As I laid there, aimlessly listening to a bunch of women throw hands, I thought about that man from earlier. The man in the mask. The way his green eyes sparkled with every word he said. That robust voice that wasn’t too deep, like my father’s was growing up.
I hated deep, booming voices.
He was tall, too. Around six-feet, if I had to take a guess. Looked like he kept himself up well, too.
“Shh,” I said out loud.
Like that would get my brain to stop thinking about the man.
He seemed so… genuine. It wasn’t like that with a lot of the clients I interfaced with at my place of work. They always had a slightly skeevy presence to them. He was so kind, though.
Maybe kind wasn’t the right word. But he certainly was…
I don’t know. My mind was too tired to come up with the word. He wasn’t an asshole like my boss, though. Which was nice. Those eyes popped up into my head again. The way they crinkled whenever he smiled, even though his mask prevented anyone from seeing his smile. The television show unfolding on my wall faded away as the feeling of his shadow while it cloaked me shot goosebumps up my spine.
I wondered why he wore it. His mask. Did he not like his smile?
It made me sad. I bet he had a lovely smile.
Before I knew it, my eyes became heavy and I snuggled deeper into bed. Within minutes I was dreaming of the mysterious man with ice green eyes and a mask.
7
GHOST
I popped a chip into my mouth and leaned back in my chair, my regular mask flipped up while my boots rested on the edge of the desk in my room at the clubhouse. The glow from the monitors painted everything in pale blue light, five screens angled just right so I didn’t have to crane my neck to see what I needed to see.
Entryway.
Living room.
Kitchen.
Hallway that led toward her bedroom.
And one exterior angle I’d managed to snag from across the street.
That was enough.
I could’ve put one in her bedroom. It would’ve been easy. In and out in under thirty seconds.
I didn’t.
There were lines, and I wasn’t interested in waking up one day realizing I’d become the kind of bastard we were trying to hunt down.
The cameras weren’t there for kicks. They were there for leverage. For patterns. For knowing who came and went andwhether she was being followed or pressured or cornered in ways she didn’t even realize yet. A woman tied to the top floor of that building wasn’t just a secretary or a paralegal or whatever title they slapped on her.
She was proximity.
And proximity got people killed.
Still, if I was being honest, which I usually wasn’t, there had been something else that made me go through with it. The way she’d looked stepping out of that car. The way she’d scanned the street like she expected something bad to happen.
That look didn’t belong on a woman who was supposed to just be filing paperwork.
So yeah.
Intel first.
