Think I’m in love?
I shake all the crazy thoughts away and manage to croak out something sensible.
“Thank you.”
To which, he responds not as sensibly...with a grunt.
Huh.
I have no idea how to decipher that. Is that a ‘you’re welcome’grunt? An ‘I didn’t do it for you’grunt? A ‘please stop staring at me, strange blood-covered girl’ grunt?
Jassy would know. Jassy would have already figured out his entire backstory based on the way he holds the steering wheel and the micro-expressions he probably isn’t even making because his face is about as expressive as a glacier.
But since I’m not Jassy, but just Mira who develops crushes at the most wildly inappropriate times—
“Are you...” I try again, grasping for something, anything, to ground this situation in reality. “Are you FBI? CIA? Interpol?”
“None of those.”
My courage nearly wilts at the curtness of his voice, but I tell myself to press on.
“Then—are you some kind of vigilante? Are you like those guys behindSTRAKH?”I know I’m rambling, but the silence in this car is suffocating, and if I don’t fill it with something, I’m going to start thinking about all the blood I just saw, all the bodies, all the ways this night could still go wrong.
“Wait, let me guess—are you like a warrior prince like Sheikh Altair Al-Atassi? Or an antihero—”
“I am not like any of them.”
Oh, finally, an answer.
“But if I have to describe myself—”
His cold blue gaze slides to mine, just long enough for me to see something glitter in their depths.
“I guess I should say I’m one of the bad guys.”
The words hang in the air between us.
From the back seat, the girl whimpers.
And all I can think is:frying pan, meet fire.
