The Chameleon didn’t want to kill us, he wanted to play with us. This sounded tiresome. I tapped out a message as Fox paced next to me.
Enough with the dramatics. What the fuck do you want?
“Did you just send something? What did you—?”
I showed him my phone.
“Hazel! That is not a good idea!”
He replied immediately.
Didn’t your parents teach you patience?
They taught me sod all. You’re showing more interest in me than they ever did. Are you here to kill us?
You sound like a troubled soul, Haze. Things will be clear soon.
Can’t wait, babe.
I even added a blowing-kiss emoji.
Fox was reading everything over my shoulder while chewing on his thumbnail.
I found the messages strangely reassuring. This shadowy unknown figure wasn’t so special. He was flesh and bone, like us. He had a mobile phone. He was into texting cryptic shit, like some annoying fuckboy who couldn’t just say what he meant.
All of this, it made him human. And that made him killable.
Chapter Eighteen
Fox
“Everyone dies!” The freckled baristasmiled as she handed me my coffee.
“Sorry? What did you…?”
“Enjoy your latte!”
“Right. Thank you.” I walked off and looked back at her. She was still smiling.
I didn’t have time for an existential crisis right now. I needed to focus on the actual crisis we were facing. I was not handling The Chameleon’s reappearance well.
This morning, I had woken up at the kitchen table. It took me a few minutes to work out where I was. It was 5:04a.m. and I was in my pajamas. They were striped with a collar, and were the ones Haze said made me “deeply unshaggable.” They were what I’d been wearing when I went to sleep last night. I’d tried to remember getting up in the night and coming down here. But nothing.
I’d never sleepwalked before. Maybe I was thirsty and had been on autopilot, coming down for a cold glass of water. Fine. People did that. But then I’d looked down at my feet and seen they were dirty. I’d followed a trail of mud sprinkles from the table to the back door. I must’ve got up in the night, come down to the kitchen for water, and then—what? Gone to check on the plants outside? That sounded like a totally normal thing to do. Or maybe I’d seen a fox and gone to shoo it away?
I was sure it was a one-off. My body manifesting the stress with a little nighttime wander.
Haze had seemed totally unfazed about now being text buddies with the man who’d tried to kill us in Italy. She’d told me to get to my office and focus on making us money—she’d get Jenny on the case of tracking down The Chameleon through the number he was using.
Jenny and Haze. The two of them were becoming increasingly inseparable. I was happy my wife was happy. Of course I was. Haze had always been suspicious and closed off to everyone she came into contact with. I’d only made it through her inbuilt defenses so swiftly due to—in her words—my “insane hotness and cool knife.”
We’d met in an alleyway in Paris. I’d come rushing to this beautiful stranger’s rescue, but had quickly realized she was the hunter, not the prey—which made her even more alluring. Ours was a love affair that had started over the bloodied body of a bad man—a perfect start to what had been a perfect match.
We were the original duo. It was just that my other half now had another other half. Did that leave me with only a third?
I did, of course, have friends of my own. Neighbors whom I’d sometimes meet for a drink, or to play a round of golf, or to hang out watching whatever sporting event was considered essential viewing. But female friendship was a different beast. There was this constant updating on daily life, a confessing of deepest, darkest fears and unpleasant health concerns. I wasn’t threatened. Of course not. Just a tad disconcerted.
Our killing mission had always been our secret. We were bonded together by this love of doing the right thing to the wrong men. But now Jenny had even muscled in on that.
