Chapter Three
“Just outside of Bogotá, to be more specific.”
Relay and Aquarius looked at me in unison.
I tucked my hands into the pockets of my cargo trousers with a shrug. “I’ve already been briefed on where I am taking you this evening.”
After a moment, silent as they each caught up on the situation, Aquarius nodded. “South America, how exciting. I’ve never been.”
I cocked a brow. Somehow, she wasn’t anything like I’d imagined. In truth, I wasn’t really sure what I had imagined. I grinned. We were going to get on like a house on fire, I could already tell.
“Shall we get moving?” I asked. “I already have the details for the flight path. We’ll be chartering our flight from Stapleford. All the information should be in your docket.”
I waited patiently as they both hurriedly scrolled through the information on their respective screens.
My eyes jumped between them, musing how lucky I was to be working with not one, but two complete smoke shows – as if the excitement of my recruitment into this shadowy agency wasn’t enough by itself.
My gaze lingered on Relay, studying his classically handsome features.
He was so my type, it wasn’t even funny.
Seemingly sensing my eyes on him, he met my gaze and faltered, surprised to discover I was watching him.
I smiled, hoping my interest was blatant and enjoying the way he floundered and glanced away.
Yep – just like I knew Aquarius and I would work well together, I knew Relay was going to be fun.
I loved it when they played hard to get.
“Okay, let’s move out. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover,” Aquarius said, standing up straight and switching the screen attached to her arm off.
To my surprise, she tugged her face covering down and leant in over Relay’s laptop.
There was a loud click as she snapped it shut, her hand pressing the laptop down onto his lap as she caught Relay’s lips with her own.
I blinked, glancing between them as they shared a kiss that although chaste, spoke of passion and familiarity. They were a couple? Interesting. I wondered if Aquarius was aware her boyfriend wasn’t as straight as he was making out. My radar for these things was never wrong.
“Be good, hm?” she purred, pulling away to stand up and righting her face covering.
“Uh, y-yeah,” Relay murmured, seeming dazed. He flushed, realising I had seen the entire exchange. “I’ll just get settled in my office. I’ll be in touch momentarily.”
“No rush.” Aquarius flapped her hand over her shoulder, pinning me with her intense gaze. “Ready?”
“Always am,” I replied. With one last glance back at Relay, I followed Aquarius out of a separate doorway to the one we had entered through.
“It’s an hour and twenty at least to Stapleford from here,” Aquarius muttered, trotting down a set of concrete stairs and into a dark parking garage. It was only small, but every space was filled with various vehicles – sports cars, motorbikes, surveillance vans…
Aquarius wrestled a pair of keys from a pocket in her suit, the metal clinking and echoing around the concrete that encased us.
A pair of headlights flashed at the far side of the car park, and I followed her over to an expensive-looking BMW.
I wasn’t much into cars – nothing could compete with the thrill of a five-hundred-mile-an-hour jet – but I admired its sleek paintwork.
“Hope you don’t mind me driving?” she asked, her eyes sparkling as if daring me to argue.
“Not at all,” I replied, sliding into the passenger seat of the car. “Just as long as you don’t drive the way I fly, we should be great.”
“I’m looking forward to it already.” Aquarius pressed the ignition button and the car’s engine roared to life. It was loud, promising a speedy journey.
I sat in silence as the assassin guided the car out of the garage to an unmarked shutter.
An ANPR camera scanned us and a moment later, the metal clanged and began to roll up of its own accord.
As soon as it was open enough to get the car out, Aquarius darted forward and the force of it pressed me back into my seat.
Shit, she was a speed demon too? We were screwed.
It wasn’t all that late, just gone ten, and yet the streets of this part of London were unusually quiet. The BMW cruised along with ease, and it was only after soaring straight through the fourth set of green lights that I began to grow suspicious.
“Am I imagining things, or have we been strangely fortunate with the traffic?”
Aquarius glanced across at me, a knowing smile playing on her lips.
I hadn’t noticed her pulling her face covering down and in the glow of streetlights I marvelled at just how attractive she was.
Damn, what I would have given to be a fly on the wall whenever she and Relay got down to business together—
“You’re welcome.”
I flinched, a deep voice rumbling in my ear, setting me on edge. I released a shaky laugh. Fuck, that was going to take some getting used to.
“Not just lucky then, hm?” I cocked a brow at Aquarius. She didn’t reply, just smiled some more.
It wasn’t long until the BMW was shooting onto the M11 and both Aquarius and I relaxed back into our seats.
My mind whirred with unanswered questions.
I had been instructed not to bother Aquarius with anything unnecessary and not to discuss her mission outside of the information I had already been given, but I had to admit that was the last thing on my mind.
“So, how long have you and Relay been together?” I asked, staring out of my window at the dark motorway as it whizzed past.
Before Aquarius had a chance to answer, Relay’s voice was in my ear once again. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
I felt a smirk pulling at my lips. Someone was prickly, hm?
“Now, now,” Aquarius purred with a laugh. “Hangman is one of us, and we’re no secret, right? Five years.”
Huh. Longer than I had thought. Interesting. I mulled over my next question, wrestling with myself as to what was the least inappropriate way to gauge how closed their relationship was. Just the thought of being invited into the middle of it got me hot.
“What about you?” Aquarius asked, checking over her shoulder as we zipped past a car, overtaking it with ease. “Any significant others?”
“Plenty of others, none of them significant,” I replied, earning myself another laugh.
“Figures.”
I cocked a brow, looking across the car at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re giving major fuckboy vibes.”
“Aquarius…” Relay groaned in my ear.
I spluttered, taken aback. Here I had been worried about being inappropriate…
“Are you allowed to speak to me like that?” I chuckled.
Aquarius simply shrugged with a smile. “Am I wrong?”
I paused before releasing a breathy laugh. “I guess not.”
“Called it.”
“Is it that obvious?” I frowned playfully.
“You could barely keep your tongue in your mouth when you were eyeing Relay back at the office—”
“Aquarius.” Another admonishing groan from Relay. “Don’t.”
“What? You don’t mind, right?” She flashed me a bright smile. “You weren’t exactly being subtle.”
I ran a hand through my hair with a laugh. Busted. “Sorry. To be fair, I didn’t realise you were a couple. I’ll try to keep my leering to a minimum from now on.”
“Right, that’s it. I’m turning my earpiece off until you get to the airfield,” Relay muttered tersely, making Aquarius cackle.
“Oh, come off it. You were almost as bad,” she teased. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you watching him undressing.”
I blinked. There was no bitterness, no jealousy – quite the opposite. The way Aquarius’s eyes sparkled betrayed her excitement. Interesting… This time, there was no response from Relay, and we both chuckled to ourselves.
“He really did turn his earpiece off, huh?” I grinned.
“It’s not the first time,” Aquarius sniggered. “Don’t mind him, he’s a bit uptight at first but he’ll come around.”
“You’re a lot more… normal than I had expected, you know.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Before I could ask any more probing questions about her relationship with Relay, she turned the car off a slip road, the headlights cutting through the darkness. “Not far now. Are you ready for this?”
“As I’ll ever be. It’s not my first rodeo.”
“I figured I wouldn’t be assigned a rookie, but my missions tend to be a bit…” Aquarius trailed off.
“I’ve got your back.” Our eyes locked, the atmosphere suddenly shifting. “You can rely on me.”
She smiled. “Glad to hear it.”
A few minutes later, the BMW was turning off the main road and into the airfield. Stapleford was only small, mostly used for training aspiring pilots. Tonight there was a new addition to the tiny passenger planes, and I knew just where to find it.
Aquarius parked up and killed the engine. The airfield was completely still and dark, not a soul to be seen. Good. The noise of the jet taking off was sure to draw enough attention from the surrounding residents as it was. We didn’t want any unnecessary eyes on us.
I unbuckled my seatbelt and heaved myself out of the deep bucket seat.
This time, Aquarius was following my lead as we picked our way through the darkness towards a large hangar at the far side of the tarmac.
Just as my mission docket had promised, I found a key card scanner and after digging my ID card from my pocket, I swiped it.
With a loud clunk, the huge metal doors unlocked, and Aquarius helped me heave them open, revealing exactly what I had been hoping to see.
I grinned up at the shadow of the stealth jet, a low whistle drawing my attention.
“She’s a beauty,” Aquarius muttered at my side.
“Thanks. She’s a custom project, the only one of her kind.” Excitement flurried in my chest. I felt like a little kid at Christmas, and I was burning to get into that cockpit.
Aquarius clapped her hand on my shoulder. “Let’s get a move on then.”
I nodded. “Give me a moment.”