Chapter 6
SYLVIE
GUESS WHO’S POSTED on a rooftop across the street from their target’s building, folded into a lawn chair in head-to-toe leather with a pair of binoculars and a thermos of coffee, going cold at my feet? Ding, ding, ding.
Because I underestimated this dude. Badly.
The bug I planted on his phone died the second he walked into work this morning.
Not glitched. Not lost signal. Instantly died—wiped clean, like the device walked through something that stripped it to factory settings on contact.
I had eyes on everything right up until he stepped into that bunker of a building, and then nothing.
Black. Which means whatever tech they’re running in there is generations past mine, and whatever clearance he’s carrying is the kind that comes with countermeasures I’ve never had to beat.
Salisbrie didn’t give much detail. Off-the-grid government contractors.
I think her vagueness was lack of intel, not that she’d admit that.
My gut told me on day one to leave his job alone and work him from the edges—the gym, the takeout, the apartment. My instincts were spot-on. Fuck, I hate when my gut is right, because it usually means I’m already in over my head.
The bugs I left in his apartment have since failed too. Those I expected. They’re temps. I ran them cheap and low-power on purpose, the kind you can sweep for and won’t find, which also means they don’t work well, and they don’t last.
I figured I’d have what I needed before they burned out. I figured wrong. Nobody told me the target would be a locked box wrapped in a government firewall who confesses his whole tragic soul to a stranger in a bar and then gives up absolutely nothing I can use.
So here I am. Old-school. A chair, a lens, and the patience my father metaphorically beat into me before I was old enough to spell my own name.
The lawn chair is a piece of garbage I bought for eleven dollars, one of those aluminum-and-nylon jobs that leaves waffle marks on the backs of bare thighs and seemingly built to lean precariously to one side.
I’ve spent two hours making micro-corrections to keep from tipping.
My outfit doesn’t help my discomfort. I thought it’d keep me warm, and hell yes I looked snatched in skintight leather like this.
It looked fantastic in the mirror, and it feels like being vacuum-sealed into sexiness.
But now the night air’s gone cold enough that the whole suit has turned cold and wet from the on-and-off drizzle.
It’s like wearing the outside of an arctic whale as a blanket.
Above me there’s nothing—no stars. The city throws up too much light for that, just a low orange smear of cloud and the sound of the avenue eight floors down, tires hissing over a wet patch that never quite dries, a bassline from a bar I can’t see.
I pull my binoculars to my eyes again and thumb the focus, bringing the view of Callen in close. His whole living room wall is glass—floor to ceiling, no blinds, no shade, the arrogance of a man on a high floor who’s never once imagined someone could be peeking all the way up there.
The lack of self-preservation. Either he genuinely can’t conceive of being watched, or he’s decided he’s not worth watching, and I can’t tell which is sadder. This is a man who survived something that killed five other men, and he sits in a lit box at night like a guppy in a tank.
Presently, he’s on the couch in a tight white T-shirt and a pair of faded navy boxers, barefoot, one ankle hooked over the opposite knee.
A Dos Equis sweats on the coffee table in front of him, the label peeling at one corner where his thumb’s been working it.
His hair’s a mess—shaggy, shoved around by palm swipes into something that has no structure.
Two days of scruff, maybe three, dark along the jaw.
It’s clear he hasn’t shaved since the morning he saw himself off from my hotel.
There’s something colorful going on the TV, angled just enough so I can’t make much out.
But it’s bright, moving fast, a snowy background…
I think that was a moose? I’m not sure. It’s cartoonish.
At first I thought it was anime porn, but all these characters have clothes on. Why is a grown man watching cartoons?
Whatever it is, it’s got his attention, and there’s looseness in his shoulders I haven’t seen on him since he was sloshed at the bar.
The polished man from the sushi place, the good suit and the better watch, is nowhere in this room.
This is the other one, the one underneath—sprawled, unkempt, soft at the edges.
This is Callen with the door shut. Off-duty. Unguarded.
Time to ruin it.
I pull the burner from my back pocket, find the only number programmed in, and dial. Through the glass, I watch him pick his phone off the cushion beside him. He looks at the screen. He looks at it for a long second. His thumb hovers.
Then he sends me to voicemail.
My jaw actually drops. This absolute fucker did not just hit decline on me while I am watching him do nothing more important than drink a beer in his underwear. I’ve killed men for less disrespect.
I switch to text.
Did you just give me the go-to-hell button?
I watch him read it. He snorts. His shoulders move with laughter before I see his face morph into amusement. He slides his finger over the keyboard, replying quickly.
Callen
Who is this?
The woman you’ve been hoping to hear from.
He suspected before. But this is the exact moment he knows who’s texting. His whole body changes. He sits up a little, tilts the phone, drops the foot off his knee to the floor. Dare I say he’s intrigued?
Callen
Jessica?
No.
Callen
Audrina?
You asshole.
Callen
How’d you get my number, Sylvie?
Aw, see? This is cute. We have rapport.
You’re a deep sleeper when you’re drunk.
Callen
You’re reaching stalker status.
Reaching? If he only knew I can read the label on his beer from here.
And you find that charming, right?
He smiles down at the phone. A giddy one.
He leans into the schoolboy excitement he doesn’t think anyone can see.
It cracks the scruff open and takes ten years off him.
I ignore the flutter of excitement in my chest at his reaction.
I mean, it wouldn’t kill me if he was into me.
The cherry on top before I kill this whole sundae.
Callen
Obviously. What are you doing?
Watching you. I don’t type that.
Wandering around the city, looking for dinner.
He sets the beer down, wipes the condensation off his palm onto his shirt. He grabs the phone with one hand in a way that’d be impossible to text back—oh.
He’s calling.
I let it ring twice so I don’t seem eager, then answer with the binoculars still trained on his face, because I want his expressions in real time.
“Hey, grandpa. What’s up?”
“Grandpa?” There’s a laugh buried in it.
“Well, I’m about to ask you to come eat with me, and I already know you’re going to give me the whole spiel about how you’re too old for me. So, I figured I’d beat you to the punch. Save us both the time.”
“You know I’m thirty-seven, right?”
“I’m aware.”
“And that’s eleven years older than you, if you are really twenty-six. Which I still have doubts.”
“Right again, bucko. But lucky for you, I have daddy issues. So, late thirties is kind of my catnip.”
“It’s futile to avoid you, isn’t it?” He rubs the back of his neck—I can see it, the sheepish tell he doesn’t know he has, elbow winging out.
“I’m glad you got there on your own. Have you eaten?”
He picks the beer back up. Tips it, and I watch his throat move as he swallows. “A beer.”
“Drinking again?” I click my tongue. “Let’s eat, and then there’s a little meeting I’d love to take you to. Very supportive environment. Everybody sits in a circle and shares their trauma.”
“Hilarious.” He’s fighting a big smile and losing. “It’s one beer. What do you need, Sylvie?”
“If you’re so annoyed to hear from me, why’d you call back?”
A pause. He looks forward on the screen which I’ve decided is a Christmas movie because they’re on a sleigh of some sort I think? Then, he leans his head back against the couch, eyes on his own ceiling, the phone pressed to his ear and his free hand flat on his chest.
“I don’t love the idea of you wandering around the city alone this late,” he says, then exhales deeply. “Probably wearing something designed to get attention.”
I glance down at the leather. The thigh-high boots. Fair assessment.
“Aw. You’re worried.” I let my voice purr. “Chivalrous.”
“I’m being decent. There’s a difference. Please go home. Order something in. Lock your door.”
“Or, come meet me.”
“Sylvie. I told you.”
“Told me what, exactly?” I shift the chair and it groans under me, metal on gravel. “That you’re too broken? Too old? Wait, are you celibate or something?”
He barks out a laugh that seems to catch him off guard. “If I say yes, will you move on?”
“Nah, buddy. I love a challenge.”
“Why?” He asks it quietly. Not a brush-off this time—genuine curiosity. He goes still, the humor draining off his face.
“What do you mean?” I breathe into the phone.
“I mean, why are you so insistent on me? You could have any man. Probably any woman too. So why the broken guy who keeps telling you no?”
I have no quick-witted response because I’m stumped as well.
The honest answer is one I’ve been trying not to dwell on for about a week now.
The mission needs proximity, sure. That’s the story.
The clean story where the rooftop and the leather and the burner are all just tradecraft.
But the mission doesn’t require me to notice the sheepish way he touches his neck. The softness in his brown eyes.
My curiosity goes way past professional.
“To be honest?” I say, and I actually mean the honest part. “I don’t know. I’m just the kind of girl who goes after what she wants.”
“So you want me?”
“I said what I said.”
“And you’d like to go to dinner?”