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I need to shake it off. Stay on task.
“One more offer. One you’ll like.” She looks to the window, to the deep blue water of the Agean. “You cut me loose. I take the laptop to my boss. Say I killed both of you. Then you ride off into the sunset. Disappear. Stay madly in love.”
I can even see the two of us, hiding in plain site on some crowded bus, holding hands, whispering sweet nothings into each other’s ears.
We’re both fighters.
We can make it through this.
I want to make it through this with him.
“No one will believe you got the jump on both of us,” I say.
“No. But they’ll believe I blew the place up while you were sleeping,” she says. “I’m an explosives expert. And, yes, I do use that to pick up men and women, and it works.” She looks to the door like she’s daring Matteo to come out.
“You have C4 with you?” I ask.
She nods to her total lack of anywhere to stash dynamite. Use your brain, mon amie. “Nearby.”
“Where?” I ask.
She shoots me that same get real look. She’s not going to tell me without a trade of some kind. Fair enough.
I motion for her to go on.
She does. “The Greek police aren’t sending a forensics team to check DNA. As long as the place is destroyed, and we see some evidence you were here, people will believe you died in the blast.”
She’s right. Our bosses wouldn’t want to draw attention to an unexplained explosion by sending a team to check the remains for DNA.
It’s exactly what I wanted when I got this mission: the chance to live a simple life with Matteo.
She waits until she can see the desire in my eyes, then she goes in for the kill. “Cut me loose and I’ll sell whatever story you want. Or we can stay and fight to the death and see which of the three of us survives.” She looks me in the eyes. “It’s your call. You decide if he lives or dies.”
Chapter
Twenty-Three
MATTEO
When she's finished, Jamie slips into the bedroom.
She looks up at me with relief in her big blue eyes then she throws her arms around me and kisses me like the ship is going down.
She tastes like licorice and Jamie. The familiarity of it sends my head into the stratosphere and keeps my feet firmly on the ground at once.
Because I see her now. All of her.
She’s kissing me because it comforts her.
And because she believes it will disarm arm.
That’s who she is.
A person willing to fall in love with someone she’s here to kill.
A woman willing to kill the person she loves.
It’s brave and brutal and awful and wonderful.
