Page 126 of One Secret

'External hacker. Caught us checking shipping contracts. No reason for us to do that unless—'

'—unless someone tipped you off,' I finish for him.

'And who on that island do you think they're gonna blame?' Jaime's voice is harried.

"And my sources say that you haven't signed the dotted line of your resignation just yet..."

Shit.

I catch Darcy staring at me.

'What's wrong?' she asks, her eyes narrowing with worry.

We're dead. I swallow. Unless we can break out of this mafia stronghold and escape an island full of paid mercenaries, we're dead.

That's what's wrong.

Snapping into a familiar routine, I switch the call to my earpiece, shove my phone in my pocket, and wrench back the curtains over the balcony doors.

'Cyrus?' Darcy's tone is hurried but not frightened. 'What's going on?'

'We're done,' I tell her, throwing back the locks and heaving back on the doors. They fly open and chilly air hits me full in the face. My adrenaline races faster, returning heat to my muscles and feeling to my nose.

'We?' Jaime is squawking in my ear. 'Who else is there?'

Oh yeah, did I not mention I brought my pregnant lover on the job? Yeah, my bad.

Fuck me.

'Not important right now,' I growl.

'What's not important?' Darcy asks.

'We're getting the extraction team to you,' Jaime promises.

'By water. For two.' I tell him, testing the tensile strength of the balcony railing and turning to Darcy. 'Get anything you can carr—'

She already has her rucksack slung over her back and her little flat pumps are nowhere to be found. Instead, she's strapped into her combat boots. When had she—?

'Do I have time for pants?' is her only question, gesturing to her skirt.

'She's not wearing pants?' Jaime asks, momentarily distracted from the disaster at hand.

From down the hall comes the call of a male voice. The words are muffled but they sound like orders. Cold and hard orders.

We're out of time.

'Nevermind,' Darcy answers her own question. 'I'll Chun Li this thing.'

'Chun Li?' Jaime is completely thrown. 'What kind of costume kink are you into, Ales—?'

'Get me the coordinates of the pickup,' I bark, cutting off Jaime's amusement. 'If I'm not there in thirty minutes, a package will arrive in two days with instructions.'

'Wait, Cyrus—'

'It's this one,' comes a voice from outside our door.

'Coordinates, Jaime. Now.'

---