It was only a quick walk across the empty mezzanine to the elevator bay, Tucker balancing the takeout boxes on top of each other while his mind buzzed with thoughts of Macy. Through the excitement, he’d just about lost his appetite.

The elevator doors shut, and after a loud chime, he was on his way to the fourteenth floor. It was fast-moving, the chimes at each floor dinging away, Tucker stared at the LED display . . . 6 . . . 7 . . . 8 . . .

He just wanted to see her, to make sure she was alright. That was all.

It had felt a little odd leaving her alone in the room, despite Macy’s proving to be completely capable of taking care of herself. Hell, she could probably take care of him at the same time. She had great instincts, and she had always been a very competent shooter. Despite the psychological ravages of what she’d been through in the last two years, her mind seemed sharper than ever. She even had a sense of humor. How the hell could anyone have a sense of humor after all that?

 . . . 12 . . . 13 . . .

The elevator slowed, and Tucker suddenly realized that he had no idea what to say to her. No idea of how he would go about doing whatever the hell he was about to do. Would he just invite himself in? He was carrying two boxes. Did that imply something?

Maybe he could just say he was stopping by . . .

Maybe he didn’t have to plan anything at all.

He knocked on the door and then waited, leaning his weight on one leg. He took a deep breath and then forced himself to stop practicing a smile. A hot, piercing sense of dread rattled down his spine as he waited for the door to open. Could someone have gotten to her, even locked away inside the hotel?

Of course they fucking could. Why had he left her alone?

There were sounds behind the door. Metal. The pop of a latch.

His free hand had formed a fist. His forearm tensed and ready for action.

The door opened just wide enough for her face, but Tucker still couldn’t breathe right. He had gotten so used to expecting the worst.

It wasn’t the worst, this time. It was Macy, her face looking fresh and shiny and smiling back at him. The scent of citrus reached him. Shower gel, or maybe perfume, either way a much nicer smell than what the Luanda hotels had offered. Macy wasn’t holding a gun this time, either. Instead, she held a towel, wrapped around her body, one hand tugging up and holding the front while she giggled nervously.

“What’s up?” she said.

He nearly dropped the takeout boxes. “I ah, just wanted to come see how you’re doing up here.”

“What’s that?”

He shrugged. “Dinner?”

For a moment she stared at him like he’d said some foreign word.

“Have you eaten today?” he said.

“Um, just the cereal.”

“From ten hours ago?”

She laughed and said, “Yeah and most of it spilled on me.” Macy looked at the boxes he was carrying, her bottom lip sucked in, and then her eyes moving back to Tucker’s face. “Wanna come in?”

She pulled the door open and took a step back. When Tucker walked in, the air was still moist from her shower. He could almost feel it on his face.

“Hold on,” she said, pulling a wad of clothing out of her bag. “I’ll get dressed in the bathroom.”

“I can come back,” Tucker said, almost regretting it the moment the words left his mouth. “I didn’t mean to intrude or anything, but just thought you might . . .”

The bathroom door had already shut and he was alone in her room, standing in front of a large gold-framed mirror on the wall. The reflection was a little disconcerting. He looked like a bellboy, hungry for a tip.

Her muffled voice: “What did you bring me?”

Tucker hadn’t even checked the box that Jasper had donated. It could’ve been a practical joke. It could have been a pair of fuzzy slippers.

“Braai,” Tucker said.

“What? Breakfast?”

“No, barbeque.”

Muffled laughter. And then: “Did you say Braai?” Macy pronounced it differently, and probably correctly. Bry to Tucker’s Bray.

Tucker placed the food on her dining table and opened the lid. At this point he was just hoping to see something edible inside—Bry or Bray or a PB&J.

“What is it?” Macy said from the bathroom, still muffled, a voice strained with the work of slipping on some piece of clothing.

How little clothing was she wearing as she spoke to him through the door? He forced his focus back to dinner, staring at a delicious-looking medallion of fillet mignon. “It’s a surprise,” he said.

He pulled two beers from her minibar, holding the cold glass necks with the fingers of one hand. He looked around for an opener, eventually finding it set in at the top of the fridge. After the second fizz and pop of a bottle cap, the bathroom door opened, and then Macy let out a loud sigh of relief.

“It’s so nice to be clean,” she said. “And in a clean room, in clean clothes.”

Shit. She wasn’t wearing anything much at all. A silk nighty that almost hid two hints of short shorts. They definitely didn’t hide her smooth and toned upper thighs, or the firmness of her nipples, two points erect under silk in the climate-controlled hotel room. If she didn’t put on a robe, he’d have to hide something of his own. His laptop bag had been left in a boardroom thirteen floors down. What could he use now? A pillow?

“What do you have there?” she asked with a grin. “South-African beer?”

“I don’t know,” he said, offering her a bottle with a little black label. “Is it?”

“They sell those all over.” She held the bottle, raising it to his and clinking the glass before the room went quiet while they drank. She licked her lips, and then said, “This is nice.”

Tucker nodded, his hand unconsciously peeling at the beer label.

“The hotel,” she said. “It’s great. A big improvement.”

“Compliments of DARC Ops,” Tucker said. “The food, too. You hungry?”

“Can I look?”

Tucker stepped aside, watching Macy approach the table he’d set for her. Rudimentary place-settings, paper napkins, and plastic cutlery. “Oooh,” she said, hovering over the closed takeout boxes. “Which one is mine?”

“Lady’s choice.”

She opened each with a quiet gasp of delight. “They both look so good. Thank you.”

“It’s nothing.”

Macy sat in front of the tray of ribs, placing down her beer with a low thunk. “You know, I can take care of myself as far as fending off assassins. But when it comes to the simplest of necessities, like eating . . .” Macy began working at the ribs without even looking up to Tucker. She was definitely hungry. Tucker felt his own hunger returning.

Halfway through an otherwise silent dinner, Macy got up to turn the TV on. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “It’s just so quiet.”

“Sorry,” Tucker said.

“What?”

“I think I’m the one being rude. I’m usually better at conversation, but I’m just . . .”

“It’s okay,” Macy said.

“A combination of hunger and fatigue, I think.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m worn out, too.”

“I don’t know how you survived two years like that. Well, I know how, because I’ve seen you in action. But, I mean . . . It’s incredible. I would say I’m impressed, but for some reason it sounds a little stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” she said. “I impress myself sometimes.”

“I bet.”

Macy wiped her hands on a small white washcloth, and then wiped her mouth, which had been sauce-lined and shiny. Had she noticed him staring at her again? She set the cloth down on the top of the closed lid, and then reached for her beer. “So how’s the big mission going?”

“I don’t know. They sent me home.”

“Huh?”

“I mean, home as in here. Er, my room, or whatever.”

“Why?”

“They gave me the night off.”

“Oh,” she said, raising the bottle to her lips.

“What about you?”

She drank and then said, “I think I have the night off, too.”

“Finally.”

“I’m a little scared to let my guard down, but . . . I feel safe here. Is that crazy?”

“No,” Tucker said. “This is probably the safest place you’ve been in years.” He stood, collecting the two boxes from their table. He walked toward the recycling bin near the door.

“You really think so?” she asked. “I feel like when I assume things . . .” Macy trailed off.

He returned to the table. “When you assuming things, what?”

“That’s when I get burned.”

His gaze locked on hers. Her face was suddenly soft and for the first time since he’d found her the day before, she looked vulnerable. But vulnerable to what? An assassin’s bullet, or his own clumsy advance?

Tucker fought the urge to do or say something stupid, something that would ruin whatever relationship they’d salvaged from a horrible past and a hellish twenty-four hours. He took a long swig of beer to muzzle himself. She drank too. Finally, he spoke. “We’ve got the hotel surrounded by some of the most capable and heavily armed professionals you could ever need. You should at least feel a little safe. And you’ve got me.”

“I’ve got you?”

“Yeah,” he said, grinning. “I’m no slouch.”

“I bet.”

“If you want, I can get a room next to yours.”

She looked confused at that one.

“A decoy room,” Tucker said. “You know, I’ll wait around and take a bullet for you.”

“Alright,” she said, chuckling on her way from the table to the bed. “Don’t get crazy.” She grabbed the remote and flopped onto the plush queen bed, folding a pillow behind her back. She sighed again, stretching out, her body still looking supple and fresh from the shower. “This is probably the nicest bed I’ve had since . . . home.” She said the last word a little sadly, as if the word crushed her in some way. Macy brought her attention back to the television, clicking through the channels aimlessly.

“St. Louis?” he said quietly.

She nodded, the back of her head digging into the plush pillow behind her, the channels on the TV flying by with hardly a second between them. She didn’t even know what she was skipping. She was just roaming, faster and faster. That had been her life, for years.

He shouldn’t talk about St. Louis, at least for now. That much he knew. There were enough sad stories to worry about already. Instead, he drained the last mouthful of his beer. “We can order a movie.”

“We can order some porn,” she said with a little laugh. “What are you into?”

“Missionary.”

“Oh, that’s exciting.” She laughed again, Tucker watching the bed shake with it. “I was asking about genre, not position.”

“I know,” Tucker said. “I’m into missionaries. You know, like eighteenth-century nuns spreading the good word through Africa.”

“What else were they spreading?”

“Well, you’ll have to refer to the adult menu to find out. Keep it on preview, though. It’ll show up on Jackson’s bill.”

“No, I think you sold me on it,” she said. “What do I care about what Jackson sees?”

“You’re right, you’re absolutely right. Life’s too short to deprive ourselves of nun porn in a Johannesburg hotel.” He chuckled under his breath. She was joking, of course. They’d always joked around and teased each other. For one, odd moment though, he wondered what type of genre she’d gravitate to . . .

Giant cocks?

That’s what girls like, right?

He almost punched himself. He had to pull himself together. He could take care of his . . . uhhm, problem later.

When he looked back to her TV, Macy finally settled on a channel. Some kind of game show with raucous studio applause. When he looked back to her face though, her eyes were closed. “Macy?”

“I’m here,” she said quietly. “Sorry, I’m just . . .”

“You’re just slowly entering a food coma?”

“I’m a terrible host right now.”

Tucker took a good look at her, stretched out. “Well, I invited myself over. That wasn’t a very nice start as a guest.”

“You came bearing gifts,” she said, her eyes still closed, the same channel on the television playing some generic game show music. American, Angola, South African—it all sounded the same, the music of background boredom. “You can put something on if you want,” she said, her hand rising off the bed listlessly, a loose-wristed offering of the remote. It had plastic wrapped around it, crinkling in her grip.

“What’s with the plastic bag?” Tucker said.

“It was a wrapper for one of the cups.”

“What’s it doing on the remote?”

“Germs,” she said.

Tucker rose from his chair, chuckling at the sudden onset of her germophobia. He took the plastic-wrapped remote from her hand, his index finger grazing hers for the smallest infinitesimal second and made him immediately want more. Her eyes were still closed.

Tucker took the wrapper off and sat at the edge of the bed. “You didn’t seem too worried about germs back in Luanda. That place you were at.”

“I had worse things to worry about.”

“Yes, you did.” He flipped through the channels but found nothing interesting. He also wasn’t trying very hard, his eyes and ears barely attuned to whatever inane show clung to the background of Macy’s dim hotel room. He was more concerned with the immediate: the bed, and who he was suddenly sharing it with.

Macy had brought her hands to her face, fingertips rubbing closed eyelids. “So should we order something?” she said. “Not missionary porn. How about a light comedy? I could fucking use a good light comedy right about now. Or even a rom-com. Could you handle a rom-com with me?”

“I could handle a rom-com with you.”

Macy sat up, grinning. She looked instantly refreshed. She even looked younger. “It’ll be fun. We’ll just totally zone out for two hours and not have to worry about everything that’s wrong with the world.”

Tucker was nodding, but for some reason it produced a puzzled look on Macy’s face. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“Well, do you mind if I join you?”

“Huh? What else are you going to do? Go back to your room?”

“I mean join you on the bed.”

Macy’s smile returned as she shimmied over and made room for him. “Me and you watching a rom-com in bed. Can you believe it?”

“Hardly,” he said. Tucker kicked off his shoes and then crawled next to her. It felt right, like something they had just always done together. It felt right to have her next to him.

It was a large bed, and so they had some space between them. He could almost feel the half-foot like it was a real thing, a physical barrier. For the first twenty minutes one of the stupidest rom-coms he’d ever seen, Tucker couldn’t stop thinking about that half-foot between them, a line. And how easily it could be crossed.

He inched closer to her and settled in, his eyelids feeling heavy, his breathing slowing to match hers.