Page 16

Anson snorted, trying to stifle a laugh.

“I didn’t mean I’m afraid one of us will die.

Though, now that you mention it…” It was an outcome he hadn’t considered.

He couldn’t resist the urge to tap his wrist five times.

Though his watch wasn’t there—FUC had confiscated it—it still quelled his rising anxiety that something bad could happen.

Like Nari could speak their imminent death into existence.

She raised an eyebrow after watching the tapping but said nothing, letting him continue.

“I mean, after your case is over. We won’t be working together anymore. ”

“Oh. That.” Her words hung in the air. Anson felt he could nearly see them written in the air, they were so heavy. So sad. So final.

Anson couldn’t read what was going on behind her warm eyes. For a second, it appeared this was a fact she hadn’t considered. Then she quickly hid her emotions, swallowing them with a deep inhale. Not knowing how she felt left Anson feeling more vulnerable than ever.

“Never mind.” Anson tried to hide his feelings behind a mask of indifference. He’d play it off like he was talking about their friendship. Going back to trying to open the cardboard box with one arm, he pretended he wasn’t the least bit upset.

Before he was able to figure out a way to brush it off with words, Nari leaned in and kissed his cheek.

“I don’t know what will happen after tomorrow, but I would like to stay in touch,” she said softly.

Her breath was warm on his cheek. Nari was still leaning in, her warm body pressing against his side.

Though she wasn’t a curvy woman, he felt the swell of her small breasts press into his arm.

Anson didn’t dare move away from the counter, or she might see just what his body thought of her being this close to him.

The oven beeped. Right. He was going to heat up a pizza.

“Do you need help?” she asked. Her eyes looked hungry as she took him in. After eyeing up his body, her brown eyes settled on his face. They lingered on his lips for a brief moment before moving back up to his eyes.

Anson turned back to the stove, though he glanced at her from the corner of his eye. He was afraid he’d misinterpreted the look she gave him. And besides, he’d already decided he’d only bring trouble to her. Nari didn’t deserve that.

“I’m good,” he said a little too stiffly. His words sounded strangled, like he didn’t have enough air. “I can manage this,” he assured her while struggling to open the end of the frozen pizza box with one hand. “Why don’t you go back to your planning? I’ll be in the living room in a second.”

He let loose the breath he didn’t know he was holding the second the warmth of her body left his side.

Anson glanced over his shoulder to watch Nari saunter away.

The little sway to her hips was doing nothing to calm his loins.

The second she stepped foot out of the kitchen, Anson ran to the sink to splash cold water on his face.

After, he went back to the pizza, nearly forgetting all the grumbling his stomach was doing.

Finally, he was able to rip the cardboard to get the pizza out.

He let gravity do the work, holding the box on an angle over a cooking sheet.

The pizza fell onto the tray. After sliding it into the oven, he wondered how he would face Nari.

Her warm kiss still lingered on his cheek as if she were still beside him.

He looked to the living room in time to see Nari flip a swatch of her silky black hair over her shoulder. It was as if she knew he was watching. This would be a long night.

* * *

Nari felt Anson’s eyes on her from the kitchen.

Though he tried to hide it, she knew when someone was checking her out.

But why was he suddenly acting so strangely?

He had nearly that whole conversation with his hips glued to the counter.

It was as if he was avoiding eye contact with her.

She knew he needed a lot of food, but to be that focused on it seemed strange to her.

In her opinion, he was hiding something. But what?

Thinking back to what Anson said left a pain in her chest. What if they didn’t see each other after this mission was over?

She’d taken spending their time together for granted.

She would feel empty if she no longer had him near her.

She’d miss his banter, his brains, and his sarcastic remarks.

More than that, she’d miss him. What was she to do?

It could complicate the mission if their feelings became intertwined.

And what would her superiors think about Nari getting friendly with an ex-henchman? Or whatever they considered Anson.

But he wasn’t a henchman, not really. The more she got to know Anson, the more she realized he wasn’t anything like she’d expected.

Her thoughts were a tangled mess. She had to get back to the maps, back to fleshing out their plan.

But she knew it was already set in stone.

The details were passed on to the other agents when she went outside to make the phone call.

Nari knew she was only pretending to be busy.

That way, she could avoid looking at Anson.

After she heard the oven door close, Anson walked back into the living room.

His gait seemed more stable than earlier.

He must have been healing up nicely. With a groan, he slumped onto the couch.

She wondered if the groan was due to pain or the dustiness of the couch.

FUC didn’t often have a maid visit their deep-woods cabins to clean.

“Why don’t we review the plan?” he said softly as he wiped his hands on his thighs.

The rhythm to the motion made it seem a nervous habit.

Nari didn’t want to inquire about it and risk embarrassing Anson.

It wasn’t all that important why he did the repetitive motions that he did, like tapping his wrist or stomping his feet.

In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter why he did it; she liked him all the same.

She more than liked him if she was honest with herself.

Nari picked up the closest map and took it with her to sit next to Anson on the couch.

She laid it out across the long coffee table in front of him, pushing some of the leftover medical supplies out of the way.

A coil of gauze rolled across the table before slipping off the edge. She’d have to find that later.

Tapping her finger at the caves a few miles away from the cabin, she said, “Backup will hide here. The coolness of the caves should hide their heat signature from any infrared that Grimm’s surveillance goonies might have.

” Nari smiled. She couldn’t help it. This plan just had to work.

There were enough agents to take down a whole team of evil shifters, yet they were gunning for one man.

“What about Ariel?” Anson’s voice was nearly a whisper. All humor was gone. Nari felt a pang of guilt for making light of their situation. The lives of a lot of shifters hung in the balance. If this went wrong, who knew what could happen to them?

“FUC always has the victims’ safety as its top priority.

They will do everything they can to rescue Ariel.

” It seemed that Anson was having his doubts, but Nari understood.

It was imperative they rescue his sister.

If anything went wrong, it could jeopardize the rescue.

“But if Grimm is at the repair shop, Grayson will apprehend him right away. There’s no point to dragging the charade on. ”

Anson nodded, though a faraway look crossed his face. Finally, he said, “I just hope he talks. This will be all for nothing if Ariel isn’t with him and he won’t tell us where she is.”

She put a reassuring hand on Anson’s shoulder.

“We can be persuasive when needed.” Nari hoped she wasn’t over-promising anything.

Ultimately, she couldn’t make Dr. Grimm talk if he really didn’t want to.

No matter what they did, that was on Grimm.

And she hated to admit it, but there was no guarantee that Ariel was alive.

There was hope that she was, but only Grimm knew where Anson’s sister was and what condition she was in.

Anson put his hand on hers, sending a warm tingling sensation up her arm.

Butterflies fluttered in her stomach. She wanted to look away so he couldn’t see the truth of her feelings in her eyes.

Would he think it was another trick? Like her pretending to leave FUC to go on the run with him?

She decided she didn’t care. She had to know how he felt, even if it was against the rules for her to have feelings for the asset she was protecting.

“Anson, I?—”

A knock at the door had her jumping nearly out of her skin.

She shot up off the couch, not sure what would be said if another agent had seen her that close to Anson.

As Nari crossed the room to the front door, she exhaled sharply.

Regardless of her feelings, she’d have to wait until after the mission was over.

It could jeopardize everything if she wasn’t thinking clearly.

Nari looked through the square window in the front door.

If their visitor was an agent, she wasn’t one Nari recognized.

The older woman tucked a strand of her auburn hair behind her ear as she brushed some pine needles off her shoulder.

Her tiny frame was hunched over slightly, as if years of gravity strained her bones.

Maybe this wasn’t an agent. Could she be lost?

Nari tried to get a better look at the woman from one of the windows in the living room that lined the porch. Nari turned back to Anson. “I have no idea who this is.”

Anson sprang up from the couch with a wince. “Is it Dr. Grimm?”

“Not unless Grimm is an older woman.” They had a sketch of Dr. Grimm, compliments of Gabby Crowe, one of his former experiments. Aside from that, no agent had actually seen him in person.

He walked toward Nari to get a better view through the living room window. “Something about her seems familiar.” He scratched at his chin with his left hand. “But I can’t recall where I might have seen her before.”

The woman knocked again. “I just need directions.” Her voice was muffled through the door.

The woman seemed innocent enough, yet things weren’t adding up.

How did a frail, old woman get lost in the middle of nowhere?

Nari hesitated, her hand hovering over the doorknob.

She considered a partial shift to bring her talons out for protection, but what if this was just a human, lost in the woods?

She turned to Anson, whispering so the woman couldn’t hear her.

“I don’t trust her. Use my phone to call for backup. ”

“Where is it?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“Please hurry!” the woman cried. “I need to use the bathroom, too.”

“One moment, please! My friend is looking for our map,” she called out before she turned to Anson, lowering her voice so the woman outside couldn’t overhear. “My phone is on the coffee table. The code is 1016. Text Grayson and Cass. Let them know we have company.”

She watched as Anson walked back to the coffee table and picked up her phone. Nari turned back to the door with a smile plastered on her face. “We have an outhouse out back,” Nari lied. “You’re more than welcome to use it. ”

The older woman hunched over a little bit more, putting a hand to her lower back before coughing a little. “I think I need some water. I’m a bit dehydrated,” the old woman croaked. Was it Nari’s imagination, or did her face seem somehow more wrinkled than before?

Crap. Nari couldn’t have an old woman croaking at her door just because she was being overly cautious.

How much harm could an old woman do, even if she turned out to have nefarious designs?

Nari dared her to try something. She’d learn just how quickly Nari could shift and scratch the woman’s eyes out with her talons. “I have to let her in.”

“But do you?” He stood, looking back at the door from the other side of the couch.

She supposed she didn’t, and a nagging suspicion in her gut told her things weren’t adding up. Some old woman wandered into the deep woods on a mountain without any gear and just happened to be asking for directions at their cabin? The only cabin for miles.

“I can’t let you in. My friend is really sick.

It’s contagious,” she lied, not knowing what else to say.

“But I can give you a bottle of water. Give me a minute to go get it for you.” Hopefully the lie would buy them some time.

She could leave the door, looking like she was going to the kitchen for water, and instead head to the armory hidden in the bedroom.

She wasn’t sure how much the woman could see from the window in the cabin’s door.

Nari started toward the back of the cabin but froze in her tracks when a bang sounded at the front door.

She turned to see that the old woman had kicked the door open. And as she entered the cabin, something strange happened to her features. It took Nari a moment to realize what she was seeing before her very eyes.

The woman’s old age reversed. The wrinkles on her face smoothed, and her skin tightened until she looked just about Nari’s age.

The liver spots on her face and hands lightened back to pale skin, her spine straightened, and all of this took Nari’s attention away from the fact that the woman drew a weapon.

“If you even think about shifting, I’ll taze you. ”

Anson’s voice emerged as not much more than a squeak when he called out, “Ariel?”