Owen huffed in annoyance. “You’re insufferable,” he mumbled, but didn’t protest my presence any further. “Make yourself useful.” He stood to the side and motioned for me to hold the window open.
I braced it above my head. It was pitch black inside the warehouse, making my skin crawl. Something felt off. “Owen, maybe we shouldn’t go inside.”
“You can always go back to thecar,” he jeered with a pointed look. He silently hoisted himself up and disappeared into the darkness of the warehouse.
I chewed nervously on my lip. “Owen?” I called lowly into the darkness. I couldn’t see him anymore.
“Right here.”
I jumped as his face suddenly appeared before me, almost dropping the heavy window on my head.
Owen chuckled in satisfaction. “Get in here.” He held the window open for me, scanning the outside for any movement.
I nimbly lifted myself into the window and soundlessly dropped to the floor inside.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say breaking and entering is your day job. You’re scarily good at it,” Owen whispered, turning on a flashlight. He scanned the tops of the warehouse, searching for cameras. But I already knew there were none. Or they were turned off. We would have seen the red LEDs in the dark. Or so Grayson had once showed me.
“I guess I was trained by the best of ‘em.” I shrugged playfully, and Owen snorted.
I smiled. It felt good being able to talk about them, without wanting to crumble into a ball on the floor. I finally had my head above water again. And a big part of that was thanks to Owen. Never had I thought I’d ever be friends with an FBI agent, but here I was, his backup on a stakeout mission.
Owen stopped abruptly in front of me. “Oh. My. God,” he whispered in shock.
“What is it?” I practically hissed, frantically looking around. We were standing in the middle of the warehouse with absolutely nowhere to hide if someone came in. Grayson would be appalled.
Owen turned slowly around the room, shining his flashlight over the hordes of machines and tables around us. I caught a glimpse of a crate stacked with money.
“It’s a printing house. The largest fucking one I’ve ever seen,” Owen breathed.
“Shit.”
“Yeah,shitis right. We need to get out of here. If they catch us, we’re as good as dead,” Owen whispered urgently, taking out his phone and snapping pictures of the room around us, then pushed me towards the window we came in.
As we reached the window, I ducked, pulling Owen to the ground with me. He dropped his phone, as we collided, and it skidded underneath a machine. Someone was shining a flashlight outside the window. There were guys murmuring to one another.
Owen inched upward, looking outside, then ducked down again. “The guard. With a friend,” he whispered lowly into my ear.
My heart beat frantically against my ribs. The burly guy wasn’t supposed to do his rounds for at least another hour and a half. Did they know someone had snuck in? How? I had checked for cameras and alarm contacts on the window.
No. They couldn’t have known.
A door on the other side of the warehouse busted open and my heart stopped as three men, guns in hand, shuffled into the room. Maybe they did know. The surveillance cameras Grayson had talked about were used by anormalbusiness. Not the mafia.
Gods!We were trapped.
“Fuck!Sorry, Ava, just…” Owen didn’t finish his sentence. There was no time. He yanked me to my feet, pressed me against a table and thrusted himself against my backside.
I gasped in shock as Owen grabbed hold of my jaw, turned my face to him and kissed me.
What the…
But it hit me. It was a cover. Our only chance of getting out of here alive.
So I kissed him back. His arm snaked around my torso, pulling me closer to him, while his other hand captured my neck, lightly holding me in place. He moaned as his tongue dipped into my mouth and my heart skipped a beat.
A light shone on us, and I wanted to pull away, but Owen held me tighter, his kiss turning desperate.
My chest concaved and my throat closed up. Why was he kissing me like that?
