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“Good riddance,” Shawn said, shrugging.
“My thoughts exactly,” I agreed.
“How many since you’ve been contracted to do it? Did they all have it coming too?”
“Quin isn’t someone who takes executions lightly. He always tries every other method first. But sometimes you run out of options. That is when they call me in. It hasn’t been that many. Ten or twelve, maybe? I’d have to ask him. What?” I asked when she lost the battle to keep a smile from spreading and a laugh from bubbling up and bursting out.
“It’s just… anytime someone has brought up body counts with me, this was not what they meant,” she said, dropping down on the edge of the bed, half folding forward as she laughed. “Sorry. I needed that,” she admitted, sighing hard as the giggles finally subsided. “It’s been a tense couple of days,” she added.
“I was worried sick about you,” I admitted. It was the truth.
“No you weren’t.”
“Love, I was. Do I look like I’ve slept?” I asked, waving at my face.
“I can handle myself,” she assured me.
“I believe that. But that didn’t mean I didn’t worry about you.”
“So, naturally, you needed to swoop in and save me.”
“Oh, love, you can accuse me of being a lot of things, but not a misogynist. You might be able to take care of yourself, but I would say that the two of us would be much stronger together while my team figures out the next steps.”
To that, Shawn took a slow, deep breath, her gaze slipping past me and out the windows to the world below.
“You promise you won’t drug me again?” she asked, gaze slipping to me.
“I won’t drug you again,” I told her.
“And you won’t force me to eat vegetables for breakfast,” she added, getting a laugh out of me.
“Watching you go green while stubbornly eating those asparagus shards should hold me over for a while.”
“What is your idea for where to go? I mean, you can’t exactly go to any of your residences. If Adams is determined to find me or us, he is going to check all your properties. Sure, it might take him a few months,” she added, rolling her eyes at me, but her lips were tipped up at the edges, “but he would find us eventually.”
“Come on now, love. Your family doesn’t have a safe house somewhere?” I asked.
“Ah, I think your family and my family are very different kinds of wealthy,” she said, shaking her head. “My aunt and uncle don’t even own any other property than their estate. I mean, it is a nice estate. But it’s their only property aside from the jewelry offices and the storefront. They fly first class, but don’t have a jet. They stay in luxury hotels or resorts, but don’t have an over-water villa mansion that sits empty ninety-nine percent of the time. And while, yes, they have a panic room in their house, they don’t have a safe house.”
Admittedly, I guess most people didn’t. Only those of us who were occasionally involved in risky things—like being the executioner for a fixer agency—thought about having properties that weren’t in their names, that you could disappear inside should you need to.
“Fair enough,” I agreed, nodding. “I have three,” I told her. “One in the U.S. The others are overseas.”
“I don’t want to go overseas right now,” Shawn said. “If something happens, you know, with my family, I want to be here.”
“Of course,” I agreed. I would have preferred to get her as far away as possible. Other countries made it exponentially harder to be found when you were hiding out. But I had to understand her hesitation as well. “I will call my pilot.”
“No.”
“No? You just—“
“Get some sleep first,” she suggested. “You look like you’re running on empty. A couple more hours won’t hurt.
“Worried about my health, love?” I asked, smiling when she rolled her eyes at me.
“Fine, if you want to go get in the car, drive, meet the pilot, and then sleep, that’s a whole lot of your problem,” she said, hopping up off the bed.
“I just don’t want to be here longer than necessary,” I told her, even if I was more touched than seemed appropriate that she was worried about how little I’d managed to sleep since she disappeared. “Your car is parked here. My car is likely out there getting stripped. People have seen you. And in a place where a couple fifties or hundreds in the right palms would have people selling you off to the devil himself.”
“That’s fair,” Shawn agreed. “You owe me a new car if mine gets stripped while we’re gone,” she said, getting up and grabbing her suitcase.
“If?” I asked, getting a snorting laugh out of her.
“Okay, when,” she said, shaking her head.
“It’s a deal. You can pick anything you want.”
“Even a three-hundred-thousand Rolls?” she asked, brow quirked up as she stuffed a shirt into her bag.
