She tucked a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. “Okay, Julian,” she damn near purred. “What can I get you?”
“I’ll take a Black Manhattan. Bourbon, not rye. Stirred slow.” Scar glanced down at Anya’s cleavage and licked his lips before meeting her darkening gaze again. “I don’t like things rushed.”
As he sipped the bittersweet drink, he listened more than he spoke, letting his easy mark fill the silence herself.
He pulled out the details he wanted with small hooks.
Fourteen minutes later, he returned to his and Meridian’s table.
He’d overshot the deadline, but he’d gotten what he was asked to get and more, down to the neighborhood she lived in, the kind of car she drove, and the fact she worked a secondseasonal job at a boutique because she was planning on going on a cruise to Jamaica next summer.
He was more than satisfied with himself.
Meridian glanced at him, then at the black face of his watch, before he shook his head as if he were disappointed.
“Seriously?”
“You spent too much time on an insignificant who wasn’t your mark.”
Scar balked, almost choking on his breath of disbelief. “What? You’re joking.”
Meridian didn’t smile.
“Your mark is the lonely-looking woman eating by herself at the far end of the bar.”
Scar turned.
An older lady—maybe in her late sixties—wearing a gray pantsuit, with her brown and silver hair pulled in a loose bun, sat dejected at the bar with a mostly eaten pasta dinner in front of her.
She wasn’t the type he normally hunted.
As if Meridian knew what he was thinking, he cut in, voice flat.
“In this line of work, you can’t assume anything by appearances. Monsters don’t always look like monsters. Innocence is a well-known disguise, and you’d do well to never forget that.”
Now he knew, and Meridian had made sure he learned it the hard way.
“Your mark is Evelyn Hartmann. She’s an intelligence analyst at the Pentagon, and it’s believed she’s been bleeding classified data to a foreign intermediary. And we need you to get proof of it.”
“How the fuck am I supposed to gain her trust when I’ve been flirting my ass off with the sex-on-legs bartender?” he muttered.
Meridian slid a small drive across the table.
“That’s for you to figure out,” he said dryly. “Get her to take you back to her place. Get into her office and insert that drive into her computer.”
Scar tried not to appear as dumbfounded as he felt.
Back to her place?
“Go to her place and ask to do what exactly…watch late-night television?”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
“I don’t know shit about computers.”
“Just insert the damn disk,” Meridian gritted. “It’ll do the rest.”
Scar shoved the device into his breast pocket, his irritation sparking.
