I shook my head, I didn’t want her to say it. “Worse?”
The agents went quiet. Maya perked up on a shoulder, now spilling wine for her arm. “Well, there is the meeting tomorrow, so maybe.” She laughed so hard, the wine had covered most of her plates and dishes on her side of the table.
In was in the file, the meeting, the reason she didn’t want to be seen by any Ashford’s today. “What’s the meeting about?”
“Classified,” she said.
“Well, I think you should perhaps drink some water, and think about taking a nap,” I said.
She giggled. “Ok, dad, sending the kids to go nap. You know, my benefactor didn’t tell me anything about these restrictions.Theywere very clear, I could get drunk. Wasted. As long as it was somewhere private.
I stared at all four of them. It was my turn to tell these people what to do. Maya’s head was probably worse than Artemis’s, she’s seen the pits. My shoulder sent a shimmy shiver down both arms. “You three. Finish working. Maya. Bed. It’s big enough for five people, I hope you don’t mind Artemis in there.”
One of the agents perked up. “We’re actually waiting on a vehicle to arrive so we can load the boxes.”
“Ok, good, well, go wait with the boxes. I have my orders too. And I don’t know how I rank among FBI agents, but I’m probably being paid more, so I win,” I said. And they followed my orders. Maya tried to take a bottle of wine with her, but I was quick to take it away. She needed these drunken times tounthink everything she knows—but she knew a lot—more than the FBI could know apparently.
I needed to know.
17. ARTEMIS
I woke from my nap in the middle of the night. Maya was snoring beside me, hugging a pillow in a vice grip. My head continued to throb and ache—with each of the pulsations in my head, a flicker of an image, a flash of light cracking through my brain almost. It was the sound of bullets, the harshness of a gun ripping through a skull. It’s all I could think about.
Everything I wore was creased up and slightly stiff as I walked out of the bedroom to the lounge, where Donovan was laid on a sofa, staring at the light above. He shuffled a deck of cards on his chest, splitting them in two, then looking at the two numbers on the deck.
“Damn,” he grumbled, lowering the cards and seeing me standing in front of him. “Jesus, don’t do that.”
“You’re supposed to be on duty,” I said.
“So are you,” he grumbled, shuffling upright on the sofa. “How was your nap?”
“It was so nice,” I said. “But my head is killing.”
Donovan stood in a huff. “Get your ass in here,” he directed me into the dining room. “Maya ordered a lot of food. It’s all very edible still. And water, you need to hydrate at all times. Just teach your dick it doesn’t need to piss all the time.”
Now I was grumbly. I wanted my morning—evening hug and maybe even a little more intimacy. I wasn’t asking for the world, I was just asking for a part of it. The cute part. The one I was sure would cure my headache.
“Are you ok though?” he asked again and now was my chance.
“It’s all—in my mind,” I let out.
He pulled me into that hug with force, patting my back and rubbing circles. “This is normal,” he whispered. “You might never get used to it, but you will learn to let it not get to you.”
“I want to sit on the sofa for a bit.” It made sense. I wouldn’t always be stuck with the images. Something worse was bound to appear that would scar me in a way I might never recover. Fucking hell. What was I doing here? All for revenge. All for a man. All to show him I was stronger. I had to do this for me.
We went back to the sofa where we continued to stay cuddled up together. I wasn’t particularly hungry, but I was hungry to spend time with Donovan alone. Something had changed between us, and it was so special, I wanted to make sure he still felt it.
Donovan kept me close with his hands around me, secured in place. He kissed me on the cheek. “I got orders to keep her from talking about her benefactor, who we’re still not allowed to know.”
“Is that what was happening when I took my comms out?” I asked, lifting a hand to my ear. “Wait. I didn’t take it out.”
“No, I did, and I wasn’t going to let you sleep with the thing in, Jinksy’s a talker,” he said, turning his head to show me he wasn’t wearing his either. “So, what do you think about your second job?”
I shrugged. “It’s—a lot like babysitting, and Maya is great, she’s the client, so—”
“No,” he said quietly. “Whoever she works for is the client. They’ve put is in charge of babysitting, and I had to put her to bed on orders.”
I’d recalled some of it in a blur, mostly when Maya would kick me from the other side of the bed and snore. Wine drunk would definitely do that to you. I was lowkey jealous she got to do that. If I was able to get drunk and forget what I’d seen and heard today, I’d be a lot happier.
