My phone vibrates. Vanya, the Kozlov’s charmer, right on schedule.
Eyes on Target Two. Confirmation?
Proceed, I reply.
This is how I work. Find the leverage, test the cracks, and break what needs breaking.
Another notification. A link to a live video. The woman from the pictures on Jordan’s fridge lives her life, oblivious to the fact that she’s being tailed and recorded by my guys as she works her second job at a coffee shop.
I transfer the video feed to a tablet, cross to Jordan’s room, and unlock her door. The sharp, deliberate click splits the silence.
She spins as I enter, caught in the act of pacing, like we’re two sides of the same restless coin. Her brown hair hangs loose around her face. Our gazes lock and hold.
There’s the charge again, that impossible flash. She doesn’t shrink. Doesn’t beg. Clear, ruthless curiosity tangles with the fear threaded through her.
A curiosity that shoots a spark of desire down my spine.
Unacceptable.
I draw closer and extend the tablet.
She studies me, narrowing her eyes as if she’s weighing her options. Then she moves in, careful but unafraid. I catch her scent as she nears, the same blend of lavender and citrus that clouded my mind while I kissed her.
Close, so close, but that’s as far as it goes.
No more contact. Not ever again.
She accepts the tablet. Her fingers skirt mine, a hair’s width away. Our skin never touches.
Good. She’s learning.
The instant she sees the screen, the gleam in her eyes darkens. Horror drains her face to chalk. Her throat spasms with a dry, helpless swallow as her gaze fixates on the ordinary but live scene unfolding on the monitor.
“Her name is Ashley Connelly.” I’ve erased my earlier mistakes. The man in this room is as he should be. Calm, collected, and focused on the job. “She lives at 1412 Northwood Avenue. She takes the brown line to work. Her mother has Parkinson’s.”
“She’s like a sister.” She clings to the tablet with white knuckles. The metal groans in her grip. “Why are you doing this?” Her voice cracks as she peers at me with red-rimmed eyes. “She has nothing to do with anything!”
I watch the tears bead along the edge of her lashes.
Absolute cold seeps through me as whatever heat flickered between us disappears.
This is better.
Simpler.
I know the tools of fear and pain intimately.
“Leverage. You’re withholding an asset. And I’m holding one of yours.”
The threat needs no explanation when the tablet in her hands already spells everything out.
She hugs the device to her chest, biting her lip. “Please don’t hurt her.” She steps toward me and reaches out with her free hand. “Kirill, please. I don’t know anything. She doesn’t?—”
“Give me what I want, and this ends.”
That’s a lie.
Because I now want more than just the mission.
