Page 41 of Lone Star

(“Um, three?” Evan had said, but no one had listened.)

He and Tenny had been slapped with the same label. Reese had known that he didn’t fit with the Lean Dogs. He did like them, and when he thought of Knoxville, of this clubhouse where he had a dorm room all to himself, he thoughthome. But he didn’t think like them; didn’t act like them. Didn’t understand, for instance, what was so special about the girls in the skimpy clothes who Boomer looked at with such round-eyed, baldly appreciative stares. Chanel had looked at Reese once, and closed one eye, and Boomer had come hustling over with his chest stuck out, his voice too deep, and told Reese to “back off,” He’d apologized after, when Reese only stared at him, pale and stammering. Chanel had laughed.

Reese didn’tunderstand.

But it didn’t bother him, not knowing; not speaking the strange social language that everyone around him did. He had his skills; he knew his place.

But then Tenny had come along.

Tenny who’d been raised to fight, and kill; to assess, and assault, and act without hesitation or prejudice.

But Ten had been groomed differently. He spoke a dozen languages, and he could slide into a conversation in the same easy way Reese slid a knife from his boot. He understood the social cues that Reese didn’t; his master hadn’t been just a man like Reese’s, but a government. An organization. They’d had the resources necessary to teach Ten to blend into a crowd; to seduce, and set at ease, and play mind games.

Ten thought Reese was weak, and he hadn’t been subtle in expressing that.

The idea of him touching Reese’s belongings left Reese thinking about the distance between them, and the force necessary to put his emergency knife in the other killer’s throat.

“No,” Reese said, “I don’t.”

Ten smiled, the blade-sharp grin that looked like Fox’s, the one that confused delight with aggression. “Because you don’t like me.” It wasn’t a guess.

I hate you, Reese thought, but didn’t say, startled by his own hostility.Hatewasn’t a prudent emotion in an assassin.

“I have no opinion of you,” he said, and thought he managed to keep his voice flat and neutral. Restraining himself was a foreign concept; he was struggling with it.

Ten chuckled; a forced sound, another practiced behavior too perfect to have been real. He sat down on the empty patch of bedspread where the knapsack had rested. “Do you know what your problem is?”

That I hate you.

“You haven’t been challenged.”

Reese thought of the small composition notebook in his sock drawer, the one rubber-banded shut. Thought of the tally marks on the pages. Of the accounting of his kills. He’d dropped over the wall of a bathroom stall to strangle a man to death. Had sniped down targets from rooftops, four blocks away before the body had cooled.

He’d crawled through the tangle of wires and vents and dropped out of a ceiling to save Ten’s own sister – whom he didn’t know, and didn’t love.

He lifted his chin a fraction. “I’ve been challenged.”

That earned another chuckle. “What? Killing rednecks? Drug dealers, and hooker-killers? You paint your face black, and you play grim reaper, and, what then, disappear? You murder the untrained civilians your masters point you toward. Where’s the challenge in that?”

When Reese only stared at him, Ten’s gaze sharpened. “You stick out. You stick out in a room full of people like a stinking, festering wound. You can’t play at charming, or interesting. You barely know how to speak.

“Could you work the long game? Could you befriend someone? Seduce someone into bed? Learn all their secrets before you slit their throats? No,” he said, when Reese gathered breath to speak. “You can’t. You haven’t the faintest notion how to get information out of a mark. Killing is good – it always comes down to killing, in the end – but any dog can kill. The best assassins canlearn– and I don’t think you can.”

I hate you, Reese thought.I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

Ten stood. “Fox might be taking you, but he doesn’t need you. When we get to Texas, stay out of my way.” He turned to leave.

He was at the threshold when Reese found his voice. “I have a name.”

Ten froze. Turned back around.

“I have a name,” he repeated. “And you only have a number. Don’t pretend you’re more human than me.”

Ten stood impassively a long moment. Then he bared his teeth in another too-sharp smile, and walked off.

His shoulders were tight, though. Reese noticed that.

Because he noticed everything.

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