"A contact."
"Same shit, different title."
"Not the same shit. A handler manipulates. A contact communicates. I'm not going to trick you into talking, Savannah. I don't have the patience for it, and you'd see through it in about ten seconds and then you'd throw something else at my head, and I only have so many heads."
"You have two. And the one I’m staring at is not as pretty as you think it is."
"It's exactly as pretty as I think it is."
She almost smiles. "Touche. I'll talk to Leone about it since he’s the boss," she says. "Today. I'll give him the marina, the boat, the schedules, the names I remember. But I have conditions."
"Name them."
"I move freely in this compound. I don't get locked in rooms or escorted to meals or filed away in a drawer somewhere."
"Done."
"I want work. Something to do with my hands. I've been sitting in rooms for two weeks and if I don't have something to do soon I'm going to redecorate this corridor, or your fucking face, with my fists."
"I'll figure something out."
"And I want to know what's happening. The real version, not the sanitized one you hand to civilians. If my life is on the line because of what I heard, I want to know exactly how on the line it is."
"I'll tell you what I can. Some things I won't be able to share, operational details, names of our people, things that could get someone killed if they leaked. But the big picture, who's coming for you, why, what we're doing about it, you'll have it."
"And if you lie to me?"
"I won't."
"Everyone says that."
"Everyone isn't me." I hold her gaze. "I'm bad at a lot of things, Savannah. Patience, mostly. Sitting still. Following instructionswhen the instructions are stupid. But lying isn't one of them. Ask my brother.”
"That's a lot of words to say trust me."
"It's a lot of words because I mean it. Two words would be cheaper but less convincing, and you don't strike me as a woman who's convinced by cheap."
The corner of her mouth moves again. "Okay," she says. "Take me to Leone."
He said for me to deal with it, but who the hell am I to deny this vixen her moment? I push off the wall and walk beside her. Not in front. I've already learned that lesson. She keeps pace easily, her stride matching mine, and I notice for the first time that she's tall. Five-eight, maybe five-nine. In shoes with any kind of heel she'd look me dead in the eye, and the thought of Savannah Cole at my eye level makes my cock throb.
I love me a strong, tall woman.
We pass two soldiers in the corridor. Both nod at me. Both look at Savannah and then find somewhere else to put their eyes when they notice me watching them. Good. Word will spread fast enough. New woman in the compound, Emilio's assignment, hands off. The compound gossip network moves faster than our actual intelligence operation, which is embarrassing but useful.
"The people in that room," she says. "Your brother, the woman on the laptop, Leone. They all armed?"
"Everyone in this building is armed."
"Including you right now?"
"Two weapons. One on my hip, one on my ankle."
"Jesus Christ."
"Welcome to the family."
"I didn't say yes to the family. I said yes to the briefing."
