Page 35 of Agent vs. Assassin

“You can’t kill what you cannot see, who you do not know.”

“I might not know this person, but Pocher does. And so, I bet, does my father. I’m confident I can find a way to make them talk, and it’s way past time I stop holding back with them.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

I attempt to step around Kane again, and he captures my shoulders. “Wait. Strategic moves only.”

“Sometimes the most strategic moves involve shock and violence.”

“I don’t disagree, but you don’t run into a snake pit and expect to survive, either. You trick the snakes, trap the snakes, and own the snakes. You know this.”

“We’re the ones getting owned. I’m done with this bullshit.Done.”

“At least talk through this with me. There are implications to the Ghost situation. You need to hear me out.”

“I’m freezing my ass off, so if you want to try to slow me down and calm me down, do it inside. Or do arrogant CEOs who are now mob bosses not get cold?”

“I am not a mob boss, Lilah.”

“If you control them, you own them, right?” I snatch up his coat and shove it at him, the act surprising him into losing his grip just enough for me to extract myself from his hold and step around him, with the house as my destination.

Kane catches up to me almost immediately, pulling on his jacket—apparently, he is human after all—but making no attempt to stop my path forward. With the damp, biting wind tormenting our bodies and the heat of the moment passing, it’sjust plain torture. Myhusbandmanages to reach the door before me, pulling it open and allowing me entry into the warmth of our home. The home I now share with him, and probably would have sooner, if not for the Society. Maybe, just maybe, my mother would have been spending holidays with us as well.

I walk into the kitchen to find Joey in deep concentration as he works on a sketch. “I think we’re done for the night, Joey,” Kane says, stepping to my side.

Joey jolts slightly as if lost in his own world and straightens, putting eyes on us, realization washing over him. “All right, then.” He pulls the page from his book and sets it face down on the table, pushing to his feet and giving Kane a tiny nod. “I’m available if you need me.”

“I’ll see you out,” Kane offers and walks his direction. I step to the liquor cabinet in a nook beside the kitchen and select a whiskey I know isn’t smoky. Once I’ve filled my glass, I sip, savoring the warmth as it slides down my throat while replaying Kane’s take on the Ghost situation. Now that I’m warming up—and cooling off, so to speak—something about it doesn’t sit as right as it did out there standing on the beach.

I walk to the kitchen island and set my glass down, slipping out of my jacket before I flip over the drawing Joey has created to find a new image. Holy wildness. This kid is talented. I told him about sitting across from Ghost, and he has drawn a profile image of me sitting on the couch, staring across the coffee table at Ghost. And as I stare at the image he’s created, memories flood me.

While I was with Ghost, logically I believed one of us would kill the other. I would kill him. I believed he came to kill me. Why else would he show his face? But I never felt threatened, just the crackle of energy between us that came from being in the room with someone we each deemed a threat.

It was almost like respect.

And yet…I don’t know what is wrong with me. I haven’t even profiled Ghost, let alone had even a fleeting thought about the assassin who resembles that of a profiler. Maybe Kane isn’t the only one rattled by his father showing up from his grave. I’m not thinking like me. I’m out of my own head and out of my zone. I squeeze my eyes shut and will my mind to go black, shutting out the noise and allowing nothing and no one but Ghost into my head.

When my eyes open, I let my assessment of Ghost flow.

He’s a loner by necessity. He can’t talk to anyone about his career. I think…years of his lifestyle have taken a toll. He needs human contact with someone he can be real with. Does he think that’s me?

Hedoes.

And he wants to honor that connection, no matter how fabricated it is, by giving me a gift. Perhaps that started as simply giving me his trust, and my story triggered a new plan that includes killing my father. Ghost never intended to kill me, which is why he had the lights set up on a trigger. He needed an escape. I think he really plans to kill my father.

My mind is racing, and I grab the sketch of Ghost, staring at his well-drawn eyes, the artistic mastery capturing the green, the haunted man beneath his own skin. I see him clearer now, a man who needs to be number one, who finds satisfaction in that ranking and the payday that comes with it. He wouldn’t take a job that equates to taunting us. That’s beneath him.

He really does want Elsa dead.

Kane walks back into the room, and the minute I lay eyes on him, I say, “Ghost is not working for the Society. I see why you think he is, though, I do, and the targets attending my father’s party certainly lend to the idea that there’s a Society presence, but I don’t think there is one, not a direct link.”

“Then why,” he says, joining me at the island to my left and leaning an elbow on it as he angles toward me, “is Ghost playing games with you, Lilah? And don’t tell me he’s not. He is.”

“I know it feels logical that he’s doing it for a payday, but he’s a killer, not a playdate.”

“Then why, Lilah?”

“He thinks I’m like him, and I am not. He kills for money. I kill for survival and justice.”

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