“Sure.” She smiled wider. “I’d better go. See you later.” She left before he could add anything.
Always quick on the exit, that woman.
He followed her out into theliving room, only to watch the front door close behind her.
“So,” Deacon said.
“So,” Hammer repeated. “She’s got great…cookies.”
“I’m such a fan of her…chips,” Deacon added, trying not to laugh.
Noel glared. “You two are about as mature as a couple of fourth graders.” Like one of Addy’s students. He knew all about his neighbor, including the fact she didn’t do subterfuge.Addy was just as she appeared, an elementary school teacher, currently single, no pets. She relied on her friendship with Solene Hansen to fill her lonely nights, when she wasn’t having dinner—and nothing else—with Brent Morgan.
That prick.
“What’s the deal with the sexy neighbor?” Deacon wanted to know. “You sure as shit didn’t want me going out with her. But from what we know,you live like a monk.”
“Sad but true.” Hammer sighed. “Dude, get a life.”
“Firstly, don’t call me dude.”
Hammer cocked his head. “Firstly?”
“Secondly, Ihavea life. One devoted to my job, my passion for gardening—”
“Are you thirty or seventy?” Hammer guffawed. “Gardening? Like shoveling dirt over potatoes or dead bodies?” He laughed harder at his own joke. “Thebodies I understand. I—”
“Gardening,” Noel reiterated, doing his best not to grab the Jericho hidden under the back of his sweater and shoot Hammer with it, “and—”
“Nights filled with research on your lovely single neighbor. Don’t ask.” Deacon held off the obvious question. “I hacked your computer. You are seriously stalking that woman, Noel.”
Noel felt his cheeks heat. “Iam not. I just like to keep tabs on those around me. As asafetyprecaution. Tell me you don’t do the same.”
“Sure we do,” Hammer agreed. “But if my neighbor looked like her…” He thumbed at the doorway. “I’d have taken her out for dinner and a lot more from day one.”
“Some of us can keep it in our pants.” A burble caused them, as one, to look over at the baby now crawling towardthem. “Then again,” Noel added, “some of us can’t.”
Deacon rolled his eyes. “He’s not mine.”
“Not mine either,” Hammer said.
“I know for a fact he’s not mine.” Not unless that gorgeous woman he’d met at that cantina in Mexico had been poking holes in his condoms when he hadn’t been looking. Not likely, considering Noel always kept track of his possessions.
“Sure thing,Noel.” Deacon didn’t sound as if he believed him. But that didn’t bother Noel, because he didn’t believe Deacon or Hammer either. “I still think we need to give the little guy a name.”
Hammer shook his head. “That’s the dad’s responsibility.”
“And the mom’s.” Noel took the locket from his pocket, the same locket he’d found in the baby’s duffle bag. Inside the locket, where he’d expectedto see a picture of the mother or the baby, were a line of letters and numbers on one side and a name on the other.X6TFLandAngel. “Any luck on running this yet?” He held the locket toward Deacon.
Deacon sighed and picked up the baby tugging at his leg. “Nothing. I even hacked the Business files.” He held the kid like a football, and the baby grinned and waved an arm around. Deacon smileddown at him and continued, “Nothing there either, unless one of us slept with the notorious Angel and didn’t know it.”
Angel—one of the Business’s top contractors. Or what other people called assassins.
Hammer frowned. “No one’s ever seen her and lived to talk about it.” He paused with a look at Noel. “Then again, not many have ever seen Ice.” He turned to Deacon. “Or the Shadowand lived either. Well, except for the three of us and Big Joe.”
Every contractor who worked for the Business had a designation. Noel was Ice. Deacon, a thief, was appropriately named Shadow. And Hammer, no surprise, was the Destroyer. Hammer, Deacon and Noel knew each other from a few jobs they’d worked together, and they shared a common handler—Big Joe.
Angel had worked for theBusiness before she’d departed a few years ago. Big Joe had been her handler too. He’d once let slip that she’d done a few jobs for him before he’d taken on the firm’s most successful contractors—Ice, Shadow, and Destroyer.
