Page 81 of Hit Man

I force myself to walk away. Retrieve the marinated steaks out of the refrigerator and set the large glass bowl down on the counter near the grill.

“Who are you really?” I hear her ask.

I’ve been expecting this. I move around, removing two potatoes from the refrigerator, rinsing them off in the sink, then wrapping them in tinfoil and placing them on the grill.

“No one.”

She snorts. “For no one, you’re living in a beautifully designed, well-thought-out apartment.”

I grin. She’s too damn smart for her own good.

“You’re not a drug dealer?”

I stiffen and turn to glare at her. “You asked me that before and the answer hasn’t changed.”

She shrugs, unfazed by the harshness in my tone. “I’m trying to understand why a man who’d risk his neck to help me, who is passionate about . . .everything. . . would be hanging around with a murderer like Juan Carlos?”

“I work in security.”

“Like a bodyguard?”

“In a sense. More like society’s bodyguard.”

She sighs. “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to.”

She sits up straighter on the barstool.

Nope. Not going to drop it.

“What was inside that crate?” Crates. But I don’t correct her. Instead, I say in a firm voice, my tone full of warning, “A word of advice. Keep quiet and forget what you saw. You’re an innocent witness to something you don’t want to get involved in.”

“Serious money went into the design and construction of Casa Bella. It wasn’t funded by air. Drug money? It makes sense.”

“It does.”

She sighs, exasperated. “So you do or don’t work for Juan Carlos?”

“Don’t.” I turn back to the steaks so she can’t see my face. I’ve revealed too much. Yet I can’t have her believing I’m a low-life drug dealer. Bad enough I’m a killer, a hired mercenary. With good intentions, of course. Dishing out TORC’s kind of justice, the kind sweet, that naive civilians don’t want to know about yet all the same it’s what keeps them sweet and naive. “I’m not with Mendoza.”

“Are you DEA?” she whispers.

“Warmer.”

“You can never give a straight answer, can you?”

“I’m like the steak you’re about to eat. A scrapper. A cast-off no one believed could be so tasty until the Argentinians turned it into something special.” Like how Hayden turned TORC into something special.

“Jesus, you’re comparing yourself to a hunk of meat?”

I grin, and turn and wink at her. “A big hunk.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Come here.” I toss both steaks on the hot grill and listen to them sizzle to life. Until I feel her standing next to me.

“You can tell a lot about a man from the steak he likes.”