Page 35 of Assassin's Heart
Hacr Technologies, the company my father had founded and passed on to us, his sons, worked with high-tech research that sometimes required heavy security. Hence the new team from JCL we’d just hired on. The tour today had taken us inside parts of the facility where cell phones weren’t allowed. I’d thought it would be okay, just a few minutes.
I’d been wrong.
“Fuck.”
Saying it aloud gave me much more relief than just thinking it. I walked back to Eli’s desk.
“Remi...” He ran a hand over his face. He’d been up almost forty-eight hours straight, working to find intel for us. The dark circles under his eyes shot arrows of guilt at my heart. “There was no threat, just a report. Nothing was stolen. It was a search-and-seize mission, only there was nothing to seize. No direct threat to Leah, okay?”
Not okay, but as Eli was kindly pointing out—instead of calling me a dipshit—there was nothing we could do about it. “Okay.” I took the chair next to his. “Did you pull anything from the cameras?”
When I’d first arrived with Leah, I’d given Eli access to the remote cameras I’d placed around the hospital while I’d been “watching” her. The answer was written on my brother’s face, no matter how much I didn’t want to accept it.
“No more than I found yesterday. Joe Southerland went in. I caught him on a couple of internal cameras, traced him to the area near the locker rooms. When he came back out, freeway, exit, vanish.” He twisted his chair back around. “Gimme something to work with, dipshits!”
Better they were the dipshits than me, I guessed.
This was getting us nowhere but exhausted. If Eli couldn’t find anything, it wasn’t there to find. We were going to have to change focus to tomorrow’s meet. Knowing it was time, I made an executive decision.
“Go to bed, bro.” I slapped his shoulder. “We’ll have any new intel waiting for us in the morning. There’s really nothing we can do beyond that.”
Eli hung his head; he didn’t want to accept that decree any more than I did, but we both knew it was true. Finally, after squaring his shoulders, he gave the mouse a couple of clicks, shoved his chair back, and turned away from the bank of screens. “I’ll get a notification if anything suspicious comes up. And”—a hand rose, forestalling the words ready to exit my mouth—“you’ll be the first to know if anything does.” He barged past me toward the elevator. “Dipshit.”
The curse pulled a reluctant laugh out of me as I joined him. The laugh died when the doors slid closed.
I cleared my throat. “Where is she?”
“Upstairs.” Eli stared at his shoes. “I’m sorry, Remi; I really am. I’d give anything to have some piece of information that let me tell her, ‘Right there, that’s where Brooke is.’ But I can’t.”
“Me too.” We were warriors, not miracle workers. It didn’t matter that Leah got it. We expected more from ourselves.
Eli exited on the first floor, and I continued to the third, needing to get this monkey suit off and into something I could relax in. Despite being homeless most of our childhood and Levi being the only boss I’d ever known, I enjoyed the structure and discipline at Hacr. The scientists there made field-changing discoveries; the security facilitated those changes. If I’d been someone else, if my parents hadn’t been murdered...
I walked down the hall, shrugging out of the jacket on the way. What I didn’t like about Hacr was the formality it required, at least for us. The Agozi family had an image to uphold, and that meant suits. Why I couldn’t just wear my fatigues like every other member of the security team, I didn’t know. And weapons. Even the thick layers of my formal clothing couldn’t make up for the fact that I was naked without my weapons. But no one at Hacr knew our background, knew we were as capable as their security officers—more, probably—to deal with threats.
Here at home? When I left my room in sweats and a T-shirt, I had more than one weapon on me.
My knock on Leah’s door got no answer. Pushing inside, I was met with a dark, silent room. No light filtered beneath the bathroom door, so no Leah there, probably. Only when my eyes adjusted enough could I see the slight mound beneath the cream-colored sheets on the bed. She didn’t stir as I approached.
“Leah?”
No response, only the slow rise and fall of her chest telling me exhaustion had gotten the better of her. I set my gun on the nightstand, climbed under the covers, and did what I’d hungered to do since I’d walked into the bat cave and heard about the call—I snuggled up behind her.
A ragged sigh escaped Leah when my arm settled across her belly, but she didn’t wake, not then and not when I pulled her into the curve of my body. The silence wrapped around us like a warm blanket, turning tense muscles liquid and soothing the runaway thoughts in my head. Warriors knew to sleep when given the slightest opportunity. I knew to be grateful for the slightest bit of peace, and I reveled in it now.
At least until Leah stirred in my arms. Seconds later her body went rigid.
“It’s all right, just me,” I murmured into her hair.
“Remi.”
My name, husky in her sleep-roughened voice. Blood surged to my cock without my permission. “Yeah.”
Leah tried to turn, to face me, but I tightened my arms.Just a few minutes longer.Or a lifetime. I wasn’t anywhere near ready to let go.
She stilled. Relaxed. Her body went boneless against mine in an age-old display of trust. Leah wasn’t submissive, not anywhere else, but here, now, she was surrendering her body to my demands. It was the kind of gift a man like me would never dream of receiving because we didn’t deserve it.
Leah gave it anyway, hardening my cock even more.
