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I could work with that.
"Yeah, dense. In case it escaped that keen eye of yours, K.C.E is a business. Meaning it has employees. Plural. More than one. K doesn't single-handedly run the place."
"So you're saying..."
"That my sister works there, asshole," I snapped, eyes widening at him like he was stupid. "She works there and she was having a personal crisis. If you must know, her fiance cheated on her. This is the week of her rehearsal dinner. She was devastated. She needed to talk."
I watched as the rest of his sharpness fell away, leaving someone similar to the Renny I thought I knew, just slightly less easy-going and jovial. "And K?"
"Great guy. He taught my sister to kick ass and then I wanted in and he worked with me a little bit. I wish I had more time with him. He seemed like good people."
"So you seriously don't know what he does?"
"Aside from training boxers and teaching self-defense classes?" I asked, brows drawing together.
"Yeah aside from all that, Violet."
"No. Is it something illegal?" I asked, shaking my head a little. "Because I can't imagine that."
"Yeah, well," he said, his easy smile breaking across his face, "who'da thunk a handsome fuck like me would be a future gun runner?" He moved toward me, throwing an arm across my shoulder. "So this sister of yours... she look like you? If so, I mean... I can heal a broken heart, man," he said as we moved in unison toward the stairs.
I laughed because that was such a Renny-thing to say.
But that being said, there was a swirly feeling in my stomach having him close to me. Not because I had any fear of him. I was still pretty sure that he was some kind of friendly for me. But because something was up with him. Normal, well-adjusted people couldn't flip a switch on their personalities like he could. His unpredictability made him dangerous for my cover. And while I might have gotten him off my case with my lie, there was no guarantee he wouldn't just keep snooping around. I wasn't exactly sure how deep K buried Maisy Mckenzie. I knew he couldn't do anything about my old tax returns, my work history, my college records. He'd deleted me off of every possible website online until if you searched my name, nothing came up except a name on a list of college graduates. But K wasn't a hacker and I had no idea how many traces there were for someone who was.
When we had crafted Maze, choosing the name because it was what my grandmother had called me when she was angry and I would automatically respond to it without any thought or training, we had given her a license, some work history, a few traces of her existence online, but that was it.
If Renny got a wild hair one day and decided to go digging, I wondered how long it would take him to see that I wasn't really who I said I was.
"So what did Repo's test consist of?" he asked, arm still slung around me as he led me toward the bathroom.
"Oh, um, shooting practice."
"Oh, great," Renny groaned, dropping his arm and looking at the ceiling.
"Not a good shot?"
"Haven't had too much practice to be honest."
"Repo is good. Like... he's really good. He's not going to let you come back here until you can hit the target how he wants," I warned.
"You a good shot?"
"I'm... decent. Definitely not good. But decent seemed to be enough to get him off my case. What did you do at Hailstorm?"
"Oh, I got grilled by Lo and some guy named Malcolm. Then Janie insisted on grappling with me."
"Why?" I asked, thinking of the short, waifish woman who had fought so hard to get me in and keep me in, despite the odds.
"I dunno. Looking for the flinch factor maybe?"
"The flinch factor?" I repeated, opening the bathroom door and putting the clothes on the sink vanity.
"Yeah, you know how men who are raised to respect women and not raise their hands to them are forced to put their hands on one. They flinch. It feels wrong and unnatural."
"Did you flinch?" I asked, turning fully to him, watching for any signs of dishonesty.
"Of course I fucking flinched, Violet," he said, looking at me like I was both crazy and insulting him.
"Just asking," I shrugged. "I hear Wolf has some kind of hunting planned for us."
"Thank fuck because just sitting around and staring and grunting at each other would get old pretty quick. Have fun getting all that mud off," he said, running a finger across the side of my neck and showing me the dirt on his finger.
"Yeah they picked a great day to drag us outside," I shrugged, hoping for casual as I closed and locked the door.
