“What did you just do?”
I slam my hand flat against Romeo’s chest and shove him against the wall inside the safe house. He looks only mildly surprised, as if I didn’t just show up at the front door practically breathing fire. If I were more sober, I would have asked Uncle to take me back to the Executive instead. But I’m pissed off that Reese went even more off-script than I did, to the point of screwing with my mission again. I’m so angry I can barely see straight.
“What do you think I was doing?” he says, moving past me into the kitchen. The safe house is a loft apartment in the middle of the city, with a luxurious sofa and oversized windows and hardwood floors. At least he knows how to be an asshole in style. “I was taking out my target.”
“And what about mine?” I follow him over to the stainless steel counter, still seething as he uncaps a bottle of gin and pours two drinks into cocktail glasses. “How am I supposed to get closer to Jamison Hart if he’s in jail? How am I supposed to comfort him at his stepmother’s funeral if there’s not going to be one?”
“I’m sure you’ll find a way,” he says, flashing a tired smirk at me.
Everything happened so fast when Jamie and I returned to the marina. We confirmed that the Claire had exploded, killing Mellie Hart and Lawrence Fisher. Their bodies had been carried away by the ocean current and likely wouldn’t be found for a while, if ever. A number of other participants in the sailing race had suffered injuries from the shrapnel, but at least no one else had died.
Jamison Hart and his father were both primary suspects, each having backed out of the sailing race at the last minute.
The police took Jamie away before he could register what was going on. I had to fake a panic attack to be brought to an ambulance off to the side, away from the witnesses and reporters and cameras, where I gave a statement to a police officer. He seemed to believe my story. I mean, I didn’t have to work that hard to seem emotional and confused. My fake identity would hold up under investigation, but I had no sense of where August was at the time. And, of course, I still thought Reese was dead.
When Uncle finally found me, I was sitting on my own behind the ambulance, staring at my silent phone.
In the limousine on the way here, Uncle told me the basics of what really happened. More of the plan had been changed than I was told. Romeo intentionally took Jamison Hart’s place on the Claire and jumped overboard just before the explosion went off, faking his own death while allowing Mellie Hart to die. Then he swam out to a hidden cove, where Alpha was waiting with a motorboat to take him to the safe house.
I wasn’t mad at Uncle. I wasn’t even mad at Alpha, who hadn’t told me any of this beforehand. No, I’d reserved all my anger and judgment for this moment, when I’d inevitably confront Romeo, the one person responsible for coordinating with me on this mission.
“You really are surprised, aren’t you?” He leans against the counter and downs his entire drink all at once. I reach for the other glass, but his hand shoots out and grips my wrist. “Have you heard of Mongoose?”
“No.” I grab the bottle with my free hand and take a huge gulp, barely registering the fact that he’s touching me.
Before I can stop him, Reese seizes my waist and draws me against his body. His lips find my ear and murmur, “I need to check for bugs, and then I’ll tell you what you want to know. Is that good enough to keep you from losing control?”
My instinct is to push him away, but I’m still intoxicated and I want to know everything. I want to know exactly what happened and why.
And I’ve already lost control.
Without stopping to think, I reach up to the back of Reese’s neck, then lean up and press my lips against his, hard, releasing all the pent-up yearning and desire I’ve ever felt into the kiss. Oh, I think. So this is what I’ve been missing.
It feels like an explosion.
Reese is already kissing me back, our mouths consuming each other hungrily, as if this is what we’ve been waiting for our entire lives. He’s won the game to get me to kiss him after all. This feels incredibly dangerous, like it should be forbidden, but maybe that’s just because every other person I’ve kissed has died. I’ve never even kissed anyone outside the context of a mission.
But Reese isn’t going to die, is he? Not in the yacht explosion, and certainly not now. No, I’m the one who’s on the edge and so close to death, because all these electric sensations streaking across my skin are making me feel as if I want to die. There’s no way my body can handle this much sensation. It’s already overloading, electrocuting, shorting out. I can’t think about anything other than prolonging this kiss and finally being with someone in whatever capacity I want.
His hand reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small device, but I don’t pay any attention. I’m too busy pressing myself against his body, wanting more, more, not just this. His tongue finds mine and I can feel his sharp canine teeth grazing dangerously against my lips, but he doesn’t bite. Normally I would be pulling back by now, making some kind of excuse to get away before I have to watch the other person convulse to death before my eyes.
But this? This I could revel in forever.
Romeo catches my lower lip gently with his teeth, cautioning me to be still for a moment, and then I hear it. A series of four pops around the safe house. One in the ceiling light, one in the television, one in the front door, and one in the bedroom. Four bugs have just been shorted out.
This is the part where I should pull away and demand to know what he wants to tell me. But I don’t, and he doesn’t, and we resume our kissing immediately, more intensely this time, as if we’re lovers who have been apart for years with both of us starving for the other. The feeling of his mouth against mine is going to absolutely ruin me, because I’m never going to want to emerge from this and face the reality of my own life. His lips don’t leave mine, and mine don’t leave his, not even when his fingers find their way underneath my dress and trace up my thigh, higher and higher, until they’re inside my panties, matching the rhythm of our kissing.
As if of their own volition, my own fingers swiftly unbutton his wet shirt, splaying across his firm muscles, feeling every rise and fall of his chest. I’ve almost never gone this far with anyone before, and it’s insane how good it feels, like my brain is blasting off firework after firework of endorphins. He lifts me onto the counter, his fingers plunging deep inside me, his thumb drawing me even closer.
But that’s when he bites my lower lip, harder than anyone ever has before, drawing blood instantly. I can feel a shot of venom enter my system. I’m not going to die because of it, obviously. I’m an aberrant who’s immune to poison, which is one of the reasons why I’m different and what has kept me from being normal, from being able to do things like this, for my entire life. It shouldn’t matter that he just injected me with a toxic substance.
But the shock of it is what finally jolts me out of his arms.
I shove Reese away and stumble off the counter, gasping, putting distance between us, my lips swollen to the point of almost feeling numb. My body protests weakly, but no part of me wants to keep going anymore. This can’t happen between us, not like this, because none of it is what I wanted. Every kiss I’ve ever had has ended in pain.
I didn’t need another one.
“Tell me what’s going on,” I gasp. “Now.”
His eyes are glazed over, his hand hovering in midair, as if he doesn’t know what just hit him. “Sorry?”
“The explosion at the marina.” I’m struggling to control my breathing. “Tell me.”
Reese doesn’t react for a long moment, but then he clears his throat and glances at me. “Why do you think Mellie Hart had to die?”
“She was an enemy of the nation,” I say automatically.
“No,” he says. “Ophidian is deeply intertwined with the Executive. Yours, mine, all the other ones as well. Half the targets we take out are threats to Gallagher Hart’s status at the company. Mellie Hart was going to divorce him, and so she had to go. She knew too many of his secrets.”
“But we work for the government—”
“We work for the Executive,” he says. “And all the Executives have been working with Ophidian since the very beginning, in exchange for the most advanced technology in the world.”
I shake my head. “I don’t believe you.”
Reese shrugs. “I don’t know what bullshit they feed you here, but this is what happens to aberrants. Imprisoned by the government, watched by the government, or used by the government.” He draws his fingers into a fist. “Yes, we save lives. But the means used by the Executives to achieve their end is wrong. They all need to be stopped, and bringing down Ophidian is the key to doing so.”
I can’t understand anything he’s saying right now. Sure, the Executive uses technology developed by Ophidian. But so does everyone else, and it’s certainly not anything worth killing over. For all I know, Romeo is weaving an elaborate cover story to save his own skin. If I tell the Executive that he went rogue on a mission, he’ll be shipped back to the United Kingdom immediately. He might even be sentenced to solitary confinement for what he did.
I turn away and take another drink of gin. “I won’t tell anyone you screwed with my mission again, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Reese gives an exasperated sigh. “It’s not about the mission. A clandestine group of operatives is working against Ophidian and the Executives, and Mongoose is the code word to know if you’re with us or not. I didn’t tell you about the change of plans at the sailing race because I wasn’t supposed to involve you in it. But this is the only way. You have to be brought on board.”
“That’s great,” I say sarcastically. “But I didn’t exactly need to be initiated into your secret club.”
“I’m serious, Eliza,” he says, ignoring my tone. “We need you to find Ophidian’s shipping manifest before killing Jamison Hart. The company has a top-secret facility on a private island, and we have to stop certain shipments from reaching it. But no one’s ever been able to figure out where he and his father keep the manifest.”
This has to be some kind of joke. Like, okay, maybe the Executive isn’t some idealistic protector of the nation. We’re aberrants who kill the enemy, and the people who should be thanking us for saving their lives will never know we existed at all. But I’m not going to agree to something that could get me locked up in solitary confinement, if not retired. My job is to close mission after mission, to defend the nation without ever asking why, and believing otherwise would destroy me.
“Sorry, Romeo,” I say flatly. “I won’t do it.”
He narrows his eyes, and I’m almost sure he’ll try to antagonize me again. Throw a punch at my shoulder, maybe. Kiss me hard and never let go. I don’t even know what I want to happen anymore. But instead he says, “It’s just a manifest. You’re the only one of us who’s been able to get close enough to any of the Harts to find it. All this time killing target after target, and you haven’t asked yourself what the Executive isn’t telling you?”
“So what?” I ask, but my chest is beginning to tighten. It feels as if my world has suddenly become unstable, as if he’s trying to burn down the very floor beneath me, and I don’t understand why any of this matters. “We’re saving lives. It shouldn’t make a difference if the Executive is working with Ophidian. What’s so wrong with that?”
But Reese shakes his head. “I’m not allowed to say. This is the one line I can’t cross.”
“Why not?”
He glances away, his eyes unreadable. “Because the truth would break your heart.”
Part of me wants to push back against what Reese is saying, but he believes he’s telling the truth. I don’t care if he actually is or not. I’m never going to work against the Executive. Because of what I am, because of my poisoned lips, I could never survive anywhere else.
This is the best thing I could ever do with my life.
As Reese slowly rebuttons his shirt, I make my way into the bedroom and collapse onto the mattress, pulling the covers over my head. If I try hard enough, I can imagine that I’m still a little girl, that my lips aren’t poisoned, that I’m not caught up in the middle of whatever he was talking about. All I want is to feel safe, and I wish more than anything that August was sitting on the other side of the bed right now, reading a comic book to me. Even the supervillains in those stories have people who love them, who want to be with them, who stand right beside them as they burn the world to ashes. But who do I have?
No one.
For the first time in forever, it feels like I’m freefalling.