Chapter 6 #2
“Yes, sir. I’ll pay, open your door, pull out your chair, the whole gentlewoman routine. You can just sit there and look cute.”
That gets a good, good laugh, head back, throat working, and it lands deep inside my belly. Apparently he has the power to spread warmth in me even from a whole building away.
He sits forward on the couch, all the way to the edge, elbows on his knees, and the movement pulls the T-shirt tight across his back. He hangs his head between his knees like he’s defeated before he finally says, “Fine, I could eat. But on one condition.”
“Shoot.” I sharpen the focus of the binoculars. I want this expression crystal clear.
“Tell me who you really are.” The laugh’s gone. He lifts his head and stares out the window. Right in my direction. For a second, I think he’s onto me. But then he breaks his gaze and rolls his neck like he’s stretching the ache out of it.
“What do you mean by—”
“The math doesn’t add up on you, Sylvie. It hasn’t from the jump. I’ve spent a long time learning to smell a plot from a mile out, and you are a plot. You’re lying to me. I’ve made my peace with that. I’d just like to know what about.”
Dammit.
There it is again—him seeing right through me.
I keep second-guessing if I’m the one running the con.
But this desk-riding, cartoon-watching, boxer-wearing man keeps quietly turning the lens around and pointing it back at me.
I underestimated him at the bar. I underestimated him with the phone.
I am, apparently, incapable of learning.
The overt seduction isn’t working. So, I’m forced to resort to the only thing that’ll appease him—I give him something real. Or close enough to pass for real.
“The truth is… I’m on the run. Look, you won’t tell me what you do, and you give off major cop energy, so forgive me for being a little cautious about my details.”
“I’m not a cop.” He says it like I’ve accused him of something shameful.
“Noted. Also noted you’re a little touchy about it.”
“What did you do? Why are you running?”
“I stole a car.” True. Technically. “A really expensive one.”
I leave out the rest. The setup. Dani. Her betrayal. I already confessed that part to a drunk man who won’t remember it, and once was more than enough.
“That’s it?” he asks. “A car?”
“A car nice enough to make me a felon in a couple of states. I ditched it two borders over, but I’m still looking over my shoulder.”
“Why’d you steal it?”
“I’m a bit of a kleptomaniac.”
“I don’t believe that for a second.” His tone is flat and certain.
Actually, it’s a brush against cocky. “I still have my Rolex after that night with you. You didn’t touch my platinum cufflinks.
You had me unconscious in your hotel room and you didn’t lift a thing.
So, try again. Why’d you really take it? ”
And this—this small, stupid, true thing—is the one I don’t have to dress up. “Because I wanted to know what it felt like to drive it,” I say. “That’s all. No plan. No buyer. I just wanted, for one night, to know what freedom felt like.”
Simple. Plain. And completely honest, which is maybe why he buys it.
There’s a silence on the line. He’s frozen like a video that glitched. Then he relaxes his broad shoulders again, deciding on trust. It almost makes me feel guilty.
“Fine,” he says finally. “Let’s go eat somewhere.”
“Or,” I say, because I can’t help myself, “I could just come over.”
Another frozen beat.
“Uh-huh. And why do I have the sneaking suspicion you already know where I live?”
My stomach drops deeper into my body. Careful, Sylvie. Who’s playing whom?
“I don’t.” Swiftly back to lies, like they’re my native tongue. “I’ll need it if you want to see me.”
“I’ll text it. Where are you? I can send you an Uber.”
“No need. I can handle myself.”
“That I believe.” A pause. “I’ll order in then. What do you like to eat? There’s an Indian place around the corner from me, actually. It’s really good and the food comes piping hot. I order there about once a month.”
Twice a week, I correct him in my mind. Butter chicken. Saag paneer. Extra naan. A mango lassi he pretends is a treat and orders every single time. I’ve watched this man eat enough Indian food for a family of four in a single sitting. His appetite is a war crime. It rivals mine.
“Indian’s great,” I say, like it’s a happy coincidence. “I’ll do the lamb vindaloo. Or the chicken tikka masala. Or, both, if you’re feeling generous.”
“Not a salad-and-ice-water girl, huh? I like that.”
I like that he likes that. Truly. “Salad is merely a distraction from the main point of a meal.”
“Duly noted. That’s officially my new favorite thing about you.” A pause. “Well. A close second.”
I shouldn’t ask. It’s too desperate. But I ask anyway.
“What’s the first?”
“I’m not going to say.”
“Say it, Callen,” I insist like my whole life depends on it.
“Your eyes.” I go still on the rooftop, because I’m trying to understand the tingling sensation racing up and down my spine.
“My eyes?” I croak out.
“Yes, they’re fascinating. They change shades. Like a chameleon.”
“That’s… You noticed that? Um, that’s actually really sweet.”
“No, I mean your eyes are like a mood ring.” And there’s the knife, sliding in under the compliment, smooth as anything.
“It’s your tell. They shift hues when you lie to me.
Green when you’re straight, something hazier and cold when you’re not.
Helps me stay a step ahead of whatever it is you’re planning.
Which I’m always assuming you’re planning something, for the record. ”
I laugh out loud, alone on a rooftop, the sound carrying off the concrete then disappearing into the dark starless sky.
“Wow. Way to give a woman a compliment and take it all the way back in the same breath.”
He laughs too, that low rumble. “You’re also genuinely beautiful, Sylvie. It’s obvious to anyone with functioning eyes. Including you.”
“Cute.” I scoff it off, because if I absorb his praise, I’ll get attached to it.
“Okay. How about this? I’d like to bury my face in your tits. Is that better? Less backhanded?”
I nearly drop the binoculars.
“Much better,” I manage. “I was starting to worry. I keep putting them right in your face. I was thinking you didn’t notice.”
“Oh, I noticed the D-cups.”
“Callen.” I’m grinning like an idiot into the night. “You guessed my bra size. Over the phone. That’s real flattery—that means you’ve been studying.”
“I’m a very studious man.”
“Text me the address. I need to change into something lower cut first, and then I’m coming over.”
“All right.” A smile in his voice now, easy, warm, a man who’s stopped fighting it for the night. “See you soon, Sylvie.”
We hang up and I leap to my feet.
I fold the lawn chair. It snaps shut with a clack that ricochets off the rooftop door behind me, loud as a gunshot in all that stillness.
I freeze for a half second out of pure habit before I remember there’s no one up here but me.
Then, I eagerly coil the strap on the binoculars, and pack the whole kit into the black duffel while the leftover heat of the call drains slowly out of my chest. I don’t need the address.
Obviously, I don’t need the address. I’ve stood in the lobby of that building under three different names.
But he doesn’t know that, and right now I want to forget who I am and what I’m doing.
Just for one night, what if this was innocent?
My phone buzzes. I glance at it, expecting to see the first few numbers of his apartment building, but it’s something else. A message.
Callen
Before I send you my address…I’ve had a long couple of days. Please. No games tonight. Just the truth.
I stand at the edge of the roof with the city humming underneath me and the target’s window glowing across the street, his silhouette moving behind the glass now, up off the couch, carrying the empty bottle toward the kitchen, and I think about all the truths I’m not going to tell him.
That I’m on the payroll of a woman who wants him dead.
That I know his food order and his sleep schedule and exactly how much milk is in his fridge.
I’m not going to tell him that he’s a job. And the job ends with his lips shut and eyes closed for good.
And then I think about the one truth I can actually give him, the one that’s been the realest thing in this whole rotten job since the second I sat down in his booth.
The whole truth?
Callen
Yes.
I’m not coming over to eat. I’m coming over to fuck. Is that okay?
He doesn’t respond to that.
But a few seconds later, the address comes through.