Page 58 of Assassin's Mark
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The silence between us was uneasy the next day. Levi exuded confidence in everything he did—except emotions. I knew that now. Killing someone? No problem. Admitting you cared about someone? Another thing altogether.
The pancakes Levi had run out for earlier—apparently my hit man had an affinity for pancakes—were almost gone when his phone buzzed across the little cardtable’s padded surface. Levi glanced at the screen, set down the plastic spork that came with breakfast, and answered.
“Just a minute, bro.” Placing the phone back on the table, he switched the call to speakerphone. One tap on the screen, but the gesture eased something wound too tight in my chest this morning. Levi might not be able to say the words, but he trusted me. Letting me hear his conversationwith his brothers proved it.
“Whatcha got?” he asked as he sporked up his last bite.
It was Eli who answered. “Good morning to you too, asshole.”
Levi grunted, but I could see a grin pulling at the corners of his lips. “You are such a girl. How’s Remi?”
A rough clearing of a throat came across the line, then Remi’s gravelly voice. “I’m fine.”
I rolled my eyes. The man had been concussed,comatose, shot, and still considered himself fine. Apparently anything else wasbeing a girl. Neanderthals. I swallowed the last of my coffee, trying to hide my amusement.
Levi was frowning. “Keep that dressing changed like Leah showed you, Eli. Don’t—”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it. Now on to other things.”
Levi scrubbed a hand over his face. My grin peeked out whether I wanted it to or not. Levi’slaser gaze pinned me as he gripped his jaw. “What’s so funny?”
“How alike you are.” I didn’t bother trying to stifle a laugh.
His eyes dropped to my mouth, heating suddenly. “Keep laughing, little bird. You’re just racking up points for later.”
Oh really? I raised a brow. “Points for what?”
“Punishment.”
My cheeks went hot.
“We’ve got business to take care of. Can you two play sex gameson your own time?” Eli asked, voice rough with impatience and maybe a hint of embarrassment. I guess seeing Levi with a girlfriend wasn’t normal.
I choked.Not a girlfriend. Not a girlfriend. Remember that, Abby.
Anyway… Eli was the one who’d started the touchy-feely stuff, but I decided not to point that out. Watching Levi choke over his brother sayingsex gameswas satisfaction enough.
“Geton with it,” Remi told them. Eli followed his brother’s lead.
“Fine. While you’ve been playing—or whatever—I dug up the intel you wanted on Anthony Clark.”
I dropped my face into my hand, wondering if I was going to survive the three of them together. Levi by himself was so much easier to deal with.
“A trucker,” Eli was saying. “No ties that we could find to Derrick Roslyn. Parents both deceased.Uneventful stint in the army—”
“Get to something we don’t know, Eli.”
I didn’t know any of it, but I doubted they’d meant to include me. At least one lightbulb had lit up in my brain. They were discussing the mark, the man who had been the catalyst for everything that had happened to me. But what did Anthony Clark, a man I’d never heard of, have to do with my life?
“Right.” Clicks came throughthe line—Eli on the computer. If we had any tech capabilities here, Levi had hid them well. There wasn’t even a clock radio on the nightstand in the bedroom. “Turns out that while Anthony Clark was deployed overseas during the Gulf War, his only sibling, a sister, went missing. Her name was Caroline Clark. Ran away from home. The police never found any leads, but according to records, Anthonycontinued to contact the detective assigned to his sister’s case for years afterward.”
“How does that help us?” Levi asked.
“I contacted Clark’s partner in the trucking company they owned. They were partners for fifteen years, so they were pretty close. He told me Anthony said he needed a week off. He was headed here to Georgia, apparently had a lead on his sister. That was a week before thecontact.”
Contacting what? But when I looked at Levi, I knew. A week before he’d been contacted about the hit. The man had been searching for his missing sister right before he was killed.
