But the darkness doesn’t want to be smart.
The darkness wantsanswers.
I hear the water shut off. Hear the door open, see her coming toward me, looking through me.
Then she stops.
Stares at the desk, at the notebook that is no longer in the same spot because I dropped it. She inhales sharply at the realization.
I drop the invisibility.
“Hello, Mia.”
CHAPTER 33
MIA
The voice comesfrom nowhere and everywhere at once, and every nerve ending in my body ignites.
“Hello, Mia.”
I spin, hand already reaching for the gun I don’t have—fuck, I left it with Kat—and my eyes find him standing by the desk. Not a shadow. Not a trick of the light.
Vanguard
He’s in the suit. The full tactical armor, all black and gleaming in spots with something that could be blood, the kind of thing that makes him look less like a man and more like a weapon of mass destruction.
And on the desk, my notebook lies splayed open where he must have dropped it.
My notebook. The one with all my observations, my intel, my?—
Oh god.
Oh fuck.
“Or should I say—what’s the proper term?” He steps toward me, and I step back before I can stop myself. His eyes are flat. Dead. The impossible blue I’ve memorized has gone icy coldand distant, like something vital behind them has been switched off. “Agent Baxter? Operative Baxter?” He takes another step forward, I take another backward. “What do your handlers call you when you’re reporting on the asset you’ve been fucking? Baxter’s not even your real name is it? Is Mia?”
“Nate—” I say, though I’m trying to figure out the best way out of this, out of here. When shit went down at the warehouse, part of me wondered if it had been him—it had been too chaotic to tell and I ran at the first opportunity. And if that was the case then my cover was already blown. But seeing him with my notebook means it’s not just blown, it’s absolutely imploded.
“Don’t you even try that,” he says, his voice like steel. “Don’t say my name like that. Like we’re still—” He laughs, and the sound makes my blood run cold. It’s borderline manic. “Like any of it was real.”
My back hits the wall. Nowhere left to go.
God, I hope Bayo is listening right now.
Vanguard closes the distance between us, planting one hand beside my head, leaning in close. Close enough that I can feel the heat radiating off his body, smell wind and ozone and something darker underneath.
Something like violence, barely contained.
I have to think my way out of this before it’s too late and yet I can’t remember any contingency plans, can’t remember much of anything because the anger and the hurt and the million emotions that are tearing at him in front of my eyes are stealing my ability to be rational, to be the agent I need to be.
“I was at the warehouse tonight,” he says quietly.
Well, that confirms it.
“Watched the whole thing,” he says. “You’re quite the little killer, aren’t you? Maybe that should be your new nickname, huh? I mean, that knife work was impressive. Professional. You didn’t feel a thing, did you? Not a moral bone in that body.”
My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat. “Let me explain?—”
