Page 124 of Kai
A glance at Cece showed her face contorting with fury.
“Do you remember the good cop, bad cop plan we talked about earlier?” she whispered so that Levine couldn’t hear us.
I nodded, then studied her face, trying to follow the explosive chemical reaction that was no doubt igniting inside her head.
“I call dibs.” Cece crawled off the bed and reached for the door. “I’m the bad cop.”
She stalked out of the berth with her hands fisted.
Oh, shit.
Cece was on the warpath. Would she be able to control her temper? Was she gonna be an asset or a liability as we worked to squeeze out the information we needed from the merc?
I ripped off the tape, pulled the IV needle out of my vein, and threw the blanket aside. As fast as I could manage, I scooted down to the edge of the bed. I was still wobbly on my legs when my feet hit the deck, but I braced my knees and forced myself to stand. A glance at my Tak revealed Levine remained secured and stationary.
I grabbed a pair of board shorts and finagled them on. The berth spun around me. Fuck, but I was dizzy. I snatched my Tak, and also my Glock and my medkit. After strapping on the holster that held my Ka-Bar, I forced my legs to move. The painmeds weren’t working well.
Suck it up, Marine.
When I topped the short flight of stairs, Levine shifted his defying sneer from Cece to me and leered at the sight of the bandage glaring on my bare chest.
“There you are, soldier boy.” Eyes gleaming with pride and glee, he chortled out a sarcastic snort. “Looks like my knife wasn’t too far off the mark. Next time, I’ll be right on target.”
“Asshole,” an infuriated Cece hissed, going into her fighting stance and flexing her knees. “There won’t be a next time.”
She tore into the merc, landing a series of controlled toe jabs on his sides, where I’d bound his ribs earlier. The fury burning in her eyes was real, and yet she showed admirable restraint for someone whose glare showed she wanted to beat the shit out of the assassin in our midst.
He, of course, cried out as if she’d kicked him in the balls, cowering, cursing, and squealing. Turned out his screams weren’t booming at all. They were like him—piggish, loud, and unpleasant.
“Get this bitch off me!” He slumped in the corner, making himself a smaller, more pitiful target, putting on a show as if he was Cece’s feeble victim instead of her ruthless would-be assassin. “She’s vicious. Do something!”
“Not my call.” I stopped mid-shrug when my pectoralis major screamed. “And by the way, you call her a bitch again and you’ll regret it.”
“I got your point,” he pleaded with Cece, keeping up his performance, feigning weakness even though I knew it was all pretend. “You don’t like it when I hurt him.”
“You bet I don’t.” With a last poke, Cece took a step back and glowered at the man.
The cabin spun around me. I refused to faceplant in frontof Levine. Ignoring the merc’s dramatic pleas, I set my stuff on the galley’s island, opened my medkit, and after lifting my pre-loaded sedative syringe in the air, made a big show of pressing the plunger.
A single transparent drop swelled at the tip of the needle. It conveyed my message to Levine better than words. The injection was ready to go. If the fucker gave us trouble, it was nighty-night for him.
“If you put me down, we won’t be able to talk,” Levine warned, watching Cece and shrinking further into the corner.
I settled the syringe on the counter and strapped my Tak to my forearm. Glock in hand, I padded to the upholstered chair. On the way, I smirked at Cece. “After trying to kill me, now this motherfucker wants to talk.”
“Let’s kill him.” Cece flashed a feral grin that would’ve frozen Levine’s soul if he’d owned one. “Or maybe hurt him a little?”
She bumped the merc’s wounded leg with the side of her foot.
“Fuck!” Levine hissed as I eased down on my chair.
“Did that hurt?” Cece demanded, pacing in a horseshoe pattern around the cornered merc.
“Yeah, that hurt, mistress of torture.” He dropped his chin to his chest with a humility that proved to be false when he whipped up his head and flashed Cece a sinister grin. “If you take as good as you give, you and I will have a blast.”
I gritted my teeth until my jaw ached. Not only was he a murderer; he was also a brazen son of a bitch. His suggestive tone didn’t faze Cece. She continued to pace around the merc while he perused her as thoroughly as she assessed him.
“You’re one sizzling hot commodity, girl.” The cuts and bruises that swelled the merc’s face accented his leer and made him look even more macabre. “I’d seen pictures of you, but CersiAstor in the flesh? Glorious. You’ve got the ass, the boobs, the moves—”
