“There aren’t any bullets in your gun right now. Figured that it might not be the best plan ever to give you a loaded weapon to point at me while you are still pissed.” He sucked the inside of his cheek. “And you’re clearly pissed at me.”
He had no idea how truly pissed she currently felt. “You lied to me.”
“Sweetheart, I lie to everyone. You’re not special.”
And that hurt. His brutal words slammed right into her heart. They hurt far, far more than they should have.
She backed up. Bumped into the side of the bed.
A frown pulled at his dark eyebrows. “What is it?” His hand lifted, as if he’d touch her.
She dodged his touch. “I need a shower. I need to brush my teeth.” Desperately. “And I need coffee. A boatload of it.”
“I…” Cass stopped. Pressed his lips together. “I…upset you.”
“Give the man a giant cookie. Yes, yes, you did upset me. Hey, pro tip, don’t tell the woman you fucked into near blackout bliss that she is not special. Think it, sure, whatever.” Jerk. “But don’t say the actual words. Not cool. Total dick move, in fact.” She’d spied an open door that led to what she thought-slash-hoped was the bathroom. Fantastic.
“You’re the best fuck I’ve ever had.”
She rolled her eyes at the absolute jerk. “Best fuck, not special, check. A body in the dark. Got it. Look, buddy, you are doing yourself zero favors here with me. You should probably stop while you are already fifty paces behind where you need to be.”
“Agnes.”
“Cass.”
His breath heaved out. “I meant…” Gritted. Snapped. “I spend most of my days lying to people. It’s who I am. I am a liar. I am a criminal. I am a thief. I am a killer.”
“And you have the tats to prove that, don’t you?” As if she didn’t know all the tats on his body held different meanings. I am a killer. She wasn’t rolling her eyes any longer. She was staring dead at him. She still gripped the gun. The gun that didn’t have any bullets in it.
His square jaw tightened. “The snake tattoo is what makes you so angry.”
Was he serious? “I was twenty-one years old,” she snapped at him. She wasn’t pissed. She was so furious that her whole body practically vibrated. And if she had not been so exhausted when they arrived at this—this safe house, then she would have given him hell sooner. But she was awake now, and it was time for that hell to be given in full force. “A bastard who was part of your Twin Cobras—he stalked me and my fiancé?—”
“Fiancé?”
“Max had just asked me to marry him. We were going to have a beautiful life.” She stopped. Huffed out a breath. The pain was just so strong that she huffed out the breath as she tried to push the ache from her body. But it was an ache that never left. “We had a beautiful life.” A careful correction. “Had one. Our time together was beautiful. It was just way too short. I should have been with him forever. I should have loved him forever.”
Cass took a step back. His expression had turned into a granite mask. No emotion showed.
“But I didn’t have forever with Max. I lost my forever one dark night when a man with a Twin Cobra tattoo on his wrist thought it was fun to terrorize us. Max jumped in front of me, but Max—he didn’t know how to fight. Certainly not how to kill.” Max hadn’t even been on the football team in high school. He’d been in the band. The drum major. She’d gone to every game and cheered wildly for him, though, as if he’d been the star quarterback. “He didn’t know about violence. Killing was not in his nature.”
“I know how to kill.” Dark. As dark as his expression. As dark as his eyes. “That’s my specialty.”
She barely heard him. “Max was going to be a doctor. He was going to save lives. But that bastard took his life. Just attacked Max so that he could get to me.” She pressed her left hand to her stomach. “Seven times. I felt every stab. I was on the ground, and Max was beside me, and that monster just—he slit Max’s throat in front of me. I knew Max was dying, and there was nothing I could do, and I prayed that I would die, too.”
“Agnes.”
She had never admitted that stark truth to anyone—that she wanted to die. She’d kept the painful secret. She hadn’t told her brothers. Not her shrink. “I didn’t die. I woke up in the hospital.” Without Max. With stitches in her that had turned into scars that were constant reminders of the worst night of her life. “I woke up, and the thing that kept me going after I buried Max was that I knew that I had a purpose.”
Cass waited.
Her purpose… “To find him. To kill him.”
Cass’s gaze searched her face. “And that’s when you became an FBI agent.”
A mocking laugh. As if it had been that easy. “Not like you flip a switch and get accepted into the Bureau. I finished my degree first. Started self-defense training. Learned everything I could about criminal psychology, crime scenes, evidence collection….” Agnes released a long exhale as she tried to steady herself. “And then I got my ass in the FBI.”
“You got on Gray’s team.”
