33. Smith
Chapter 33
Smith
I t hurts like a bitch, the agony spreading fast through my arm and upper chest. But through the pain, I don’t miss the choked cry from Calista.
She rushes the guy who shot me. I struggle to pull myself up off the floor, just in time to see her with what looks like some kind of vibrator in her hand. She skids across the smooth desktop, kicking his arm that holds the gun. A second bullet goes wide as the thing in her hand makes contact with balls and then his chest.
Oh fuck.
It’s a stun gun.
It cracks and sings, and by the time I’m on my feet, Eric’s on his back. She fires at his nuts, doesn’t stop until another scream bursts from her lips, one so loud it smothers his. Then she pulls out an actual gun—I recognize it—and she shoots him, point fucking blank.
“You killed him. You killed Smith! You fuck?—”
“Calista?”
She shrieks, drops the gun, and turns. A sob, ugly and big, breaks free. She flings the stun gun and rushes at me as the room fills with the other Knights.
I’m pretty fucking sure I’m bleeding all over the place, more blood than I’d expect from a clean shot.
But before I can say anything, the world wavers as Calista throws her arms around me and kisses me.
I stagger like I can’t hold any weight, like standing is treacherous. My legs wobble.
My arm is wet and so’s my side. And she’s talking, along with the others, but their voices are far away, like I’m hearing them from the inside of a tunnel.
The room starts to spin and go gray.
Everything gets dim and turns black as I crumple down to the floor once again.
“Calista’s okay. Not a scratch, she…”
I shoot fucking Jones a look, trying not to wince at the pain in my side. “Can I finish bleeding to death in peace?”
“You’re not bleeding to death. Not anymore. The bullet nicked an artery. You’re sewn up and on bed rest.”
I nod. “The bodies?”
“They’ll be found in the wreckage of the car. According to Forensics, the investigation is finished, they’ll have four bodies. One they can’t place, and…”
He doesn’t need to say it. We both know who it’ll be.
Johnny’s off to Washington, news of the explosion no doubt reaching him. But he’s gone. And Jones informed me he called to say all of our conclusions checked out. They’d wanted to question Riley, Brown, and the others in the car, but you can’t ask the dead and expect an answer .
Shit. I lie back, the pain’s throb setting in now that the drugs they gave me for the stitches wears off.
I don’t mind the pain.
It’s confirmation that I saved Calista’s life.
But fuck. I didn’t want her anywhere near there. What we’d learned is that this guy was greedy, depraved, and working the senator. Maybe it was the other way around because yeah, CIA goes bad, all the fucking time. Agents both retired and active can be corrupt. Like people anywhere.
But Johnny CIA turned out to be one of the good ones, and maybe even Riley is too.
Not fucking Eric T. Brown. That bastard, a man I’ve never met before, was the pin holding everything together.
And I regret his death.
Not that he’s dead, though.
How it happened. The fucker should have suffered slowly, in agony, by my hand for calling Calista a cunt, by threatening to brutally rape and kill her. If I’d been able to, I’d have taken him down and skinned him alive with a goddamn mandolin, done things to him that would make Reaper both impressed and a little jealous.
I’d have made the fucker last, screaming to his bitter end.
Instead, he pulled the fucking trigger, and I only had time to shove Calista out of the way.
“She killed him.”
“Yeah, I know.” I open an eye and look at Jones. “Get the fuck out.”
“I’m going to talk to the doctor, then I’ll be back. Don’t be an asshole.”
Closing my eyes again, I try to place the weird emptiness in me that writhes with unease.
Calista killed someone.
Yeah, I know. She’s CIA. She’s trained. Maybe not to go and zap a man in the balls for so long and hard, followed by an assault on the chest and then a shot to the head when he was already down, but she did. And I know why.
For me.
She did it for me.
And that’s something she’s going to have to live with. In her living ‘death,’ she’s going to have to fucking live with it.
But even knowing all of that doesn’t stop me from the carnal thoughts about her that always seem to fog up my brain. Maybe it’s the drugs. Maybe it’s something more.
What I’d really like is to have her ride me. And I’m not going to lie. There’s a part that wants her in a hot little nurse outfit while she takes care of my whims on the road to recovery.
I’d start that with her deep throating me, sucking my balls. Maybe keep her snuggled next to me, her scent in my nose, soothing me, her heat warming me. Fuck, and we could argue and flirt, and I could take the time to learn more about her, the things that a dossier can never hold.
The things I haven’t discovered yet that make her tick. What her favorite food is, her favorite song. Her favorite band. She seems like an Einstürzende Neubauten girl to me, rocking out to complex industrial German music. Yeah, Collapsing New Buildings is even her when I translate it. A facet of her. Of us. She?—
My eyes snap open.
What the actual fuck?
Inside my chest, my heart starts to throb and ache, and a vise tightens on my head.
How did a sex fantasy turn into mush?
No.
No fucking way.
She’s too young .
She’s not my type—okay, in essence she’s exactly my type, but she’s too fucking young. And I’m sending her as far away as I can.
“You can go home tomorrow.”
“I’m not a fucking baby,” I yell at Jones. “The shot went right through.”
“And it hit an artery. You lost a shit ton of blood. And fuck if I’m going to go and find another person to replace you in the Knighthood. It’s too much work.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
Jones sits on the chair opposite me. “She’s out there. Where are you sending her?”
“A long way from here.”
He rubs a hand over his eyes. “Do you think it’s that easy? I’ve been working on the stolen weapons shit for a few months. Not for the same reasons the CIA was. But there’s a guy I wanted and…” He shrugs. “Calista had an electronic trail turn up. A fluke, in the whole list of stuff you showed me. I saw that he went to a titty bar in Vietnam with a well-known Bolivian porn guy. Never would have found that link without her digging.”
“Let me guess. The guy’s run trafficked women to Rare Birds, Inc. and to the Collectors.” I pause. “And no, I don’t think it’ll be easy to send her away. She’ll miss her brother…”
I trail off because he’s staring at me.
“I meant breaking down the Collectors and all their subsidiaries,” he says with a lifted eyebrow. “We knew when we rescued Dakota that we wouldn’t get them all, and leaving some around to be watched helps us track more of them. But the more we uncover?—”
“The more of them pop up. I’m fucking aware.”
“Loose strands everywhere.” I laugh, but neither of us mistake it for humor. “We need a super database to keep track of all of this.”
Jones rises. “Interesting you say that.”
“Why?” I narrow my eyes at him.
“Remember what you had to do to blow up her life?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, why not take it further?”
I don’t speak. I don’t think I trust Jones right now.
“I’ve got a proposal,” he says. “If you’re willing to listen.”