Page 131 of Hard Luck (Blackstone House)

The look of horror on his face said he’d done exactly that.

“You’ve had plenty of other shit to worry about,” I reminded him.

“We need to get help.”

“No, I need to get over there.”

“I know what the three boys did was bad, but on a scaleof zero to running a drug empire, they’re somewhere near the bottom. They don’t deserve to die.”

I sat on a pile of drugs, unlaced my left boot, and tipped out a stone. The boots didn’t smell much better than the corpses.

“I don’t always kill people.”

“You said you were an assassin.”

“Sometimes I am, when the need arises. But I also do other stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“Hostage rescue, intelligence gathering, security audits, training…”

In the Choir, we’d settled into roles we were comfortable with, based on our strengths. If someone needed to die, the chances were that Tulsa, Dice, or I would be sent to dispatch them. Tulsa also masterminded our hostage rescue missions, and she wasn’t a bad investigator. Spider was our B&E specialist, Barbie made a great honey trap and an excellent sniper, and Sin gathered intelligence along with Dusk. Sin spoke eleven languages, and Dusk was an excellent actress. Echo was our team hacker and a pain in everyone’s ass. Hacking excepted, we could cover each other’s roles, but our strengths meshed together nicely.

“Witt was in the Navy. He nearly joined the SEALs.”

“Bullshit. He was a petty officer third class, and if he’d been even adequate at his job, he’d have been promoted based on time served.”

“How do you know that?”

“Background check.”

“You background-checked Witt?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you background-check everyone? Did you background-check me?”

“Somebody else did it on my behalf. I didn’t ask her to,but I’d do the same if she began dating a stranger. Although that’s unlikely because she doesn’t date. Anyhow, you must have been digging into the Blackstone House murder if you found my name”—it was nowhere else on the internet; Echo had made sure of that—“so let’s not pretend that background checks are something out of the ordinary.”

“There’s a difference between googling and whatever it is you do.”

“And right now, that’s a good thing because I know what I’m up against.”

“What we’re up against.”

Huh? “We?”

There was no “we.” My secrets had been well and truly spilled, and now we were two separate entities. A gentleman and a psychopath. It was time to go on our not-so-merry way and live unhappily ever after.

“Did you forget about the past month entirely? The part where we spent every night together? The part where I fucked you bare yesterday? The part where I told you I loved you?”

Loved. Past tense. My eyes began to prickle, dammit. I realised how much I’d miss Cole when he was gone, how much I’d wanted him to be a part of my future.

“I didn’t forget, but everything’s different now, isn’t it?”

“And that means you can just walk away, no discussion and fuck my feelings?”

“What else do you expect me to do?”

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