Page 38 of Dirty Gambit

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” she reminded him. “Now, pick it up. Let’s go.”

Not waiting for a response, she started down the steps with Jessie. Above her, she heard Jaxon move forward. There was a scuffle of fabric, indicating his following her instructions.

At the doorway of the barn, she turned and waited for him to reach them. He did so with great reluctance. His expression was a maze of irritation, but he kept his thoughts to himself the entire way to the car.

Lena was relieved to find the road still deserted. She’d half expected Roy to have returned, his curiosity having gotten the better of him. But the old man and the tow truck were nowhere to be found.

Grateful for small miracles, she piled everyone into the car, chained Jaxon to the door handle in the passenger’s side seat, strapped Jessie into her car seat, and dumped the bags into the trunk. She herself climbed in behind the wheel and started the car. With great care, she turned the car around and headed in the proper direction.

There was no missing the wary side glances from Jaxon, or the weight of his suspicion building through the cabin. Each passing mile amplified all the things neither of them wanted to say.

“How did you get the car out?” he said at last.

“Magic,” she mumbled.

“Are you going to tell me anything?” he snapped.

Lena scoffed. “No.”

They lapsed into a silence broken only by the crunch of gravel under rolling rubber. The engine rumbled. A suspicious grinding had taken home somewhere under the hood, drawing infrequent glances towards the shuddering needles on the dashboard. They didn’t have long before whatever was holding the car together finally came undone.

“Are you a drug dealer?”

Caught off guard, Lena blinked at the question. “What?”

Next to her, Jaxon stared at the windshield. “Do you sell drugs?”

The absurdity of it almost made her laugh. “You’re kidding.”

“Normal people don’t have thousands of dollars neatly bundled in a suitcase.”

“It’s a duffle and maybe I just don’t trust banks,” she offered flatly. “Or, maybe, you shouldn’t go through people’s stuff.”

“You were gone for over two hours,” he remarked. “I thought there might be something worth using to escape inside.”

Lena snorted. “And you think I’d just leave something like that with you?”

He looked at her then. “You left that money.”

He had a point.

“Can you pretend you never saw it?” she offered, already knowing the answer.

“I will if you tell me where you got it.”

Lena contemplated this offer and found it grudgingly hilarious.

“Okay,” she said, at last, biting on her lip. “I am an assassin. I kill people for a living. It’s a thankless job, but the pay is decent.”

For a split second, his eyes narrowed as if he was actually considering that possibility as if trying to picture her killing people and discarding their bodies. The whole thing could have been highly entertaining if she wasn’t thoroughly insulted, especially when he came to his own conclusions and shook his head.

“That’s not it.”

Lena huffed and rolled her eyes. “Maybe it’s from a place called none of your damn business.” She put up a hand when he opened his mouth. “Let me put it to you this way, the less you know, the less likely it is that I will have to kill you when this is over, okay? Be thankful.”

“I’ll be thankful when the person holding me and my sister—”

“She’s not your sister.”

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