Page 8 of Countdown to Murder
I checked the company guns out with a notation I’d be taking some of them on the op and would return the rest before leaving, and we stepped outside into a beautiful fall day, freshly cleaned from the recent rain. We were well into October, and I love the spring and the fall.
Taking her home with me was probably the worst of ideas, but I couldn’t help myself.
We were due at the airport at three in the morning, and we’d have our time on the plane to read the operational details. To my knowledge, Aaron had never put a first-time guard on an A-list actor, and I wondered what he knew about Mira that I didn’t.
I watched her clean the weapons, and she proved to know everything about how to break them down, clean them, oil them, and put them back together. She wasclearly a neat freak — every piece was lined upjust sowhen she took a weapon apart.
“Are you one of those people who line their soup cans up in the cabinet?”
“Is that a problem?” When I’d first met her, Mira’s beauty had struck me as hard, cold. Carved granite. Every muscle visible, sharp and without relief. I’d seen glimpses of a softness, once we were alone. The person behind the emotionless façade.
I smiled, hoping to bring back the softer version, even if only for a few moments. “I take that as a yes?”
“What’s wrong with it?”
Sometimes, her eyes were the color of honey, other times, I saw them as milk chocolate. Now, they struck me as the shade of expensive whiskey.
“Nothing. It was just a guess.”
She’d eaten one steak and had declined the baked potato. She’d accepted a spoonful of my onion and mushroom specialty, but it’d felt as if she was being polite. I knew other snake shifters, and they ate like a shapeshifter, so I didn’t understand how she could get away with eating so little.
“How often do you eat? Do you count calories?”
“Why do you ask?”
“How am I supposed to watch your back if I don’t know your habits?”
“I’ll let you know if I’m not eating frequently enough, but I can’t imagine it will be a problem. I usually eat once a day, until I’m full. When I’m expending a lot of extra energy, I’ll eat twice a day.”
“And one steak fills you up? One burger?”
“Yes. My body doesn’t handle an excess of carbs well. I eat mainly fat and protein, with a minimum of carbs. The bun on the burger was more than I’m accustomed to. It feels as if I should go for a run.”
“Then we can do that when we finish with the guns. How far do you usually run?”
“Five to ten miles, when I can run where humans can’t see. Three to five if they can. Running human-slow is good practice, but it gets boring.”
“One hamburger bun is enough to fuel a ten-mile run?”
“Should it not?”
I stared at her. “No.”
“I was trained to make the most of the fuel I take in. My heartbeat and breathing remain slow. I weigh eighty-five pounds, so there isn’t as much of me to move. My small size can be detrimental when I come up against a three-hundred-pound man, but it’s advantageous at almost all other times.”
“How many times have you been dispensed towards a three-hundred-pound man?”
“I don’t know. Twenty? Thirty? Possibly fifty. Reaching the throat when silence is important can be a challenge if they’re tall, but I manage okay.”
She even knew how to talk about it in a way to keep from incriminating herself should LEO be listening in, now that we were no longer in Drake Security’s hardened, spy-proof building. What she meant was that slicing the throat to kill in a way so the vocal cords were useless was hard when her target was tall, but she’d managed. I imagined she’d probably landed on the dude’s back, clung to him like a parasite, and then rode him to the ground.
“Do you need to go home and pack?”
“Yes. Nathan said I’ll need suits as well as fashionable clothing, in case it’s important we blend in and not look like bodyguards. He warned that she might have her people dress us if she wants us to look like friends out for the day.”
“Do you have a boyfriend?” I tried to sneak the question in as if I was just curious, and I held myself in check, so she wouldn’t know how much I hoped she didn’t.
“I’ve never had one. The vampires tell me it appears I’m asexual. Do you have a girlfriend?”
