you snarling again?”

Kael stilled, hands low on his narrow hips and body angled my way from across the room. Even from several feet away, I saw heat simmer in his eyes. “Say ‘snarl’ again, Bunny. See what happens.”

I pinched my lips between my teeth fighting a smile. Then I released them with an audible pop sound. “Let me know when you’re ready to go.”