Now he shifted toward her. “Haven’t you heard?” Mocking. “I’m the leader of the Night Strikers. When I snap my fingers…” He snapped his fingers. “Shit gets done.”
Uh, huh. “Is that supposed to be reassuring or threatening?” Because it definitely seemed to be a bit of both.
His hand dropped. “I’m not threatening you. I told you before, and I’ll say it again, I will never hurt you.”
“Because you don’t hurt innocents.” She put the gun down on the bed. She’d been holding the weapon the entire time. As if it would have done her any good without bullets. As if I could have shot him. “I’m not innocent.”
“Yeah, I know. But you are mine.”
His… No, she was pretending to be his.
He’d whirled away once more and was heading for the door. He hauled it open.
“I’m pretending to be yours,” she clarified. Because it seemed like an important clarification to note.
A brief hesitation. Then, “If that’s what you have to tell yourself.”
What she had to tell herself?
“You’re mine, Agnes, and I always guard what belongs to me.”
And on that deep, dark, possessive note, he left her. The door shut softly behind him.
Chapter Thirteen
“We have a problem,” Gray told him.
Cass glared at the coffee pot. Was he doing this crap right? He’d poured in the water and shoved several scoops of coffee into the thing and now the light was red, and something was hissing.
“Are you listening to me?” Gray demanded.
“The phone is shoved against my ear, and I hear your voice annoying the hell out of me, so, yeah, I’m listening.” Black liquid had just begun to slowly drip out. A quick smile curled Cass’s lips. “I’ll be damned.”
“Yeah, we both know that, been aware for years and years, but focus on the current problem, could you?”
“I have lots of problems. The newest one would be that Agnes wakes up feeling ragey. Definitely not a morning person. No one warned me about that quirk. I open my eyes, and the woman beside me in bed is about to go in for the kill.”
Silence. Then, “Beside you in bed…” A rough expulsion of air. “Don’t want to know that shit. Don’t want to know because it does not help the current problem. At all.”
“You didn’t tell me you wanted the Twins taken down because of her. You never mentioned the name Agnes Quinn to me.” That pissed him off. “Not. Once.”
“Uh, and so what if I had mentioned her to you?” Gray seemed genuinely confused. “What good would that have done? You didn’t know the woman. Your paths had never crossed until you met not too long ago outside my office.”
“Her fucking fiancé was killed right in front of her. She loved him.” The coffee kept dripping and hissing. He’d put in a few different blends because he wasn’t sure what Agnes liked. He’d figured if he added them all, then he was bound to wind up with a taste she might enjoy. “The prick slit her fiancé’s throat. She watched him bleed out and she wanted to die right there with him.”
“She…wanted to die?”
He didn’t take his eyes off that stupid, dripping coffee. How long was this gonna take? “She didn’t know we were after a serial team.” The Twins. That was his target. Not the whole MC network. Just the two at the top. The ones who got off on killing and their sick, sadistic game. Two killers. Two monsters. “She works for you. She profiles with you. But you never once told her this shit? Newsflash, the woman is pissed at you.”
“I’ve been trying to protect Agnes. You do not know what’s fully involved here.”
“Uh, shocking. Because you keep secrets.”
“So the hell do you. I told you to get out long ago, but you wanted vengeance, so you burned down the world. You went after what you wanted. I’ve been trying to protect your ass, trying to keep you out of prison, and I can only control so many fires for so long—hell, especially since you keep setting them every time I turn around!”
“What can I say? I like the way the flames dance.”
“This shit isn’t funny. I never thought you and Agnes would collide this way, all right? Never suspected you two would hook up in a one-night stand or whatever the hell you did. I’m a profiler, but I’m not psychic. I could not predict that twist.”
