Page 6 of Trigger Happy Ending

“Angel.” He sighs, picking up his phone, pretending to be preoccupied. “Put your goddamn knife away, please.”

Sighing heavily, I slide the blade back into my jacket. “Why’d you ask me here?”

“There’s a new assignment.”

“But I just finished one.” I exhale an exasperated breath through my nose. “I need a break. Send someone else.”

O looks up, his face glowing in the reflection of the computer screen which is now flickering to life. His eye reminds me of a pearl rotting in its socket. “Are you whining?”

I know this conversation is over. “No, sir.”

“You know you’re the only Black Widow I trust.”

The Agency loves its euphemisms. “Black Widow” sounds mysterious, right? In our world, it means seduce and deceive. The Russians called women like us Swallows, but of course, the New World Order Americans had to be different from their Soviet counterparts.

“Yes. I know.”

“Only someone as exceptional as you can pull this off.”

This is what he does. He fucks with my head. Cold and mean one moment, tender the next. Makes me feel needed, wanted … almost cherished. Like I’m his favorite child. And because I’m totally fucked up from this life, I grab onto his praise like it’s the golden ticket.

I’m fucked in the head a bit (a lot), I guess.

“We need your special talents.”

He makes it sound like I juggle swords and breathe fire. (Both of which I can do, for the record.) Although O isn’t referring to that. He’s insinuating that this next job needs my natural skill set, my appearance, and ability to manipulate. The Agency harnessed my beauty and taught me how to draw information out of men with the flick of my hair or the stroke of my tongue. My communication methods are effective as they are terrifying. Before my targets know what’s occurred, I know all their secrets—and they are dead.

Which makes me a terrific spy and a very dangerous woman. Have I told you I can hit a bullseye from 150 yards away? That’s pretty fucking special too.

“To pull what off exactly?”

“A retrieval,” O finally answers.

This is O at his most cryptic best. I’m pretty sure I can feel my eyes roll, because, sure. A retrieval. That explains everything.

“A retrieval,” I repeat like a goddamn parrot. “Of what?”

I’ve done a few retrievals in the past. Normally, it’s something sparkly and priceless, sometimes a person. Other times, documents. State secret shit that doesn’t interest me in the slightest.

“You’ll be briefed when your partner arrives.”

My body stills at O’s response. “Partner?”

A flash-fantasy erupts behind my eyes: me, leaping across the desk, jamming the blade into O’s jugular while that gross glass eye stares, dead and useless, as he bleeds out on his precious mahogany desk.

Too bad it’s just a fantasy, and I don’t ever get to do what I want.

“I don’t work with partners.”

I hate that my voice has gone up an octave, but I’ve proven I work better alone. I’m not a collaborator, wouldn’t have a faintest idea on how to be a team player, or whatever the fuck. Doing this job alone—the research, surveillance, how the task is executed—I’ve never failed, not once, because I am in complete control.

So to now lose complete control in this upcoming assignment? My insides are screaming. “I can’t be responsible for someone else.”

O pinches his nose, remaining silent. It makes my pulse quicken.

“That’s not what I said.” O’s voice sharpens, sick of my shit. “You won’t be responsible for him. But you will work with him. Side by side. Until the assignment is complete.”

“But—”