“I asked you not to send the photos because I have everything under control,” he said, switching on his turn signal and crossing two lanes of traffic. The rumble of the roadway echoed up from the rusted hole in the floorboard and in through the busted back windshield.
She frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“If you truly work for Interpol, then—”
“If?” she interrupted him. Any apprehension she still felt morphed into indignation. “There’s no if about it. I do work for Interpol. Have since I was twenty-two years old.”
The look he sent her was pitying. She scowled at him because she’d thought they were finished with all that nonsense.
“I know all about you, Sonya,” he told her. “I did my research before letting Spider catch me in his web.”
He did research on her? Well, that sounded ominous. Except, hang on a minute…
“You let him catch you?”
“Yes.” Angel hit her with his gaze. “I should not tell you what I am about to tell you. But I can see you need a reason to trust me. I had hoped…” He stopped, his jaw twitching from side to side like he wanted to pop it.
Hang on a tick-tock. Had her momentary crisis of faith actually…hurt his feelings?
What a mind-blowingly curious concept. She’d thought the Prince of Shadows didn’t suffer feelings. At least not the way normal people did.
“Since leaving Iran, I have worked for an American defense firm funded, run, and overseen by President Thompson and his Joint Chiefs,” he said, his ruined voice making each word sound as if it was filled with portent. “The goal of this defense firm was to handpick operators capable of completing missions too dangerous or too politically risky for traditional forces.”
Okeydokey, then. That sounded…illegal. Of course, having worked with various governments and Intelligence communities, she’d come to realize legality was sort of like beauty when it came to international politics. It was in the eye of the beholder.
Truthfully, she wasn’t all that surprised the Americans had gathered the Prince of Shadows into the bosom of their defense force. After all, they prided themselves on being the best of the best. And judging by what she’d seen of Angel so far, there was no one better.
“How can President Thompson oversee and run a defense firm when he left office in January?” She watched his reaction closely. She was good at spotting lies.
“He cannot. But before he left, he set up a trust to pay our salaries for one additional year and gave us one final mandate.”
Color her intrigued. “Which is?”
“Destroy the man who goes by the name of Spider and burn his criminal empire to the ground. Afterward, Black Knights Inc. will shutter its clandestine doors.”
A hurricane of thoughts swirled and blustered inside her brain. She seized on one thing as it flew by her. “Black Knights Inc.? That’s the group Grafton blames for the death of his son.”
“Yes.”
“And you work for them?”
“Yes.”
An awful thought occurred. “Does he know you work for them? Did he bring you here because—”
“No.” Angel shook his head. She squinted her eyes and tried to picture him with long hair like Mark’s. It would suit him, she decided. Soften his harshly beautiful features. “I have never been listed on BKI’s roster. Have never done any work for the civilian side of the business. President Thompson was careful never to mention me by code name in the internal documents he shared with his staff. Jamin “Angel” Agassi is a ghost, known only by whispered name to the Black Knights.”
“But you’ve been working on this side of the pond, helping Western governments track down—”
“None of them know me as Angel. When working with them, I have always gone by an alias.”
“Wow.” She shook her head, flabbergasted by how complicated his life was. “How do you keep it all straight? Majid Abass became the Prince of Shadows when he turned double agent. The Prince of Shadows became Angel Agassi when he went to work for the American president. And then Angel Agassi became…” She cocked her head. “What’s your other alias?”
“I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you.”
She sucked in a startled breath. But then he looked over at her, his dark eyes twinkling.
“Oh, ha ha. Very funny.” She punched him in the arm, immediately regretting it because one did not punch the Prince of Shadows. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, now both sides of his mouth twitched.
