Tobias adjusted his glasses. “With my client list, I find that cameras are a necessity.”
Soren’s mouth hooked up at the corner again. “So the cops can find out which of your clients is the one who snaps and kills you?”
Tobias shrugged. “Perhaps. But that’s not what I use it for. With my patients, what they say and what they mean are often two very different things. Being able to go back and observe them at my leisure allows me to compare the two so I can get to the truth.”
“How many cameras are there?” Soren set the clock back on the shelf in its proper place this time.
“Why? Worried you’re on more than one?”
Soren sauntered back to the single chair in the center of the room. “I don’t worry about much, Doc. I’m retired. I’m all about that easy living.”
Tobias’s brow shot up. “Yet, here you are, in my office, warning me not to look any closer at Paddy Killeen because you’re under contract. I’m not sure you understand what retirement means.”
“Oh, I understand just fine. What’s that saying? Do what you love and you never work a day in your life?”
Fuck, the man’s voice was distracting. “And you love being an independent contractor?”
“No, Doc. I like taking out the trash. I love it so much that, sometimes, when all the sun and fun gets to be too much, I come out of retirement, especially when the trash is especially dirty. Toxic even. So toxic that, when you attempt to clean it up, it could spill and poison other areas of your life.”
Tobias blinked at him. “And you think I was going to…what? Attempt to do a bit of garbage collecting myself?”
“Exactly. And you seem like a guy who likes to keep his things tidy.” Soren snickered when he noticed a small statue of Buddha on the corner of Tobias’s desk. He held it up. “You’re a Buddhist? That I find hard to believe.”
They were barely two feet apart now. Close enough for Tobias to get a good whiff of motor oil and ocean air. Two things that weren’t inherently sexy yet, on this man, this killer in front of him, had his body taking notice. There was something about Soren that seemed to overwhelm all the locks Tobias had in place to keep himself in check. If anything made him nervous about the assassin, it was that.
“Why’s that? Do I not seem zen to you?”
“If I’m being honest, I just can’t get past this feeling that you’re the type of guy who used to pull the wings off butterflies.”
“No. I did pin them to a board on my wall. But it was for purely scientific purposes.”
“Now that’s not very in line with the Buddha’s teachings,” Soren teased.
The guy’s voice wasreallydistracting. “I’m only just starting my path to enlightenment.”
Soren checked his watch and grimaced. “Looks like our session’s over,” he said, setting the Buddha down and pointing it toward Tobias, letting him know he knew it was another camera. “Stay away from Paddy Killeen. I promise he’ll get everything he has coming to him.”
Tobias eyed Soren’s ass as he left his office, shutting the door behind him, as if that was the end of the discussion, as if Tobias would simply stand down and let the professionals do the job. But that wasn’t happening. He’d been fantasizing about taking out Killeen for too long. He’d done the leg work. He knew what he needed to do. He just hadn’t finalized the plan.
Tobias didn’t like the idea of rushing, but he certainly wasn’t about to give up on something he’d worked so hard for, and he definitely wasn’t letting some slow-talking, boat-shoe-wearing beach bum steal this right out from under him. The plan wasn’t finished, but it was close enough.
Paddy Killeen had to die tonight.
6
Soren
Soren eyed the clock on the dash of the rental SUV and settled back in the driver’s seat, cueing up KolorKrusher on his phone. Stupid fucking game. He kind of hated Ronin for getting him addicted to it, but, damn, it passed the hours, especially when they’d been doing recon or surveillance on the warehouses Jonah and Cas had sent them to demo after they’d disrupted the trafficking operation.
Killeen usually messed around for another hour in his office, so Soren had time before nightfall to get in a couple of rounds on the game. The latest level had stumped him for three days. His thumbs flew over the screen, matching and sorting to the cheesy music of the stupidly addictive game.
He cursed as he missed an easy combo and then forgot about the game entirely as a flash of movement caught his eye. Over the years, Soren had become something of a human motion detector, even in a dead sleep.
He twisted for a better look, and his jaw dropped open in disbelief. A split second later, he had the door to his SUV cracked, tension lining his muscles before he caught himself, and pulled it gently shut again. He watched with a mixture of naked curiosity and amusement as Tobias Eastman, revered psychologist, slipped right past Killeen’s security detail parked at the back of the building and disappeared around the corner.Un-fucking-real.
Craning his neck, Soren swept the nearby parking lots in search of Eastman’s car but came up empty. That was a point in the doctor’s favor. He’d emerged from a stand of bushes and was obviously taking advantage of the shop’s side entrance. Soren was curious as hell how the man was going to get past the security locks on the door, but something told him Eastman would have already worked that out. The man was fastidious, after all.
He started to call Ronin to have him patch into the shop’s security cameras, so he could watch, but caught himself at the last second again.
