None of which Hew liked.
He opened his mouth to say…he wasn’t sure. Probably something that would make him sound like an even bigger asshole. Thankfully, Sabrina saved him the embarrassment when she stepped off the last tread onto the second floor and announced, “Okay. I’m here.” She checked the old-fashioned analog clock on the wall above Ozzie’s bank of monitors. “With fifteen seconds to spare.”
She wore jeans and a plain white T-shirt. No frills. No nonsense. Just her.
It was a wonder Hew’s jockey shorts didn’t burst into flames.
Just her was everything he hadn’t allowed himself to want. Everything he’d told himself he couldn’t have.
She’d swept her hair into that messy bun she wore when she wanted it off her neck. And lord help him, that pale strip of skin from her collarbone to her delicate jawbone made his mouth go dry.
Her cheap, plastic flip-flops clacked on the floor as she made her way to the chair across from him. And he couldn’t help noting her toenails were painted a dark, sparkly purple.
He’d never had a thing for feet. Never really got the appeal.
But Sabrina’s feet?
They were long and graceful, with high arches and smooth skin and?—
Damn, man. You’ve spent months convincin’ everyone—includin’ yourself—that all ya feel for her is friendship. Then she tells you that there for a while she wanted more, and suddenly you’re waxin’ poetic about her damned feet?
After she sat, pulling her rolling chair close to the table, he tried to catch her eye. But she was either refusing to look at him, or she simply had no idea he was still stuck on their conversation from upstairs.
More than stuck. Mired. Cemented there until it was impossible to think about anything else.
Boss stood behind the chair at the head of the table. He cleared his throat once Graham, the last of the Knights to wander into the War Room, grabbed a seat.
“All right.” Boss folded his big arms over his even bigger chest. “We got ourselves a hostage downstairs who’s probably going to need some gentle persuading to answer a few questions.”
“Gentle persuading.” Ozzie snorted, but there was no humor in it. “That’s one way to say waterboarding.”
“We’re hoping it won’t come to that.” Boss’s face was grim. “We’re hoping that after nearly eight hours in the damp and the dark, she’s ready to pony up some answers.”
“She won’t be.”
There was quiet certainty in Sabrina’s tone. It had every head in the room turning in her direction.
“She’s slick,” Sabrina went on. “She had every man on her team eating out of her hand. If y’all want her to talk, you’re going to have to find the chink in her armor, the thing she wants above all else.”
“Tell us about her,” Boss said, no doubt hoping to build the arsenal of information that he would use against the woman during interrogation.
Sabrina hesitated. Then, slowly, steadily, she laid it all out. Everything she’d gleaned during her time as a hostage. From the tone of Black Widow’s voice when she spoke to each man in her crew to the glint in the blonde’s eye when she allowed the one they called Diesel to abuse Sabrina’s breast.
By the time Sabrina finished, Hew’s breath was ragged. He white-knuckled the edges of his chair to keep himself from flying down to the Bat Cave and throttling the hired assassin with his bare hands.
“Hummer, Diesel, and Black Widow are probably code names,” Boss muttered, rubbing a hand under his chin. “And given what you just told us about them, I’d say they’re either ex-military, ex-fed, ex-spook, or some combination of the three. Which means there are records. See if you can find anything on them, Ozzie.”
“Already on it.” Ozzie’s fingers flew over his laptop’s keyboard.
“And then there’s the one who hired them,” Sabrina said.
Boss’s bushy eyebrow arched up his forehead. “They told you who hired them?” he asked incredulously.
“Not directly.” Sabrina shook her head. “But I heard them talking. And the only time I saw Black Widow look unnerved was when she spoke to the guy.”
“Guy,” Fisher said. “So it was a dude who put them up to the job. A single entity and not some group.”
“I mean—” Sabrina twisted her fingers together. It was her habit when she was unsure of herself. She saw what she was doing and quickly hid her hands under the table. “I think it was a guy. They referred to him as a him.”
