Chapter 34 #2
This time he relaxes, closing his eyes and breathing deeply as I thread his skin and tie the stitch. I dribble alcohol over it one last time and cover it with fresh gauze, wrapping the whole thing in the tensor bandage.
“Come on.” I help him up. “Let’s get you to bed.”
August and Carter take him off me in the hallway and help him up the stairs as I return to the kitchen and start cleaning everything up. I’m on my hands and knees, sopping the blood up off the floor when William comes in.
“So many interesting revelations happened today, Tripoli.” I ignore him and scrub at the floor. “Untouchable, eh?”
“I’m worth more alive than dead.”
“Is that right?” He rips me up from the floor and pins me against the counter. “Tell me more about that.” His hair falls forward as his dark eyes look down on me.
“I know a lot of things. Like the duke.”
“That seems like a great reason to put a bullet in you, not keep you alive.”
August walks back in and starts cleaning up the counter, completely ignoring the pair of us. I can’t shift back anymore, and when I lean my torso away, the cupboard bumps the back of my head.
“You are keeping secrets,” William says softly.
“You aren’t?” I roll my eyes. “We’re all hiding something, William, and I would argue that you’re hiding more than me.” The set of his jaw and the intensity of his glare begin to make me nervous. “What was the plan tonight? If York weren’t hurt, I mean. Where were you going after?”
“Airport.”
I nod. “So, you use me, all of you use me for what you can and then bail, leaving me in the lurch . . . A fugitive.”
“First of all,” he whispers, “don’t pretend like you don’t like being used on occasion.
” His breathing thins out. “And second, I’m not that easily distracted.
” My skin warms at the insinuation, and I drop my eyes, but he grabs my chin and tilts it up.
“What was it you said to me again, Tripoli? Eyes on me? Yeah.” He nods. “Look at me when I’m speaking to you.”
I swallow hard as he holds my gaze. I did say that to him over the radio .
. . although I was asking him to have my back, and this situation is not that.
The heat that floods low in my belly makes me question my sanity, but it’s there, nonetheless.
York awoke a little demon inside me, and I don’t think it discriminates. William’s right. It wants to get used.
“What did she say that was interesting today, August?” he asks the other man without taking his eyes off me.
August pauses in my periphery. “She threatened him by reciting his family’s address . . . then said she was untouchable . . . She said she knows, and her head isn’t the only place it lives.”
“Really?” William whispers.
I really did get carried away in the moment. I should have stomped on the radio and knocked August out before I said a fucking thing . . . I really wasn’t thinking things through.
“She saved my ass,” August adds quietly and stops wiping the counter. “You knew his ex-wife’s address . . .”
My eyes shift from William to August as my back prickles with sweat.
“You knew about the duke . . . but it wasn’t what you knew about him that bothered me . . . You remembered the date and time of the call, off the top of your head . . .” He trails off.
Shit. If anyone was going to put something together, it was going to be August, and I suddenly wish I had a gun on hand.
“You have an eidetic memory.” He stares at me. “Don’t you?”
Blinking, my gaze meets William’s again, and he moves closer, leaving just inches between us.
“So . . . you remember everything?” William presses.
“Generally, yes,” I whisper.
“Everything you see, hear, read?”
“Yes.”
“With perfect recall?”
“Ninety-eight percent accuracy.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, and I look at it, and then look up again. His head tilts slightly, and he exhales heavily.
“Fuck’s sake, Tripoli,” he mutters and releases my chin as he pushes away from the counter, away from me. I watch him walk out of the kitchen.
The heat from his proximity dissipates, and I let out a slow breath. What’s wrong with me? I literally hate him. I find him intimidating in a way that is separate from York . . . William seems far more volatile and unpredictable. God, what if that’s what I like about him, too?
I narrow my eyes on August. He owes me no loyalty, but as he said, I saved his ass today.
“Sorry.” He raises his hands and backs out of the room.
“Are you serious?” a raised voice floats down the hall a minute later. Carter.
Groaning, I rub my eyes. Good news spreads like wildfire.
I flex my hands a few times to steel my nerves.
This isn’t that bad. They don’t know the whole picture .
. . They think they’ve figured me out, and if I let them think that, then they’ll stop looking for anything more.
Now they’ll simply want to kill me all over again . . . or use me.
Walking down the hall, I round the end of the stairs, intent on ignoring them as I head up to check on York but stop when Carter speaks.
“We just destroyed all that information, and now I’m being told you’re a walking, talking copy of it?”
“No,” I snap and step off the first stair and walk into the living room, where William is standing with his arms crossed, August is pacing half-heartedly, and Carter is glaring at me.
“I only know what I saw or had access to. Ravens are insulated from one another—independent. Besides, not every op or subject was fruitful. The shrewd ones play it close to the vest.”
“What do you mean, subjects?” he asks.
Again . . . I need to protect myself, but I certainly don’t need to protect the Agency anymore. “Our mission parameters were broad. I participated in everything from operations to state dinners, balls, diplomatic events . . .”
“So, you have information on . . . everyone.”
“A lot of people,” I correct.
“Home and abroad.”
“Yes.”
“Does York know this?” Carter leans forward with his elbows on his knees.
“Not the memory bit.” I resist the urge to wring my fingers. It does feel wrong that he will be the last to find out. I can’t imagine it will make him very happy, either.
Carter looks to William, some silent conversation passing between them before William’s sharp gaze lands on me again. “So, do we kill her or keep her?”
“York needs to weigh in on this . . . He singled her out for a reason.” Carter rubs his beard. “I’m sure he had all kinds of probabilities worked out regarding why she was redacted from everything. This . . . makes sense.”
“Too bad.” William smirks, and his eyes drop down my body. “I was looking forward to the inevitable chase when she ran.”
“York might decide to kill me,” I point out. “So, I might still run . . . but no promises.” My voice sharpens. “You can paper-rock-scissors for the pursuit, though.”
“I like working in a team.” William’s eyes grow heavy, and his hands clench beneath his folded arms.
There is a pulse between my thighs as our eyes meet. It feels like he’s working fucking witchcraft on me. I nibble the inside edge of my lip.
“York won’t.” I raise my brow but openly appraise him too.
His eyes are full of heat when I find them again.
“York won’t want her dead,” August says calmly. “And we all know it.”
“I’m going to . . . take a bath.” I point my thumb over my shoulder. “There is no window in there, so you don’t have to worry about me escaping . . . yet.” My eyes linger on William lazily before I turn my back on the room. I can feel his gaze follow me until I disappear up the staircase.
This is reckless. Really reckless.
I’m not even sure what I’m doing.
I like York, and I hate William. Those feelings couldn’t be clearer, but there is no future for us, not in this business.
It’s insane to think there could be. There is even less of a future with William, obviously.
Maybe that’s another reason why I’m starting to feel this way around him.
There is no future in it . . . just fun.
Although, there is no guarantee of fun either.
William feels dark, like he could choke the life out of me in the middle of it and not lose any sleep over the error. If it was an error.
A shiver goes over me, and my nipples tighten.
Locking the door behind me, I turn on the faucet, running the water until it warms and then popping the plug in as I begin undressing. I scoop the top half of my shortened hair up and secure it with a clip, before adding bath oil and some bubble bath to the water.
In my ideal world, I get out of here, get away, and escape to a beach somewhere.
Every now and then as the years wear on, York appears, stays for a while to whisper crazy shit in my ear, and then disappears again.
No commitment, no expectations . . . no ownership.
Maybe in the off-season . . . William appears too.
That’s a stupid fantasy, I chastise, though it says something very clear that my ideal world involves visitation rights.
Fuck. I stare at the water until the bath is half-full and then slip into the mountain of bubbles. My head falls back against the lip of the old iron tub, and that’s when I realize I forgot a towel.
Shit.
There is a mechanical click, and the door swings open. I gasp, sloshing the water as I dip lower into the bubbles.
William walks in, folding away a pocketknife, and sets a towel on the counter. “You really going to run on us?”
I raise a brow. “You really going to chase me down?”
His attention drops to the bubbles and then down the length of the tub, stopping where my knee breaks the surface. “You’re fucking right, I will.”
“Even with that bad knee?” I pout slightly.
Smiling broadly, he glances at his feet, but when his eyes flick back up, the smile slips away. “What bad knee?”
Goddammit.
Pushing off the counter, he pulls the door open again and slips through, pausing part way. “You should lock the door.” He twists the lock and pulls the door closed behind him.
I’ve made too many guesses without enough confirmation, which has let me fall into the assumption of correctness. I was certain he had a bad knee . . . He put on a show of it, and I fell for it. And he had a story to go with it. I keep forgetting that we’re all playing the same game.
The thing about William is, as much as I detest him at this point, he is very attractive.
It’s an unassailable point of fact. He’s nailed that Texan thing down.
He’s tall, strong . . . bit of a scumbag.
Still, I’d take him for a ride if I never had to look at him again.
What does it say about me that I’d even consider it after he shot me, though?
Sinking further into the bubbles, I exhale and begin plotting what my escape is going to look like now.