Chapter 14 #3
“I’ll be there,” Frederick Bradwin said, voice cracking. A very distinct voice. Ryan would have recognized the prick’s pompous tone anywhere. “I’ll meet you in London. I was, ah, already planning to travel there in the morning.”
And that’s how you draw your prey right to you.
“Good. I’ll be waiting. Plan to get your ass here by eight.
You know where I am, so I’ll meet you in the hotel’s restaurant.
” Ryan rattled off a specific meeting time because he wanted to be very clear.
Then Ryan motioned to the waiter. “Hang up the phone, Edward.”
“Right, right—”
“Did you kill Alexei?” Frederick demanded before Edward could end the call. “Or was it Simone? Who did it? Who—”
“Me,” Simone said. “I’m the guilty one. Don’t screw with me again, or you’ll meet the same fate. A knife in the heart.”
Ryan’s back teeth ground together. He let go of Simone’s wrist and snatched the phone from Edward. He ended the call. Tossed the phone aside. Slapped the knife down on a nearby table.
“I think that went really, really well,” Edward told him, all big eyes, sweaty forehead, and desperate expression. “Now, will you please not kill me? Please?”
“I make no promises,” Ryan snapped. “Especially considering you came to kill what is mine.”
“I have a name,” Simone pointed out. “Not just ‘mine’ but an actual name. It’s Simone.”
He was not dealing with her, not then. Not after the woman had just announced that she’d killed Alexei.
He knew she’d done that deliberately, to put a bigger target on herself when he should have been the one receiving Frederick’s fury.
Ryan’s breath heaved. “Get him out of here,” he ordered Charlotte and Jamar.
“And make sure you smooth over any issues with the hotel’s management. ”
Charlotte nodded. “Consider them smoothed.”
His nostrils flared. “Put every agent on alert. We will have a visitor incoming. VIP.”
“Very important person.” A murmur from Simone.
“No.” A hard shake of Ryan’s head. “Very important prey.”
Jamar shoved Edward toward the door. But Charlotte hesitated and pointed to the cart. “Are we sure that we don’t want to stuff him under there?”
Ryan studied the shaking waiter. “Edward is going to cooperate fully with us. I think he is going to tell us everything he knows about this criminal organization that he finds himself all tangled up with. If Edward plays his cards just right, he’ll get to live to see another day.”
“I would really like that,” Edward whispered. “I want to see another day. More than anything.”
“Get the hell out of here,” Ryan snapped. Because that fool had come to kill Simone.
“Give us his gun?” Charlotte prompted. “We can check it, see if it was used in any other crimes.”
“It wasn’t!” Edward swallowed three times. “This was my first—uh, my first—”
“Murder for hire?” Simone chimed in to say. “Go big or go home, as the saying goes.”
Jaw clenched far too hard, Ryan reached the gun he’d tucked into the back waistband of his pants. He gave the weapon to Charlotte.
The two agents took Edward to the suite’s door.
“Nice to meet you,” Charlotte called back to Simone. She sent Simone a friendly wave. “Maybe we can go out for drinks sometime soon. You know, to toast your new engagement and all that.”
“Yes.” One of Simone’s eyebrows crooked up. “I can’t wait to celebrate my engagement. I’m over the moon with joy.”
“Yeah, I could see that.” Charlotte fought a smile.
Then she was gone. So was Jamar. And their would-be killer.
Ryan locked the door. Flipped the extra bolt. He tried to get his rage under control, but, nope, it kept right on surging within him. What had happened to him? He’d once been able to control his emotions so easily.
“Oh, look.” Simone’s voice. All but purring with delight. “There is another chocolate mousse under this silvery thing. An untouched one. Want to share?”
He whipped around to look at her.
She’d just dipped a bit of the mousse into her mouth. The spoon was still between her lips. Her eyes were gorgeous and so blue they almost hurt to see. She stood there, calm, poised, eating the chocolate mousse as if a man hadn’t just come in that suite intending to end her life.
“Does this happen a lot?” Ryan asked as he stalked toward her. “Because I am thinking it must. You are way too cool for this to be a one-time occurrence.”
She slowly pulled the spoon from her mouth. Pausing, she licked the edge, swiping away a bit of leftover chocolate. “Does what happen? Me, finding a perfectly good chocolate mousse? I wish.”
How could she just stand there calmly—and sexily—eating the mousse? “Did you consider that it could be poisoned?”
Horror briefly flashed across her delicate features before she rallied. “It would take a true bastard to poison a chocolate mousse this good.”
Where was her fear? Where was her fury? How could she be so controlled and cool while his skin seemed to be burning from the inside out?
“If poison was his game…” Simone picked up a little more of the mousse on the edge of her spoon and brought it to her lips. She savored the bite, moaning slightly.
That moan. His cock went rock hard.
Simone put the spoon down. “If poison was his game, I don’t think he would have bothered with the gun, do you?”
Probably not.
“Or with the steak knife as his back-up attack option,” she added.
Again, probably not.
Their gazes held. “So…is it going to happen now?” Simone finally asked him after too many moments crawled past.
His hands had clenched into fists at his sides. “Is what going to happen?” He’d never been as confused by a person in his life as he was by her. He just could not predict her actions. When she’d come out of that hallway, throwing the lamp…
“Are you about to get down on one knee and propose to me?” Simone fluttered her lashes. “Because I’m waiting.” she told him with more than a hint of relish.
Fuck.