I don’t know what I was expecting, but whatever it was, I was covered. She seemed to watch… everything. From big blockbuster superhero movies to indie films I’d never evenheard of. Cheesy, borderline offensive early aughts comedies? She had ‘em. Rom-coms? Those too.
“We all have our hobbies.”
I looked back over, still finding the gun trained on me. “You really not gonna put that down?”
“You really not gonna leave my home?”
“Not until we have a little conversation.”
“I’m not interested in talking to you.”
“We could… not talk…” I suggested, gaze sliding to the bed, despite knowing this was not the time to be thinking with my dick.
“You into being fucked with a gun to your head?” she asked, making a chuckle escape me.
“Fuck,” I said, reaching to rub the back of my neck. “I just might be.”
“Why are you here?”
“To talk,” I reminded her.
“On your president’s order?” she asked. “Or Zayn’s?”
“We don’t take orders from Zayn. We work with him.”
“Sure you do,” she said with a snort.
“That’s funny?”
“If you think you work on a completely level playing field with an international arms dealer, then, yes. How many yachts do you have? Million-dollar sports cars? How many countries do you have homes in?”
“He takes more risks. That’s why he makes more money. We do just fine.”
“I’m sure you do. But he’s still not working alongside you. You’re working for him, whether you like that or not. And it’s not just that lethal Daniyal guy he has on his payroll. So you’ll excuse me for not believing you’re here in good faith.”
A part of me maybe agreed with her. We weren’t on the same playing field as Zayn. But working with him made our workeasier. My brother and I joined up when he was already in the picture, but we knew that before he came around, not only did we have to source weapons (we still did), but we had to find people to sell them to. And then do the drops.
It was cleaner and less dangerous to work with Zayn. But so far, things had gone well. This was the first time a job went sideways. And we had no idea what Zayn was capable of when he didn’t get his way.
To be fair, though, he wasn’t angry with us. This wasn’t our fuck-up. We never even had our eyes on the guns. All we did was grease the right palms to get them into Florida. The other guys were the ones who had possession of them. Then, of course, Noa. And as much as I didn’t want to imagine that the guy we partied with all the time was capable of hurting a woman, the fact was that I didn’t know for sure.
Clearly, Noa didn’t either.
I couldn’t fault her for being paranoid.
“Look, I can tell you that no one suspectsyouof taking the shipment.”
“You’d be idiots if you did. But they were in my possession. And now they’re not.”
“Which is why we want to talk to you. To figure out what we can about these guys. How to get to them. Make them cough up the goods. Or point us to where they sold them.”
“I’m handling it.”
“Are you? ‘Cause it looks like you’re running.” I nodded toward the duffle bag and weekender sitting on the bed. Already packed.
“From the cops,” she said, rolling her eyes. “They don’t have my real name. And they can’t access the security system on my part of that warehouse. But if there were other cameras…”
“Where were you going?”
