“That’s probably not a great idea.”
“Don’t second-guess me on this, G-man,” he said. “Your buddies have your back. We’ll look out for you and make sure you get home safe. You can abdicate your role as lead do-gooder for one night, can’t you?”
Do-gooder. The same thing Kat called me. I wondered if it had been an insult all along. I nodded. “I can do that,” I agreed with Rex.
“Good man! Come on.”
I called Jim and sent him home, then followed Rex into the bar.
“Bartender, pour this man a whiskey, neat,” Rex said as we passed the bar. “In fact, you better make it a double. He’s going to have to do the chicken dance next week, and it’s sure to be captured on someone’s phone and uploaded to the internet for all of eternity.”
If the chicken dance was the worst of the fallout from Kat breaking it off with me, I’d be absolutely fine, because neither the dance nor the stupid bet mattered one damn bit to me. Losing a woman like Kat before I’d even had a chance to win her,thatmattered to me.Thatwas a tragedy. She didn’t owe me anything, though. I was the one who’d said no strings. But right now, that was no fucking comfort at all.
“Shit,” I told the bartender, “you better just bring me the whole bottle.”
CHAPTER 16
KAT
Ipoured myself a second glass of Cognac, the perfect drink for cold winter nights. But I wasn’t kidding myself. I wasn’t drinking because of the weather. And I wouldn’t drink myself into oblivion while I was being hunted by old enemies. But I did need to take the edge off that call with Gage. None of it had been good, but the way I’d thrown it in his face that he wanted to take care of me haunted me. I’d needed to push that button to keep him away until I was no longer a danger to him, but now I wondered if I’d pushed so hard that he wouldn’t come back.
My watch buzzed at the same time my phone chirped. I snatched up my phone and saw Pasco’s number. “Are you in the city?”
“Good evening to you, too, KitKat.”
“Sorry, Pasco. I’m just a little on edge here. Will you be here soon to do the building sweep?”
“About that,” he said. “There’s been a weather incident, and I can’t get out until morning. I’ll land at seven a.m.”
I didn’t bother asking where in the world he was at the moment. If HEAT wanted me to know, they would have told me. Then again, X playing that game was how I’d ended up here, cowering alone in my apartment.
“Ugh.” I tossed back my entire drink.
“I have done an initial remote sweep,” he said. “I haven’t detected anything. There could be a low-end on a nonspecific bandwidth—”
“Pasco, I’m two drinks in. If you want me to understand you, I need the headline.”
“Sure. I forgot how non-techie the ops teams—”
“Pasco,” I whisper-hissed. “Please. I’m begging you.”
“There’s no sophisticated tap in or around your building.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. It was a small thing, but it was a win.
“That doesn’t mean there’s no low-end bug there. I can’t know that until I’m on the ground. But at most, someone could be watching movement in and out of your apartment.”
“Anything I should or shouldn’t do?”
“Don’t stay overnight in anyone else’s apartment, and don’t let anyone spend the night with you.”
“Subtle. Is that you talking, or X?”
“Mostly X,” he said. “But she’s not wrong. I have to get on my transport now, KitKat. I won’t be available for the next couple of hours, so if you need anything, you’ll have to call the other guy.”
I smiled. Only at HEAT is the talent pool so deep that the world’s top two hackers refer to each other asthe other guy. “Safe travels, Pasco, wherever you’re coming from.”
“Hey, one last thing,” he said in a quieter voice. “Heads up, a small strike team is landing in New York tonight. Cynthia Kessler, Mai Li, and Martin Penn.”
