I give her a thumbs up before opening the accounts I've been sent overnight. I look through, immersing myself more in the work than in Leena’s conversation. The call eventually ends, and like before, Leena takes notes.
“It's another hunter sighting,” she explains. “From the east, but there was no attack.”
“That's good, they don't know that shifters are hiding in the mountains there… but how long can we keep this up?”
The phone rings yet again. Leena rushes for it, and the call begins. Once she ends it, I get her attention again. “It was Nate,” she says.
I perk up. “That's a high-priority call. What did he say?”
“It's some good news at least,” Leena replies, placing the phone on the table before reclining further into the chair. “He said he was able to find out some of the identities of the suspected hunters.”
“We need to be one hundred percent certain before we attack.”
Leena pauses, keeping her eyes on me. “Attack?”
“We're going to take the fight to the hunters,” I explain. “We can't just sit here and wait for stuff to happen.”
“So you're going to try and fight them on the full moon?”
I shake my head. “Even if it's not a full moon. Once the plans are properly implemented, we can begin our attack.” For some reason, everything I say seems to confuse Leena even more. “Is everything okay?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I'm not sure how I feel about senseless killing.”
“What they're doing to us, that's senseless,” he explains. “What we're doing is different.”
“But it's still murder,” she argues.
I pause for air. “Leena, it's kill or be killed in this world.”
I can see her battle with her morals. “Yes, I get that, but I think it's much better if that happens in self-defense. It sounds better to me than when we talk about killing people as they live their normal civilian lives.”
I'm about to counter this when the phone rings again. I try to reach for it, but Leena gets there first. She looks at the screen and is just about to answer.
“Who is it?”
“It says Jill.” I'm unable to control what my face does after that. Leena sees this and is shocked. “What's going on? Why do you look so annoyed?”
“Jill is my ex-wife. I completely forgot her number was on my phone. We haven't talked in years.”
“Oh…” Her tone is unreadable. “Do you want to answer it?” The call ends, but starts up just a second later.
I shake my head. “I don't want to talk to her. Looks like you picked the perfect day to start answering my calls.”
“I'm not sure what the protocol is for an ex-wife, so I'll just leave the call on speaker.”
Leena swipes across the screen to answer the call. “I thought I'd have to call a couple more times before you’d answer,” Jill gripes.
I remain silent, and so does Leena, until she begins her scripted greeting.
“Hello, this is Leena, Grant's—”
“Oh, I'm sorry,” Jill apologizes. “I didn't realize he had a woman in the house. My goodness, you must feel like I'm intruding with this call.”
Leena looks more confused than I do. “No, I'm just his assistant.”
The simplification annoys me so much, even though I try not to show it.
Leena and I have been sleeping together, and we're not exactly shy about wanting each other. It seems a bit reductive to announce herself like that, even if there's some truth to it.
