"I was not joking."
"I know. That's what makes it funny." I cover my face with my hands. "This is insane. You know that, right? This whole thing is insane."
"Yes," he agrees. "But you signed the contract."
"Stop saying that."
"It is true."
I peek through my fingers. He's watching me with that unnerving focus, like I'm a puzzle he's determined to solve.
"Three days," I say.
"Three days," he confirms.
"And then it's over."
"And then," he says slowly, "the mission is complete."
Something about the way he says it sounds like a promise and a threat.
I drop my hands. "Fine. But you're buying the coffee. I need at least four cups before I can deal with teaching you how to pretend to be in love with me."
"Five," he counters.
"What?"
"You will need five. You are very tense."
"I'm tense because there's an Orc in my living room with a battle axe."
"Six," he decides, and heads for the door.
I follow, because apparently my survival instincts died with the third margarita.
This is going to be a disaster.
But at least it won't be boring.
CHAPTER 2
KRUK
The asset talks.
She talks when she buckles her seatbelt. She talks when I check the mirrors, adjust the seat, and verify the fuel gauge. She talks when I pull onto the street, when I turn left at the intersection, when I merge onto the highway.
She has not stopped talking.
"So the thing about my sister is she's very traditional, which is why the pastel theme, right? Because pastels say 'classic elegance' or something, I don't know, I wasn't really listening when she explained it the first seventy-three times, but the point is that you can't just show up looking like you're about to storm a castle because that's going to make her think I'm having some crisis, which I'm not, I'm totally fine, I'm completely fine, this is all completely normal and?—"
"Breathe," I tell her, my voice cutting through the stream of words like a blade through tissue.
She obeys immediately. Sucks in the air through her nose, sharp, desperate. Her chest rises, holds. I count three seconds before she releases it in a shaky, uneven exhale that fogs the window briefly. Her fingers dig into the coffee cup, knuckles going white against the cardboard.
"Sorry," she says automatically, the word tumbling out before she's even finished exhaling.
I keep my eyes on the road, checking the rearview mirror, scanning for tails, for anomalies, for anything out of pattern. Traffic is light for a Saturday morning. Good.
