Page 3 of Lily and her Mercenary (CHANGING OF THE GUARDS)

Ryker

If that happened, combined with me almost blowing my cover a week ago at the coffee shop and again at the shelter, Royal would have my ass. He still doesn’t know I used his name instead of mine while introducing myself to her, and I think I’ll keep it that way.

She’s easy on the eyes and for some fucking reason I can't stop watching her.

The light in her bedroom flicks on, and I adjust the monocular’s focus.

There she is. Her long blonde hair cascades over her shoulders as she moves about her apartment in flannel pajamas.

She looks nothing like a person who needs round-the-clock surveillance.

Just a normal woman who spends her days teaching five-year-olds their ABCs and finger painting.

Yet here I am, freezing my ass off in a maple tree, right outside her window for the third night in a row.

"Goddammit," I mutter as my phone vibrates. I wrap my arm around the tree limb and pull it from my pocket. Royal's name flashes on the screen.

"Where the hell are you?" he hisses when I answer.

"Working."

"You’re in that tree again, aren’t you? Jesus, Ryker, this isn't what MacGallan meant by keeping an eye on her."

I ignore him, focusing instead on Lily as she pads across the floor towards the kitchen.

"She's just a kindergarten teacher," Royal continues. "We're supposed to be keeping an eye out, not stalking. Get the fuck out of that tree before someone calls the cops."

"There's something about her," I insist, keeping my voice low. "Why would Declan want us watching a kindergarten teacher in the first place? Did he fill you in without you telling me?"

A sigh crackles through the phone. "No. If he wanted us to know, he would have told us. Our job is to follow orders without going overboard."

“This isn’t overboard. It’s efficient,” I mutter.

As if on cue, she turns to look out the window at the tree I’m currently perched in, and I swear she sees me. But it’s impossible, I’m dressed in black and in the heart of the tree.

“She’s up late,” I whisper, a hint of concern in my voice.

“Are you even fucking listening to me? Get the hell out of the tree and back to the hotel. We have trail cams up for a reason.”

She’s peering out the window now, and I hold still as can be. But then I have a brilliant thought and start hooting like an owl.

"Hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo," I call softly, trying to sound as owl-like as possible.

"Did you just... Are you making fucking bird noises?" Royal's voice cuts through the phone.

I quickly mute the call and continue my pathetic owl impression. Lily tilts her head, and for a moment, I think my brilliant plan might actually work. Then she reaches for something on her windowsill. Binoculars.

Shit.

She raises them to her eyes and scans the tree methodically. I press myself against the trunk, bark digging into my back through my jacket. My phone buzzes with angry texts from Royal, the screen lighting up like a beacon in the darkness.

"I know you're out there," Lily calls out, her voice carrying across the courtyard. "And you're a terrible owl."

Double shit.

She's still holding the binoculars, sweeping them back and forth across the maple's branches. "I've been watching you watch me for three nights now. It’s you, Royal, isn’t it?”

My heart hammers against my ribs. This was not part of the plan. There was no plan beyond "sit in the tree and watch," which now seems incredibly stupid.

"I'm going to count to ten," she continues, and there's steel in her voice that doesn't match the soft kindergarten teacher image. "If you don't come down, I'm calling the police. One... two..."

I unmute my phone. "Royal, we have a problem."

“You gave her my fucking name at the coffee shop, didn’t you?!”

"Three... four..."

"No shit, Sherlock. I’m getting out of here. Now."

"Five... six..."

But something stops me from climbing down and running.

Maybe it's the way she's standing there fearlessly, calling out a potential stalker.

Maybe it's the fact that she spotted me when I thought I was invisible.

Or maybe it's because in three nights of watching her, this is the first time she's seemed like someone who might need surveillance.

"Seven... eight..."

"Nine..."

Wait—what the hell?

A shadow moves across the ground and heads right to the steps of her fire escape. Silly woman should not have the steps opened, I thought as I adjusted my monocular, focusing on a figure dressed in black, creeping up the stairs.

"Ten! That's it, I'm calling the—"

I forget all about Lily's countdown as adrenaline surges through me. This is my moment. My redemption arc. If I can intercept this guy, I'll prove I wasn't just being a creep in a tree.

"Royal, someone's heading up her fire escape," I whisper urgently into the phone.

"What? Don't you dare—"

I end the call and shove the phone in my pocket. I scramble to my feet like a deranged raccoon, bark scraping my palms.

The plan forms in my head with startling clarity; tackle the intruder, be a hero, and disappear into the night before Lily can see my face. My all-black attire is finally serving a purpose beyond "professional creeper."

I crouch on the branch, calculating trajectory like I'm in a physics exam I didn't study for. The intruder reaches the fire escape landing. It's now or never.

"AAAAAAARGH!!!" I scream, immediately regretting my battle cry as I launch myself through the air.

Time slows. I'm flying, arms outstretched, feeling simultaneously like Batman and a complete idiot. The gap between the tree and the fire escape suddenly seems much wider than I estimated. Maybe if I’d had a running chance, things wouldn’t have gone sideways.

I slam into the metal railing with a resonant CLANG, my torso folding over it like laundry on a line. All the air whooshes from my lungs.

"What the—" The intruder spins around as I flop over the railing, landing in a heap at his feet.

"I meant to do that," I wheezed, as I sat up. That landing took more out of me than I anticipated.

We size each other up—both dressed in black, both not supposed to be here. He's shorter than me but stocky, with a ski mask pulled over his face. At least one of us came prepared. I spring to my feet, fists raised.

"Look, man," he says, raising his hands, "I'm just here to…"

I don't let him finish, launching myself at him with all the grace of a drunk penguin. We crash into Lily's potted plants, sending soil flying everywhere.

"You picked the wrong kindergarten teacher to mess with!" I growl, trying to pin his arms.

"Get off me, you lunatic!" he shouts, kneeing me in the stomach.

We roll across the fire escape, a tangle of limbs and curses. I get him in a headlock; he stomps on my foot. I pull his ski mask halfway up his face; he bites my arm.

"OW! Did you just BITE me? What are we, five?"

The window slides open with a bang. We both freeze, looking up to see Lily Andrews standing there, backlit by her apartment lights, wielding what appears to be a cast-iron frying pan like Thor's hammer.

"Hi," I say with a stupid grin.

The other guy uses my distraction to shove me away. "This psycho jumped me from a tree!" he pointed at me.

"That's not… I mean, technically yes, but I’m not a psycho," I stammer.

Lily's eyes narrow, her grip tightening on the frying pan. "You were pretending to be an owl, weren’t you?"

"I prefer 'wildlife enthusiast,'" I try to joke.

The other guy inches toward the stairs. "I'm just gonna go..."

"Oh no, you don't!" I lunge for him again.

"ENOUGH!" Lily shouts.

The last thing I see is the frying pan arcing through the air with impressive speed before it connects with my head. There's a boing sound that I'm pretty sure only happens in cartoons and then stars dance in my vision.

As I crumple to the metal grating, I catch a glimpse of the other guy taking advantage of the chaos to disappear down the fire escape steps.

"Coward," I mumble as darkness closes in.

My last coherent thought before passing out: Royal is never going to let me live this down.

∞∞∞

I feel my phone buzz in my pocket, and I pull it out. I squint at it and finally see that it’s a text from Royal. She called me from your phone. You fucked up.

No shit. I think as I groan and try to push myself up, and realize I’m no longer on the fire escape, but on a couch with something cold pressed against my forehead.

The room spins for a moment while my eyes focus on the fuzzy pink unicorn blanket that is pulled up to my chin.

That’s when I reach for my pistol, only to find no holster because I’m not wearing my clothes.

Instead, my lower half is encased in a pair of grey sweatpants.

Tight ones, I might add. I sit up, and my head feels like it’s being tightened in a vice.

I put a hand to the back of my skull, only to feel it bandaged.

“Looking for this?” A soft voice came from the doorway. Lily is standing there holding up my Glock, dangling it from two fingers like it were a dead mouse. “I unloaded it. The bullets are in my cookie jar. The dinosaur-shaped one.”

Who the hell puts ammo in a cookie jar? I wonder as she keeps on talking.

"You know," she says conversationally, "If you wanted a date, all you had to do was ask me out for coffee instead of impersonating wildlife and diving off trees or you know, stalking me."

I try to sit up and immediately regret it. "In my defense, that guy was definitely up to something."

"The delivery guy? Dropping off my late-night Chinese food order?" She gestures to a bag on the counter. "Which is now cold, thanks to your heroics."

"Delivery guy?" I echo weakly. "At two in the morning? In all black? On the fire escape?"

She lifts a shoulder of indifference as she tosses the gun onto a chair and picks up the frying pan. "He works the night shift. The front buzzer is broken. And he wears black because his boss is too cheap to buy uniforms." She sighs. "He comes once a week."

I close my eyes, wishing she had hit me harder.

"So," Lily continues, tapping the pan against her palm rhythmically, "want to tell me why you've been playing tree ninja outside my apartment?"