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He chuckles. “You tell me, love.”
“I don’t know. As you pointed out, I don’t exactly ask questions when I’m given a job.”
“Why ask now?”
My lips twitch. “Personal curiosity.”
I wait through several seconds of silence before he finally sits up and balances on his hands behind him.
I blink away as his handsome face comes back into view, cradled perfectly by shadows around us. “The Boss’ list of loose ends isn’t for just anybody,” I say to distract myself. “You must have done something to piss off the organization at some point.”
He pauses with a furrowed brow. “This came from the Boss herself, then?”
“How did you know the Boss was a woman?” I ask.
“Lilah, I knew about Snake Eyes long before Fitzpatrick turned rogue.”
“Really?”
“If I had to guess…” he bites his cheek in thought, “I earned my loose end status about five years ago.”
I shift up into a more comfortable position. “How?”
“I was with MI-6,” he begins. “I got called in for a classified assignment in Afghanistan. The US government suspected one of their own of traitorous activity, but they didn’t want anyone tipping him off to the investigation, so they sent me instead.”
“Who were you investigating?”
“High-ranking bloke named Paxton,” he answers.
“Yeah. He’s one of ours. Or he was.”
“I learned that fairly quickly,” he says with a nod. “Before I could alert anyone to my findings, I woke up in a box buried beneath six feet of sand.”
I pause. “You were buried alive?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get out?”
He stares at the bed between us for a few quiet moments. “In some ways, I never did.”
My chest clenches. I take a deep breath only to push it back out again as my lungs fill with that phantom stench of smoke and fire.
Archer clears his throat and turns away from me. “That’s enough story time for now.”
He lays down again, leaving me in suspense. I roll the blanket beneath my ankles to keep them warm and I shimmy in place to get more comfortable.
“Hey, Archer.”
“What?”
“Thanks for the blanket.”
He doesn’t reply, but I sense a smile.
* * *
“Rise and shine, love!”
