Page 80 of Radar

“I don’t sing much, but I do love my mother. Choir boy?”

“Your eyes. You don’t have trained killer vibes.” Elyssa’s frown was deep and heavy. “Have you?”

Xander’s brows drew together. “Have I what?”

“Killed someone?” Elyssa’s voice conveyed the “How dare you?” without her having to say it aloud.

“I was in Afghanistan for three tours,” he said quietly.

“I am so confused by all this.” This was her rugby face. Elyssa was fierce. “I’d never have slept with you if I’d known.”

“Known what? That I work for the Pentagon?” Xander tried to step away from his DIA role, which seemed to bother her.

“That you were so dangerous.” She pulled at the neck of his Henley that she was still wearing. And he wondered if she remembered what she had on. “I’m feeling an existential threat. Internal. I don’t think you want to hurt me. But still, you’d think that I’d be able to sense that you’re a killer. I can’t trust my own instincts. I made such poor choices.”

Killer. Xander had never thought of himself in that way, either. He was trying to line himself up with this conversation. He could support her best—no matter what her role turned out to be—if he maintained rapport. “Your instincts?”

“I mean in bed.”

Xander sat in one of the plastic chairs, so he wasn’t looming over her. “I’m not particularly comfortable with the juxtaposition of being called a mama’s boy one minute and then jumping to sex.”

“I agree. Gross, right?” She drew in a deep breath. “Dangerous men tend to be selfish and self-absorbed.” She slid her ring on and off her finger, and Xander let her sit with that thought, hoping she’d give him some insight. “I mean, there’sa woman’s truism about going to bed with a man for the first time, an orgasm isn’t expected. My orgasms weren’t expected last night.”

Xander’s mind was on the possibility that the Zorics had tried to down their plane, that someone had kidnapped Elyssa’s friends, and there were Zoric goons in the hallway. But Elyssa had no idea why she was in this room, and so she was assessing the time she’d known him.

That made sense.

She was talking about orgasms.

Plural.

A smile spread across Xander’s cheeks, then he forced his face into something neutral as Xander wondered why that seemed like a sticking point for her. It was as if the disconnect came from her belief that killers and spies were incapable of giving a woman an orgasm. And since she told him he was both a killer and a spy, maybe she thought she should have been left unfulfilled. And so, somehow, he was lying to her? Was that it? “What are we talking about, Elyssa?”

“Is this being watched or taped or something? Am I being interrogated?”

“Interrogated,” Xander shook his head slowly, “No, we want to figure out—”

“Are you filming this?”

“Yes. But not because we believe you did anything wrong. But we do have some questions, and we want a way to go back and think about what you’ve said.”

“Surely, this isn’t about us screwing around. And it can’t be about the guy grabbing me in Lumberjack because the White woman and the Hero guy are from intelligence agencies. Hero, that’s a made-up name, right? Like, you originally called yourself Ender?”

“Hiro, H-i-r-o, not hero, h-e-r-o. Hiro is his last name.”

“Intelligence agencies gather international information, right?” This was the Elyssa from the tapes he’d watched on Eddie’s social media last night, with Elyssa’s bare ass pressed into him as she slept. This was the woman who would take no shit from the competition. “Tell me why I’m here,” she said.

“There appear to have been two attempts to kidnap you in Lumberjack. Someone tried to break into your room last night, but Radar alerted me because my room was right next to yours. We took care of it.”

“That’s why you were wearing pants,” she said as if his pants had been a major question in her mind. “And I didn’t wake up for that? Don’t answer that.” She held up a hand. “Answer this instead. Purposefully? You took the room expressly so you would be next to mine? That wasn’t happenstance?”

This whole next chapter was going to be really hard on Elyssa, and Xander hated like hell that this was happening to her. He’d ease her in by mentioning her great-uncle now.

“Reservations were made for me. I was placed in the closest room available so I could get to Orest Kalinsky.”

“Uncle Orest?” She startled and drew her chin back, genuinely perplexed.

“I had no idea you had a connection to him. Nor did I know that room was yours.”

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