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For her, the widely accepted definition applied—vexing, infuriating, offensive. For me, longing for her fit better. Or mad with desire. Verity’s pouty lips alone drove me to distraction.
While I’d done my level best to mask my reaction to her change in appearance, she’d stunned me. Her disguise was sexy as fuck, but I much preferred her earlier look, when we’d boarded the plane.
Sans makeup, she came across younger than her age. Then her hair had been loose, flowing over her shoulders. Now, it was pulled back in an austere bun in what might be intended to be off-putting but, instead, accentuated her high cheekbones.
I’d spent a good amount of time studying her in meetings when letting my gaze rest on her face appeared I was paying attention to what she was saying, rather than imagining how those lips would feel wrapped around my cock. Picturing exactly how she’d react if she could read my thoughts, I turned my head so she couldn’t see my grin. When I looked back, she was glaring at me. I’d ask why, but wouldn’t until we could speak privately rather than have the pilot listen in.
I thought about how her shoulders had been hunched on the drive to Gatwick when Mag and I were talking about Schön. It made me want to tell her that, yeah, the agent was hot, but that didn’t mean she appealed to me enough for me to act on it during a mission. Or ever, really.
Verity, on the other hand, was someone I would’ve pursued—again, not during a mission—if it weren’t so obvious she’d shut me down in a hot minute.
I rested my head against the seat and closed my eyes, relieved Schön hadn’t found a way to cancel our air transport. An hour-long flight sure beat three hours on the road, and with the amount of work we had to do after we arrived in St. Moritz, every minute counted.
Other than the money moving from Mauritius to Switzerland, we didn’t have many leads. Sure, we’d followed it here, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t come in via wire transfer. Instead, Nemesis had acted on a gut feeling that we’d learn something valuable during this deployment. As she was our commander, Verity and I were expected to follow orders, regardless of the concerns we’d brought up before leaving Shere.
While I doubted it would help us during this part of the op, by the time we arrived in St. Moritz, I anticipated we’d receive a post-op brief from Nem, addressing two significant events that happened within the coalition: Oleander’s abduction andSeshat’s defection—something that weighed heavily on everyone in the coalition.
There were two other matters of unfinished business niggling at me. First, right before Nemesis had made the announcement that she was sending Verity and me undercover, she informed those in the room that Z had resigned as chief of MI6. That in itself came as a surprise. Then, when she’d said no one knew where he was, I was stunned. I hoped that part of the mystery worked itself out by the time we landed.
The second unresolved issue involved a missing agent who was a member of the UK task force.
Sven “Puck” Lindstrom disappeared shortly after we’d lost two agents in a shootout on Gozo. At the time, Puck had been the task force’s interim commander, and as was to be expected, he took the loss hard. It was believed he’d left Gozo with Cayman Trace, but several days later, we’d learned he hadn’t. That was a year ago, and we hadn’t established any leads in our search for him. For all we knew, Puck was dead.
No one had asked my opinion, but if they had, I would’ve said Seshat’s defection and Puck’s disappearance were somehow related.
The whole thing with the female agent plagued me. Collectively, we were the best intelligence agents in the world, and not one of us had suspected her. She and I hadn’t had many interactions after we returned from the Gozo op, but in the time I’d spent with her on the island, she was professional and proficient. There were no red flags raised by anyone over her behavior.
It was widely known in our group that Seshat and Puck were mutually attracted to each other, but if he was still alive, I’d have a hard time believing he’d turn into a traitor like she had. The two agents he’d lost died at the hands of AMPS’ soldiers. If anything, I’d say he’d infiltrated them, hoping to take themdown single-handedly. However, he was a smart guy; he would have had to know that going in undercover with the coalition’s backing would get him further faster.
When I felt Verity’s tap on my arm, I turned my head to see her pointing out the window on the opposite side of the copter.
“Wow,” I murmured at the panoramic view of the Swiss Alps, lit mainly by the moon’s glow. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen them from the air, but they never failed to take my breath away, even at night.
“Do you ski?” she asked.
“I do.”
“Quite well, I’m sure.”
“You don’t?”
She shook her head. “No, I do.”
“Maybe that’s something we should do together.”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
When she turned her head to look back at the mountains, I wondered how this would go between us. Would we be able to pull off looking like a couple crazy in love enough to have married?
The momentwe arrived at the helipad in St. Moritz less than an hour later, both Verity and I checked our mobiles.
“Holy fucking hell,” I muttered under my breath before looking up at her. When I did, her expression of concern mirrored mine.
“Z is missing?” she mouthed.
According to the short brief, he was due to pick another agent—George—up from her flat at nineteen hundred hours for a dinner date. When he didn’t arrive on time, something very unlike Z, she contacted Pinch Fulton, DG of MI5 and also the interim chief in the wake of Z’s resignation.
“This says an all-call alert was issued at nineteen hundred,” Verity read once we were inside the terminal. “It says he wasabducted.”
