Page 77 of Agency

Won’t lie, I nearly broke a tooth from clenching my jaw.

“Mother. Fucker.”

The kitchen chair was certainly upstairs next to the prisoner’s door. But, the kitchen chair was certainly empty, too. And both bedroom doors were sure as fuck closed.

Still grinding my teeth–and now seeing red–I went right for the stairs. Oh, I was going to have a fucking field day when I busted open that goddamn bedroom door and found both Andrew and Morgan passed out.

Swearing to myself, I began to climb. If there was only one of them in there, and the other was in the prisoner’s bedroom… Oh, the shit-storm that I was going to rain down on that poor, stupid motherfucker’s head. Who was I even trying to kid by giving them the benefit of the doubt? One of them was in there with her. Had to be. IknewI shouldn’t have fucking left them alone with her, not even for five fucking minutes, and certainly not for a few hours. I’d seen the way they kept looking at her. Hell, even I probably wouldn’t have been immune to her charms if left to my own devices for that long.

Something chunked at the front door behind me as I planted my foot on the fourth stair. Figuring either Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Fuckstick coming back from a jog or something, I half-turned back with mouth open and fully ready to start verbally laying into them.

I shut my mouth again when I saw the man in gray slacks and a maroon sweater. “You’re not Tweedle Fuckstick.” And he, without a doubt, wasn’t. Shorter than me by a few inches, and smaller by quite a bit of muscle-bulk, he was definitely not one of the guys.

“No,” he replied in an accent that sounded European, but I wasn’t quite able to place. “I am not.” As he spoke, he raised a suppressed pistol midway and pointed the muzzle at me, center of mass. In his other hand was a lock pick gun, which he tucked away. With salt and pepper hair and the kind of lean, leathery face that only comes from decades spent under the sun, he was older than me by at least ten years, if not more.

“Hands.”

My eyes flickered back down to the gun, and I took note of the casual way he held the compact, flat-black weapon: no shake, no tremor, no need to use the iron sights. Almost as if the weapon was an extension of his own body. He knew exactly where his bullet would go when he pulled the trigger his finger was already on, just like I knew he already had a round chambered.

The other assassin, who’d ambushed us with his buddies in their Audis?

Joergensen?

Had to be.

How had he managed to find us? Had the mole gotten into Thomas’s financials, as well? Or had we just been sloppy on the way out here?

Carefully, slowly, I raised my hands, even as I castigated myself for not having at least bothered with putting pants on. Not being armed before I got my coffee?

Okay.

I could forgive that.

But no pants? Goddamn, I was slipping.

“Where is she?” Joergensen asked.

“Where’s who?” I replied in a slightly louder-than-normal voice, playing as stupid as I possibly could, not to mention, with the way I was dressed, felt. Not to the point of shouting, but hopefully loud enough that I’d awaken my dumb ass subordinates from their Disney-like sleeping beauty slumber.

“Do not,” he said, shaking his head. “Voice down, and do not play stupid. I may not know much about you, but I am going to hazard a guess that you work for Trinity Security, and that you are former US Army.”

“And you assume that why, exactly?”

His cold, pale blue eyes glanced down to my T-shirt.

“Huh?” I looked down my nose, saw the big, upside-down ARMY letters printed across my chest. Well, not upside-down for him, of course.

“Oh. Right. Well, I still don’t know shit about Trinity Security.”

“Off the stairs, please.” Joergensen emphasized his words with a gesture of his pistol, as he stepped back out through the still open front door to maintain distance between us.

“And now, turn around.”

Yep. Definitely a pro. From the proximity maintenance, to the way he moved with a certain kind of killer’s grace. Solidly a pro.

But, still, polite.

“There is good,” he said to my back as I came to a stop next to the couch. “Sit. How many are in the house?”