Her brow furrowed and her lips parted just a fraction—the look she got when she had something to puzzle over and was already three steps into solving it.
God, he loved that look.
“What is this? A pin code?” Suspicion edged her voice.
He met her stare.
“The number of pizzas you owe me? The combination to your sock drawer?”
She was so damn adorable and she didn’t even know it.
She pushed to her feet as if she couldn’t contain her energy any longer. She squared up to him, hand on her hip. “The street address of the house you grew up in? Coordinates to your location? What is this?”
He closed his fist over the handles of his duffel, took two steps and dropped a kiss to her lips.
She made a small sound against his mouth and her hand came up to his wrist to hold on longer.
He pulled back enough to memorize her face right this minute—eyes closed for half a second, lashes dark against her cheeks. When she opened her eyes, questions scrolled through them.
“You’re brilliant. You’ll figure it out.”
He made himself walk away. Then he was in motion, rushing through the mansion to join his team.
The last thing he thought before his mind fully switched into ready mode was the message he’d sent her.
Four. Five. Nine.
She’d figure it out.
The darkness outside matched the one in his chest—that old familiar pressure his instincts threw at him when he sensed shadows shifting around him but he just couldn’t identify the threat.
But he had orders. And orders didn’t bend for gut feelings, no matter how loud they got.
* * * * *
She stared at the numbers until they stopped looking like numbers.
459
She’d been sitting here for twenty minutes. The lab was quiet around her, the sounds of the other women somewheredown the hall—Kennedy’s laugh, the clink of plates, the low hum of voices as they found comfort in each other.
She should be there. She knew that. Angelo wanted her to take comfort in the sisterhood they’d formed.
But she stayed in place, coping by manipulating the numbers. She ran through the digits forward, backward and upside down. One of the big nerd jokes was to input 58008 on a calculator, then turn it upside down to spell outboobs.
When she came up against a dead end, she created equations that might equal the number he sent her.
That didn’t work, and she dove deeper like her life depended on it, trying it as a coordinate fragment. A sum, a product, a ratio.
She inverted it, mirrored it and ran it through every pattern she knew, waiting for the meaning to emerge the way numbers usually answered to her.
Nothing.
She bit down on her lower lip. Dammit. What was Angelo trying to tell her?
You’re brilliant. You’ll figure it out.
She was The Accountant. She could solve this.
