Chapter 24
Koen
She’s back home. My pacing can cease. Thankfully, I made a trip to her house today to drop off her belongings. I listened to her softly snore.
I got great amusement out of her finding my additions to her e-reader and hearing her phone conversation with Allison.
I was highly disappointed when she poured perfectly good wine down the drain, thinking it was contaminated, but I’m trying not to fixate on things I can’t control.
I have a job I need to focus on.
Even if all I want to do is sneak into Greer’s house and fuck her senseless.
I should be digging my heels into this new case that Helms put me on, but instead, I’m shoving my key into Greer’s door.
Bear greets me, and I give him a good rub down. Strange how much I missed the little asshole after a few days apart. Even when Greer didn’t know who I was, Bear and I were close.
When I take up my post beside her bed, feeling more at ease the longer I loom, I exhale shakily.
She’s like a fucking drug that I can’t quit. I couldn’t think straight knowing she was here. I couldn’t focus until I had my hit.
After the last job I took her along on and everything that happened afterward, I know she’s processing a lot.
Usually, I wouldn’t give a shit. Still, I need her far away from what I’m doing for the moment, so I’ll slink back into the shadows and make her think I’m behind bars while I figure out why the hell Helms gave me so much more information than I’m usually privy to before a hit.
Greer turns over in her sleep, a small whimper escaping. “Koen,” she breathes.
My mind stops racing, and it feels as though my heart skips a beat.
I step closer, narrowing my stare.
Is she awake?
This is precisely why I started slipping shit into her wine.
Her eyes are closed, her pouty lips spread open slightly.
Is she dreaming of me?
It’s not too far-fetched with everything going on in her life.
Everything ties back to her deranged stalker, who fucked her ten ways to Sunday and then got arrested.
She’s had a rough couple of years.
I grin at the thought.
Tormenting my pretty little poison is what I live for anymore.
It used to be taking lives that kept my sick brain straight. Now, it’s her.
Another small moan stutters out of her as she rustles, and instinctively, I reach for her.
My hand spreads over her stomach.
Shit.
I freeze, hoping like hell she doesn’t rouse. Before, I worked my way up to touching her. But that was also before she was aware I could get into the house.
Her phone’s on charge beside her bed; she knows I was here.
She’ll be hyperaware of her surroundings from now on.
Half of me wants to come back tomorrow night and lace a few more items to keep her complacent, but I toss the idea aside quickly.
After having her awake and responsive, the idea has lost its luster.
“I’m here, poison,” I whisper in her ear, curling my fingers into the warmth of her stomach.
My cock fills with blood at the way she mewls, seeming to shift deeper into the mattress, drifting away with her stalker’s hand beneath hers that she’s covered it with.
Something strange flutters through my body, and I don’t know if I like it.
I pull my hand away slowly now that she’s resting deeply again.
Covering her with the blanket that had fallen in her rustling, I leave the bedroom, replacing the door to the exact position it had been in before I entered.
Bear lifts off the couch when I walk into the living room.
“Take care of our girl,” I tell him.
He huffs back, hopping off the couch and padding to the bedroom as if he understood me.
Maybe he’s not such an asshole after all.
“As I said,” I pinch the bridge of my nose, “it doesn’t make any sense.”
Joseph’s chuff on the other end is accompanied by clicking keys as he works his hands over them. “Maybe it’s like he said; he wants to do this by the book. After all, we work for a completely different agency than Lasko. We gotta dot our I’s and cross our T’s, you know?”
“Yeah. I get that. There’s just something fishy.”
“Well, he told you to do your due diligence, right?”
“Yeah…”
“Then do it. Don’t just fucking whack the Fed, investigate the shit. If you don’t want a dead agent on your hands, look into it. He all but permitted you to.”
“But did he give me permission so that I’d do the opposite and just kill the little shit, like I usually would?”
“I think you’re looking too far into this.”
“Maybe.”
“How’s it going with your lady friend?”
I huff a laugh. “Lady friend?”
“Well, I don’t know what you’re calling her. The girl you kidnapped. How’s that going?”
“Well, she’s back home because of your bullshit arrest.”
“Hey, I was carrying out my orders. Helms wanted to know if you felt the same thing he did about Lasko.”
Which I had.
Something’s off about the agent, but I don’t know what it is yet.
“I haven’t investigated in years, you know. I might be rusty.”
“You?” He scoffs. “I doubt it.”
A beat of silence rings through the other end, and even his fingers have stopped caressing his keyboard. “Maybe it’s for the best that she’s home.”
I grit my teeth.
“With this case and how you’re feeling about it, maybe it’s good she’s far away from it. After all, she’s on Helms’s radar.”
My teeth squeak as my bite grows firmer. “How exactly did that happen, Joe?”
“You know I have orders to report anything I know. The agency likes to keep tabs on its assets, and you’re one of its most expensive ones.”
“You mean I’m the most dangerous if I go rogue?”
“Exactly.”
“Did you e-mail me what I asked for?”
“I did.”
“Good. I’ll loop you in if necessary.”
“Koen,” he warns, and I stay silent. “Watch yourself. If the agency’s watching how you handle this, you’re in more danger than you realize.”
“I’m the danger, Joe. They should watch their fucking backs.”
I cut the call as he says something I don’t have time to listen to, turning my attention back to the feed where Greer’s alarm’s going off.
She sits on the edge of the bed after silencing it.
Running my finger over her on the screen, I smudge it.
Her face looks contemplative, like she’s considering something. She’s probably wondering if my presence in her room last night was all in her head.
Even though I know I shouldn’t, I grab my phone and move my fingers over the keys quickly, hitting send before I can talk myself out of it.
I’m still watching, my deadly girl.
Her phone pings, and she grabs it faster than I’ve ever seen her do anything before, which makes me grin.
Standing, she looks around the room, searching for my hidden cameras she’ll never find.
She hits call, and I lean in closer to listen.
“Ali, is Koen still locked up?” she asks.
I don’t hear Allison’s reply, but I can only guess she’ll use her many connections to find out where I’m being held or if I am at all.
The girl really is a fucking thorn in my side.
“Yeah. Could you, please? No, I’m fine. Just a feeling.”
Her posture changes as her friend says something seemingly absurd. “Will you stop talking about his dick?”
That has my attention, and a grin spreads across my lips.
She told Allison about us.
That’s big.
“I’ve got to go get ready. Let me know what you find.”
She tosses her phone onto her bed, giving the room another quick scan as Bear dances around her feet, pleading with her to be let out.
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Giving up her investigation into my camera placement, she takes Bear out.
A few clicks of my keys move me into another room, so I can watch her as she walks around the house, cataloging everything as if she can sense I was there.
“You know I was there, poison,” I whisper. “I’m always lurking.”
After watching her get ready to leave, I log off and walk to my room, practically falling into my bed from exhaustion.
The mid-morning sun bleeds through the blinds as I instantly start dreaming of Greer and our final moments together.
It’s as if she’s all that matters, but that’s utter nonsense.
I startle awake and reach for the gun beneath my pillow, clicking the safety off as I look around the room.
It’s dark out as I come around and realize there’s no one here.
“Fuck,” I moan, putting the safety back on and replacing my weapon.
The clock reads 9 p.m., and I realize how much time I lost sleeping like the fucking dead.
I rush to my cameras, worried that I’ve missed some part of Greer’s day. I find that a few emails from Joe are open as if I meant to work last night, but got too distracted, which is precisely what happened.
Checking my phone, I don’t see any missed calls, but I see one missed text.
I don’t see Greer on any of my feeds, so I type in my passcode on my phone and open my messages app.
Were you even real?
My heart races as I read it over and over.
She’s never texted back before.
She didn’t know me before, I remind myself.
I open Joe’s emails. Two of them have pieces of information I asked for on the Nameless Collective, and some tidbits about the angle Helms was working on with Lasko before he handed the shitshow over to me.
The last email from Joe confirms that I’m scrubbed from the Oakland database.
It’s like I was never arrested and detained at all, so that Allison Cheney wouldn’t have gotten even the tiniest morsel of information for her friend.
I hate to do that to her, but I have to fly under the radar. It’s how I stay alive.
My phone pings as I’m sifting through Helms’s documents on Lasko.
I can see you read that.
Damn, it’s not like me to have read receipts on for texts, but with the new iPhone updates, you can turn them on and off for each thread. It seems Greer’s slipped through the cracks.
And that…
I grin.
I’m as real as you are.
Then why aren’t you in jail? Why doesn’t anyone Allison speaks to know where you are?
I don’t know how to answer, and texting has always been and will always be dangerous, so I put my phone down and hope she’ll give up.
When I look up at the feeds, I find her curled on the couch, where she hadn’t been a moment ago. She’s staring at her phone, biting the edge of one of her fingernails.
Tell me I’m not stupid for missing you.
Stupid, you aren’t. Poisonous, you are.
What are you, Yoda? Talk to me!
Go to bed, G. You look tired.
How are you watching me still? I had the place debugged.
Oh, did she now?
What else did I miss while I was out?
I leave her on read for another thirty minutes, hoping she’ll give up. While I sift through documents and paperwork, she watches TV with Bear.
It’s like we’re together, coexisting. It’s only that she’s halfway across town, and I’m holed up with work I’d rather not be doing.
The flicker of her shutting the TV off draws my eyes back to the monitors behind my laptop screen. She lets Bear out, leaning on the doorframe as she looks at her phone again.
My phone pings.
I changed the locks.
Is she trying to goad me into answering?
Knowing she’d done it isn’t an issue; I can still get in the house. It’s the fact that she did it in the first place.
She’s attempting to get me to react to her, and it’s what Joe and Helms have been worried about since they caught wind of her.
She’s a fucking distraction.
A sickly sweet one I can’t resist.
I text back, grinning.
Like I fucking care.
As if she knows I’m full of shit, she turns toward the living room as she shuts the door, reading my text with a big ass smirk on her face.
Fuck.
I showed my hand.