Page 22 of Assistant to the Assassin

“The safe house is twenty feet below the surface,” he replies, staring ahead at the shut doors.

Shit. “And is it all concrete?”

“Yes.”

“Please tell me I’ll be able to get a signal down here. Kinda need one to live.” Literally. My pump and CGM require a Bluetooth connection.

He smirks. “I made sure it would, don’t worry.”

Just to make sure, I pull out my pump and find it working smoothly. My CGM must be working as well because the pump is still getting readings from it.

“Good.” One less thing to worry about. “Besides, I don’t think I can go even a week without finding out what happens with Lady Rose and Atticus or if Tom is going to move to America with Sybbie.”

“Neither can I,” he admits, and I have to hide my smile.

The elevator doors finally open, revealing a homey living room, which shocks me. I honestly expected this place to look like a military barracks, but it’s cute and comfy looking, with a large cream couch that could probably seat eight people, a sixty-inch flat-screen TV, a tree stump coffee table, a tan rug, and an entire wall of bookshelves filled with thousands of DVDs. What really grabs my attention are the concrete walls though, which are painted sky blue, and on the ceiling there are realistic little white clouds.

“Did you do that?” I point upwards.

He chortles, shaking his head. “When the crew I hired to build this safe house were done, I commissioned a local artist. I thought it would please you.”

“Are all the rooms like this?” I ask excitedly.

“Why don’t you go see?”

The closest door is right next to the TV, so I scan my face on the scanner and then push it open to find a kitchen that would make Gordon Ramsay faint: a steel refrigerator and freezer, an electric stove, a large oven, dozens of cabinets that are filled with plates and dishes, an island big enough to cook a five-course meal on, and a pantry completely filled with nonperishable food like canned vegetables and beans, dried fruit, oats, rice, soup, granola bars, pasta, and a fuck ton of bottled water. Once again, the concrete walls are painted, but this time they’re a soft yellow, and on the ceiling, there is a very realistic-looking sun, with birds silhouetted midflight.

Henry walks over to the fridge and opens it up, revealing boxes of insulin pens and vials of both Humalog and Levemir already stocked. I also spot a couple glucagon pens and some juices for when I go low in there also. I don’t even use Levemir anymore since my insulin pump doesn’t use long-acting insulin, but he got some for me anyways.

My heart flutters like the wings of a baby bird taking flight for the first time as I stand there staring at the fridge, unable to form words of any kind. It shouldn’t surprise me that he would do something like this, but it does. I knew he would keep me safe and take care of me, but this is above and beyond. The movies, the painted ceilings, the supplies in the fridge…

Henry shuts the door and points to an already open door near the stove, pulling me from my thoughts. It’s a cute little bathroom painted red with little tulips on the ceiling. “All bathrooms don’t require facial recognition, so if your blood sugar is high, you won’t have to wait.”

Every type one diabetic is different when it comes to low and high blood sugars, but for me, the symptoms hit me hard. When I’m low, I feel sweaty, shaky, dizzy, and all I can think about is eating. I imagine it’s how a wolf feels after it hasn’t eaten in five days. It’s a hunger beyond hunger—an instinctive need to fend off starvation. And when I’m high, I feel thirsty, tired, I have a horrible stomachache and headache, I’m a complete bitch, and I have to pee like a racehorse.

I don’t even try to hide how happy his accommodations make me. “You’re my favorite thing in the world,” I admit.

If I didn’t know any better, I would say he’s blushing. “Let’s continue with the tour.” His voice is gruff, raspy. Once he turns from me, a shiver runs down my body.

He leads me back through the living room and down a hallway on the right side of the elevator. There are quite a few doors on either side, and each of them are labeled: armory, gym, office, Henry’s bedroom, and my bedroom. The armory looks like it’s straight out of a John Wick movie: the concrete walls are covered in racks of guns, knives, ammunition, and rope; boxes of cameras, syringes, chemicals, and tactical gear line the floors. It’s the only room without any paint on the walls.

The gym—which includes but is not limited to a treadmill, weight station, punching bag, wrestling mats, and paper targets for shooting practice—has a darker blue hue to the walls than the living room, with flowers growing out the trim, which has been painted a dark grass-green.

The office, which more or less looks like our old one, is painted navy blue with constellations across the walls and ceiling, and a shooting star cresting where my new swivel chair sits.

My bedroom is painted purple, which is my favorite color. On the walls are cascading pink and lavender leaves falling from an invisible tree; they lead down to a mountain landscape with pink and grey hues and beautiful shading. There’s a king-sized bed against the wall opposite the door, a set of double doors that leads to a walk-in closet that rivals The Princess Diaries 2, another door that leads to my own bathroom, and a TV twice my size on the wall opposite the bed, right next to the entrance. Right under it are a couple of beanbag chairs and blankets too. There’s even a One Direction pillow on my bed and a poster of young Justin Bieber holding a heart with the words “I can fix up your broken heart” written in neon pink next to him.

It’s perfect.

“You must be exhausted.” Henry once again pulls me from my thoughts. “I’ll leave you to unpack and get some rest. If you need me, I’m right across the hall,” he says, starting to back into the hallway.

“H?” My voice stops him in his tracks, and he looks at me inquisitively. “Thank you.”

He nods once, a smirk playing across his lips. “Anytime, B.”

Patchwork Hearts Lighting Up the Dark

Based upon my intelligence sources, Cai chartered a private jet under an alias name that flew him to England, and I suspect he would have used it to get back to America if not for him being caught. Someone with his intelligence and reputation wouldn’t be stupid enough to risk leaving the country using any major airport, but my team checked them all anyways. Thanks to my time in the military, I have some contacts in MI6 that don’t care about my current profession, or what it was. I’m technically unemployed now, since Jake had been my boss, at least in the eyes of everyone else, and now he’s gone.

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