Page 28 of My Super Sexy Spy
The bathroom was unisex, a thing in Europe apparently, and thankfully not occupied. I did my business and washed my hands. And when I exited the door, I could feel the presence of someone behind me.
Instinctively, I went on alert. Mostly likely it was just another customer needing to use the bathroom, but you couldn’t tell that to the hairs on the back of my neck.
“Beth…fancy meeting you here.”
I turned at the sound of my name. The accent familiar. It was dark in the hallway; I could see the figure of a man but not his face. The accent however was unmistakable.
“Ivan?”
“Fate, it seems, has brought us together again.”
No way. This was too crazy. “This can’t be a coincidence.”
He stepped out of the shadows then, and I could make out the sinister smile on his face and the small black device he was holding in his hand. With a quick jab he tapped my ribs. I felt the shock, then quickly everything went black.
* * *
Liam
This was taking too long. Of course, there could have been a queue for the facilities, but I didn’t like it. I should have never let her out of my sight. There was no chance The Douchebag wasn’t here somewhere, although I hadn’t gotten one of his ridiculous texts lately. Still, she’d told him where she was going last night.
Both of us were playing this cat-and-mouse game, but the truth was it wasn’t really our style. We both liked to strike first and ask questions later.
This time, however, I wanted to wait and build a sense of trust between me and Beth. It was highly unlikelyIvangave a shit about that.
I knew the bathroom was inside and downstairs. I also knew there was a back door to the place that led to the alley behind the restaurant. If The Douchebag was going to act, that would be his move.
Shit. It would have been my move, too, if I hadn’t been thinking about how much I liked the damn target.
I took off down the street and found the alley. Sure enough, I found a guy in a dark suit with a man bun, who happened to have a woman draped over his shoulder, walking quickly in the opposite direction.
“Put her down, Douchebag.” I pulled the gun from my ankle harness and aimed it at his feet.
With a silencer on my Glock, he didn’t hear the shot, but jumped when the bullet nearly hit his foot. He knew that shot was only to get his attention and that my next one would take out his knee.
Slowly, he turned around, his hands in the air where I could see them, Beth still draped over his shoulder.
“Let’s be reasonable about this,” he said with a simpering smile. “We both want the same thing. Why not work together to get the information we need, and then whoever gets to her father first wins.”
“She doesn’t know where he is. She doesn’t even realize he knows she exists. We’re both wasting our time.”
“If you believe that, then you won’t mind if I ask her a few simple questions.”
I rolled my eyes. “You mean you’re going to torture her to get answers. I can’t let that happen.”
The Douchebag looked perplexed. “Why not? This is the business we are in. You know this, my friend.”
I sighed. “I sort of…kind of…like her.”
The Douchebag thought that was hysterically funny. “You. Like.Her.You know what she is. She’s the target. You don’t like the target. You kill the target. You use the target. You fuck the target. You torture the target,” he explained. “All this becomes difficult if you actually like the target.”
Yeah, I knew that. Which was why, as a general rule, I didn’t do the getting-to-know-people thing.
Beth Ryan was different. Once I knew who she was, I’d started reading her blog and it…got to me. Like I could feel her loneliness and her isolation even as she was taking me to these places in her mind.
Then I asked her a question through the comment section on the blog and…something changed. It was like, for the first time in a long time, I was connecting with humanity again.
With myself again.
