CHAPTER 9
Gemma
The first thing I notice when I wake up is the absolute, crushing silence.
It isn't the quiet hum of a server room or the ambient noise of a city apartment. It is the heavy, dead silence of a place that has been entirely cut off from the rest of the world.
I open my eyes.
The heavy steel shutter covering the single window in the master bedroom allows only a thin, sharp sliver of morning light to cut across the dark wood floor. Dust motes dance lazily in the beam.
I am lying on my side, curled into a tight ball under a thick duvet. I am still wearing my jeans, my boots are on the floor near the edge of the bed, and I am completely swallowed by the dark gray cashmere hoodie.
The memory of the night before crashes into my brain, not in a linear sequence, but in violent, fragmented flashes. The green laser sweeping the stairs. The deafening sound of the gunshot. The heavy, wet sound of Callum’s knife.
And then, the quiet, terrifying intimacy of him pressing his forehead against mine.
I push the duvet off and sit up. My entire body aches. The muscles in my back and shoulders are screaming from the tension of sleeping in a defensive coil, and the scrape on my jaw stings when I move my mouth.
I look toward the heavy oak door.
The wooden chair is still wedged under the handle.
Callum is sitting on the floor exactly where he was when I closed my eyes. His back is resting against the dark wood dresser. His legs are stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles. The Glock is resting on his thigh, his hand loosely gripping the frame.
His eyes are closed.
For a wild second, I think he might actually be asleep.
His breathing is slow and even. The harsh, lethal lines of his face are relaxed, making him look less like a corporate assassin and more like a man who is simply exhausted.
The dark smear of blood on the collar of his t-shirt is completely dry now, a rust-colored stain against the gray cotton.
I sit perfectly still on the edge of the mattress, watching him.
I shouldn't be staring. I should be figuring out how to get back down to the basement to finish the decryption script. But the hacker in me cannot resist analyzing a system when its defenses are down.
He is beautiful.
It’s an entirely inappropriate word for a man who kills people for a living, but it’s the only one that fits. It isn't a soft, approachable kind of beauty. It is the sharp, terrifying aesthetic of a weapon.
I lean forward slightly, my hands resting on the mattress.
"I am awake, Gemma."
His voice is low, rough with gravel, and entirely devoid of sleep. He doesn't open his eyes. He doesn't move a single muscle. He just speaks into the quiet room, completely shattering the illusion that his defenses were down.
I flinch, my heart doing a stupid, erratic stutter in my chest.
"How did you know I was looking at you?" I ask, my voice sounding entirely too defensive. "Your eyes are closed."
"Your breathing changed," he says. He finally opens his eyes. They are dark, sharp, and instantly focused on my face. "You stopped breathing in a deep, rhythmic pattern and started taking shallow breaths. It means you were awake and assessing the room."
"Or it means I was having a nightmare," I counter, crossing my arms over the cashmere hoodie.
"If you were having a nightmare, your heart rate would have spiked, and you would have moved." He uncrosses his ankles and smoothly pushes himself off the floor. The movement requires zero effort, despite the fact that he has been sitting on hardwood for hours. "You were assessing."
"Fine. I was assessing." I drop my feet to the floor and slide my boots on. "I was assessing the fact that you didn't sleep."
"I don't require eight hours of sleep to function." He holsters the Glock. "I require situational awareness."
"You require a therapist," I mutter, tying my laces.
"Probably," he agrees, his tone so dry I actually pause and look up at him.
He is standing near the dresser, rolling his shoulders to work out the stiffness. The movement pulls the dark gray t-shirt tight across his chest. I force my eyes to stay on his face.
"What time is it?" I ask, standing up. My legs feel heavy, but the adrenaline from the night before is completely gone, replaced by a cold, practical need to get to work.
"Just past seven in the morning."
"Are they still out there?"
"There has been no movement on the perimeter for four hours," Callum says, walking over to the heavy oak door.
He pulls the wooden chair away from the handle and sets it aside.
"They have retreated to a secondary position.
They are waiting for reinforcements, or they are waiting for us to try and leave. "
"So we’re still trapped."
"We are contained," he corrects, unlocking the deadbolt. "There is a difference."
"Right. Semantics again." I walk toward the door, stopping a few feet behind him. "Can I go back to the basement? I need to finish the script."
Callum turns to face me. His eyes drop to my jaw, lingering for a fraction of a second on the red scrape he cleaned last night, before meeting my gaze.
The air between us immediately thickens.
The memory of the intimacy we shared in the dark is hanging in the space between us, heavy and entirely unacknowledged.
He is waiting for me to bring it up. He is waiting for me to panic about the fact that I let a hitman hold me while I cried into his shirt.
I bite the inside of my cheek. I am absolutely not going to bring it up.
"Yes," he says, stepping back to open the door. "You can go to the basement. But you stay behind me until we clear the living room."
I nod, slipping my hands into the front pocket of the hoodie. My fingers brush against the hard plastic casing of the encrypted drive.
We step out of the bedroom and walk down the hallway.
The damage to the house is much worse in the daylight.
When we reach the living room, I actually stop walking.
The massive ballistic glass windows, which looked like jagged teeth in the dark, are completely destroyed.
The floor is covered in a thick layer of shattered polycarbonate, drywall dust, and shredded upholstery.
The cold morning wind is blowing straight through the room, carrying a few dead pine needles onto the polished concrete.
It looks like a bomb went off.
"Holy hell," I whisper, stepping carefully over a massive chunk of glass.
"Keep moving," Callum says, his eyes scanning the tree line outside the broken frames. He isn't looking at the damage. He is looking for optics. "Stay low."
I crouch slightly, hurrying past the exposed area and into the kitchen.
The marble island is still covered in his weapons. The half-eaten frozen pizza is sitting on the stove, the cheese congealed into a hard, greasy mass. It feels like a lifetime ago that we were arguing about the quality of the crust.
Callum walks past the kitchen and stops at the hallway leading to the mudroom.
I stop behind him.
The body of the mercenary he killed is gone.
I look at the floor. There is a dark, smeared stain on the concrete, but the hallway is empty.
"Where is he?" I ask, my voice dropping to a whisper.
"I moved him outside before I came to the bedroom," Callum says, not looking back. "I didn't want you to trip over him in the dark if we had to evacuate."
I stare at the back of his head. He moved a two-hundred-pound dead body in the dark, silently, specifically so I wouldn't have to look at it again. It’s a terrifyingly thoughtful gesture.
"What about the one in the basement?" I ask, dreading the answer.
"He is still there." Callum turns around. "I couldn't move him without leaving the perimeter unguarded for too long. He is behind the server racks. Do not look behind the server racks."
"Got it. Don't look at the dead guy. Solid advice."
I walk past him, pushing the heavy steel door open. The stairwell is still coated in a fine layer of plaster dust from the breaching charge. The smell of copper and cordite is sharp and metallic in the enclosed space.
I walk down the wooden stairs, keeping my eyes fixed firmly on the glowing monitors of the server rig. I do not look to my left. I do not look at the dark corner where the shadows are thickest.
I drop into the mesh chair, pulling myself close to the desk.
The command terminal is exactly as I left it. The predictive script I was writing is paused, waiting for the missing variable.
Callum comes down the stairs a minute later. He is carrying two bottles of water and a dark, heavy object that looks suspiciously like a military-grade ration pack.
He sets one of the water bottles on the desk next to my keyboard. He drops the ration pack beside it.
"Eat," he orders, pulling out the secondary chair and sitting in the corner of the room.
"I’m not hungry," I say, my fingers already flying across the keys. I am lying. My stomach is completely hollow, but the smell of the basement is killing any desire I have to consume calories.
"Gemma."
The warning tone in his voice makes me pause. I look over at him. He is unscrewing the cap of his own water bottle, his eyes fixed on me.
"Your cognitive function is degrading," he says flatly. "You missed a variable last night because your blood sugar crashed. If you miss another variable today, the cascading algorithm might trigger a hard wipe of the drive. Eat the MRE."
I glare at the dark green plastic packaging. "What even is it?"
"Beef stew," he says.
"That sounds like a threat." I rip the plastic open, pulling out the foil pouch inside. "You know, for a guy who makes millions of dollars, your culinary standards are shockingly low."
"I don't eat for pleasure. I eat for fuel."
"That is the saddest thing I have ever heard." I open the pouch. It smells vaguely of salt, artificial meat, and preservatives. I grab the small plastic spoon included in the pack and take a bite. It tastes exactly like it smells. "Mmm. Delicious. Tastes like despair."