Page 14 of Villainous Intent

Menace had a forgettable face. That was part of his actual power set. He was so ordinary looking, he wasn’t worth remembering. Somehow, Annie remembered him.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away as she navigated between tables toward us.

In the back of my mind, an inkling of panic surfaced. She couldn’t possibly recognize me. No one does. That’s the whole point of the fucking mask. It was a perfect shield, the reason Thomas Smith could walk around Chroma Bay with no one connecting him to Cipher.

Dawn stood and hugged Annie as she reached our table. “You made it! Let me introduce you to everyone. This is Hunter.” She placed a hand on his chest and looked up at him adoringly.

Annie offered a smile that was all teeth. “Nice to meet you.”

“And this,” Dawn continued, turning toward me, “is Thomas, Hunter’s friend.”

Annie’s eyes finally, finally landed on me. I readied myself for the inevitable. The widening eyes, the parted lips, the slight flush that always accompanied the first assessment of my face.

I braced myself for my own fucking disappointment.

The swooning never came.

Yes, there was a flicker of appreciation, I’m not blind to the symmetry of my own face, but it was perfunctory. Instead, her gaze sharpened, like she was trying to solve an equation and finding the variables suspicious.

“Nice to meet you, Thomas,” she said, extending her hand.

The contact was fucking electric. Her fingers were warm, her grip firm. I wanted to yank her across the table and pull her against me, bury my hand in that soft brown hair, and taste her again.

“The pleasure is mine, Annie.” I let my natural Scottish accent roll thick and heavy, a velvet shroud over the flat, American cadence I had used to taunt her as Cipher. It was a tactical deployment of syllables and tone.

Her electric blue eyes widened, just a fraction. My voice triggered something, a phantom echo of violence and rain she couldn’t quite place. It threw her off balance and I deeply enjoyed the stumble.

Our hands stayed connected longer than they should have. Three seconds. Four.

She continued to stare at me, searching. Logic dictated she couldn’t know who I was. There were plenty of tall, muscular Supers in the League. Some with dark hair. Without the mask and my suit, I was just a civilian anomaly to her.

But the arrogant, possessive monster scratching at the inside of my skull didn’t care about logic. I wanted her to know me. I wanted to see the exact moment the realization clicked into place.

She finally pulled her hand from mine, severing the connection and breaking the stare. She took her seat, smoothing her dress.

My brain immediately discarded the restaurant, the ambient jazz, and Dawn’s cheerful chatter, trying to figure out how to isolate her. I needed to get her alone so I could strip away that soft civilian disguise and make her look at me with the same desperate, beautiful hate she’d aimed at my throat earlier.

“So, Hunter,” Annie said. “Dawn tells me you work in security consulting?”

The emphasis she placed on “security” was subtle enough that Dawn wouldn’t notice, but Hunter did. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard.

“That’s right,” he managed, his voice only slightly strained. “Helping people identify vulnerabilities in their systems.”

“How fascinating,” Annie replied with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’m sure you find all sorts of unexpected weaknesses to exploit.”

A bead of sweat appeared on Hunter’s temple. Dawn, oblivious, just beamed proudly at her boyfriend. Her fingers stroked the back of his hand, blind to the high-voltage subtext crackling across the table.

Hunter swallowed hard. He was a master strategist, but cornered by a Keeper who held the power to detonate his civilian life, he did what any desperate man would do.

He used me as a human shield.

“Thomas here is my colleague,” Hunter said, his voice tight as he redirected her crosshairs. “We’ve worked together for years.”

“Is that so?” Annie’s gaze slid back to me. “And what do you do in this security business?”

My evening had just improved exponentially. Watching Menace sweat through his disguise was a mild diversion. Having Annie Bishop look at me with that potent cocktail of suspicion and raw intelligence was fucking intoxicating.

“Hunter consults for me in the security division of Smith Industries,” I clarified. I let the Scottish accent bleed heavily into the words. “He helps me find cracks in systems that people believe are untouchable.”