“Why are you asking my staff about men for hire, RevaMcEntire?”
The question slices right through my cover story. I go still.
I make myself breathe through the jolt. “You make it sound worse than it is.”
“Do I? It’s no small thing, a girl coming in here asking for a contract killer. We tend to take that kind of thing seriously.”
A snap answer rises first—because he’s infuriating, because he’s dissecting me without lifting his voice,because I’m tired and angry and still not over the stockroom—but I shove it down.
A fight won’t help here.
I try another angle. “If someone’s gonna offer contract services, they shouldn’t judge those who hire them.”
“Mmm. I reserve that right.”
“I’ve been hurt,” I say, letting some strain bleed into my voice. “Maybe I wanted to know what my options were if he came looking again.”
Nash says nothing.
It’s the worst kind of silence—attentive, unimpressed, and impossible to fill without making a mistake.
I push, because the silence dares me to. “Maybe I wanted to know where a woman goes in a place like this if she needs someone stronger than she is.”
“You want protection?” he asks.
“I don’t think I want the strings that come withprotection, exactly.”
His gaze sharpens almost invisibly.
The way he’s looking at me now—cool, clinical, detached—gets under my skin harder than if he’d made an outright threat. He doesn’t look at me with lust, or pity. He watches me with assessment, as if I’ve been reduced to a problem set on his desk.
Useful or not useful.
Liar or simply desperate.
Risk or leverage.
I can feel anger climbing up my throat, hot enough to burn away caution. He doesn’t see a person when he looks at me. He sees a variable.
What an asshole.
“Fine,” I say, and the word comes out sharper than I intended. “As you have already figured out, I am looking to hire a…k—” I stumble a little over the word, never having actually said this part aloud— “killer.”
The room goes still in a new way. Nash’s eyes narrow—not dramatically, not with shock, but with a quick, controlled focus that feels worse than either.
“For what?”
His tone doesn’t change. Mine does.
The answer comes cold and steady, because there’s no way of dressing this part up.
“I want to kill a man named Deacon Cross.”
Saying the name out loud in this room feels like striking a match.
And Nash looks like he caught the scent of smoke.
Someone who survived something she shouldn’t have.
