Page 16 of Iron Blade

I shook my head, but said nothing, wrapping my arms around my torso and tightening my coat.

“You’ll need to signal if you need an extraction. You showed up with him?” He mumbled, staring up and down the road, as if ready to hail a cab. “Did he try something?”

I gave a slight nod, as I looked down the street as if I was also waiting to find a yellow taxi.

But there were none.

“I can handle it,” I said through lips that barely parted.

This was a ridiculous game of speaking, but not speaking. Two people a good distance away from each other, mumbling into the wind.

“You’re not trained for this, Picasso,” he said, using my call sign. Picasso. An impressionist I didn’t like. But my handler couldn’t tell an Art Nouveau from the Grotesk.

“I’m fine, Blink.” I used his code name as well. A code name he hated too. Did any of us like our code names? Or did we all hate them in equally? “I can handle myself.”

Blink looked up and down the road, before letting out a sigh, staring at the sky. To the casual observer, he was a man trying to find a cab, but resigned to the fact that there weren’t any. He pulled his collar up and trudged towards the subway entrance at the corner of the street, needing to pass behind me to do so.

“Watch your back,” he mumbled behind me.

“Fuck,” I said, rubbing my forehead, looking up and down the street in a real search for a cab. “Shit. It’ll be impossible to find one right now. Damn it!”

Call me a pussy, but I hated taking the subway. Enclosed spaces, underground, trapped, with only one way in and out? No, thank you.

“I’ll drive you home.” I almost screamed in surprise at the voice that was only a few inches behind me.

I whirled around and he was there, his jacket on, his green plaid scarf in his hand.

Without preamble, he put the scarf around my neck, tying it beneath my chin.

“It’s too cold, Miss Kekoa.” He held on to the ends of the forest green scarf, and it lightly pulled me towards him. “You’ll catch your death out here.”

He took off the glove from his hand, grabbed my wrist, and put one on me. Then the other. They were too big, but they were warm, and I balled my hands into fists, clutching them to my chest.

“What are you doing?” I asked, my breath coming out in steam.

“I may have misstepped with you.”

I snorted. “Misstepped?”

“Aye, Miss.” There was that grin again. A slight tilt at the corner of his mouth. “Let me drive you home, just as I said I would.”

He wrapped an arm around my waist, escorting me down the curb to a black town car. I stopped, pulling my arm away.

“I don’t trust you, Mr. Green.” That was a rare truth. I definitely did not trust him. No one should ever trust him.

“Call me Eoghan,” he said, as he bent down to open the back seat.

“I don’t trust you, Mr. Green.” I refused to call him by his name. I did not want to get more familiar.

He stopped and looked to the side, letting out a slight laugh. “A’right, get one of your girlies on the phone, and have them stay on with you until you are safely inside your apartment. Go on, now.”

I… didn’t expect that.

I actually didn’t know what I expected. That he’d give up and let me go? No, that would be naïve considering how persistent he had been.

“Isn’t that something young women do, now? To keep safe?” He put his hands in his pockets, stepping to the side, giving me a clear path to the back seat of his ride. “Call one of your girlies. I’ll wait.”

He gave me the slightest wink and smiled.

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