Page 16 of Fallen Hero

I didn’t bother answering. She knew exactly how I knew.

Calista turned her back on me while mumbling, “That motherfucker.”

I didn’t hate the view of her ass in her tight jeans, but I preferred looking into her eyes when she spoke. They didn’t lie.

“Why?” she asked.

And maybe it was better I had her back, better I didn’t have to look her in the face while I struggled to come up with a suitable answer.

“Why what?” I feigned ignorance to buy myself more time.

“Why are you doing this? I explained I didn’t send the text. I apologized for the inconvenience. I told you I’d cover expenses. You and your team are off the hook. Actually, you were never on the hook. You can go on your merry way and forget this ever happened.”

I wished it was that easy.

“You need backup.”

That wasn’t a lie, but that wasn’t the reason I couldn’t do the smart thing and get the hell away from her.

“I don’t. And you guys being here is going to screw everything up.”

A familiar sensation started at the base of my spine and licked its way up. An awareness that had saved my ass many times. The intuition in my gut that shit was about to get real.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Calista turned, leveled me with a hateful stare, and shoulder-checked me as she passed.

“Everything,” she snarled as she stomped her way to the bathroom. “Be gone by the time I’m out.”

The door slammed behind her.

I went to the bed, arranged all the pillows in a pile on one side against the headboard and plopped my tired ass down.

If I was going to wait out this latest drama, I might as well be comfortable.

I was nothing if not patient.

Chapter Five

The stubborn asshole was still in my room.

I’d been lying in the empty bathtub with nothing but towels to cushion my neck. My ass was sore, I was angrier than I had been in recent years, and part of that anger included my lack of access to a weapon.

I could go out there and challenge the prick to a fistfight, but he’d best me before I could kill him. Sure, a few solid punches to his handsome face would make me feel better, but it wouldn’t solve my problems.

I needed him gone. Him and his busybody friends.

Fucking Tom.

I was going to kill him too. I no longer cared that I needed him alive to work his magic and get my DNA and prints to magically disappear so I could reenter the US without a warrant for my arrest. I didn’t care that my father had respected the man. That was just another lapse in his judgment. That and not getting my mother into a program when she turned to alcohol to numb the pain of losing my sister.

I wanted this life to be over, and I was close.

This would be it, then I’d tell Tom I was no longer available to be his personal assassin and go about my life. I’d find someplace quiet. I’d never look at a gun again. The only time I’d ever hold a knife would be when I was chopping vegetables. Which reminded me, I needed to add watching cooking videos to my post-CIA-contract-killer life. Wherever I was going, I would for sure not have internet or a phone.

Okay, I needed the internet so I could watch my cooking videos. But no phones and no email.

I wanted to be totally off-grid—with my internet. I’d grow a garden and live out the rest of my days talking to birds and wildlife and pretend they were talking back. I’d forget I had a dead sister, a dead father, and a mother who hadn’t been coherent enough to have a real conversation in a decade. I’d never utter the name Tom again; hell, I wouldn’t even think it. I’d change my name and call myself . . . nothing.