Page 42 of Hero & Villain
“Right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Unless we don’t. You’ve done your civic duty by teaching me not to commit vehicular manslaughter. You also know that if there is screaming, it’s not a thing worth bringing out your ninja suit.”
“Jezebel probably won’t give me back my night vision goggles, will she?”
“You could ask.”
He grinned. “I’ll call it her Christmas present.”
I waited for him to go, but he lingered, taking his time to gather up all the trash and a stray fry on the floor mat. He was strikingly adorable with hands full of wrappers and a taped nose. The impulse to kiss him was almost too strong for me to resist. Like a good villain in danger of losing her mind, the second he got out I hit the pedal and sped towards the gate, leaving a cloud of dust in the air behind me.
Chapter Thirteen
VILLAIN
TThe rest of the week went by without any more encounters with Dirk involving blood or kissing. He’d give me a cool nod while his eyes laughed at me, and I’d try not to say anything incriminating while my heart tingled.
I really enjoyed the regular schedule of eight hours of paperwork, ordering whatever I wanted for lunch from one of the many restaurants in Las Vegas, and then going to Jezebel’s safe house after work and playing Othello until bed, eating leftovers for dinner. I didn’t see any signs of the mountain lion, because he never came into Nix’s office.
In other words, I was on vacation, living a life so normal for most people, but so strange for me. My time was mine to do what I wanted with it, and I got paid a generous envelope of cash every Friday without worrying about family obligations or corporate takeovers.
The more I dug into Nix’s team’s paperwork, the messier it got, but I enjoyed the challenge of organizing someone else’s disaster. There were some serious inconsistencies that became more and more glaring as I dug into things, but no one seemed to care, so I just jotted down notes about it and put it under thestapler at the end of every day. Nix had to be making side deals with a few of the viewing channels that he didn’t keep on the books.
That was a problem. I was there for the sole purpose of taking down Dirk Dagger, but instead I was happily playing secretary and avoiding my target.
I missed Toni. She would remind me that I was the supervillain who could easily seduce Dirk Dagger. And then she’d help me come up with a game plan. I also just missed her. How could you be a villain without a minion to give you validation?
After work on Friday, I drove my girly pink car with my pretty pink hair to the grocery store to get chocolate, ready for a long, luxurious weekend of playing Othello. Maybe I’d read a novel. Secretaries did that.
“Hey, it’s pink!” the guy crowed, the same drunk I’d met on my first day there. He was carrying a case of beer, so he probably wasn’t drunk yet.
“Your deductive skills are still stellar,” I said, giving him a sneer, although he didn’t look terrible when he wasn’t drunk. He seemed harmless, somewhere between twenty and thirty, and good-looking in a beer-drinking kind of way.
He was standing in line at the only open register. Maybe I should leave my nice German chocolate and make a run for the car before I accidentally stab him.
He smiled cheerfully, tapping his temple. “Thanks. I have a good memory for faces. What are you doing tonight? I’m going to the big fight, Dagger and Bulldog. Who are you betting on? Don’t tell me, Dagger, because of the pink thing, right? See? I am a natural-born detective.” He winked and chuckled very awkwardly.
I contemplated a series of things I could do to shut him up so that I could progress through the line without having to talk tohim, but I needed more intel and less avoidance in this takedown scheme.
“I don’t know. What are the odds?”
His eyes lit up, and he moved a little closer to me. “Well, Dagger was slotted to fight against Milk last weekend, but they switched it so Death-hammer took him, and everyone knows that Nix is the best fighter in Vegas, so Bulldog got pissed when Milk got trounced. He runs the Dogs of War as I’m sure you know. They’re the third-best team since Dagger gave up his crew. So what I’m saying is that the odds are on Bulldog, but you never know what Dagger’s going to pull. He’s the least consistent fighter, but on a good day, he can even take out Nix.”
“I see. So, if I put money on Dagger and he won, I’d make more money, right?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. The odds are definitely on Bulldog. I could round up an extra ticket if you wanted to come with me.” He winked and leered pretty blatantly. I was wearing a kitten cardigan and a midi skirt that was incredibly comfortable, but not remotely attractive, so he must have had a very good imagination. He didn’t look like he had much of anything going on between his ears, but looks could be deceiving.
I’d just earned my first paycheck. It would be incredibly irresponsible to blow it on a fighting match, but that’s exactly what I wanted to do. And maybe Dirk would like it. My seduction plot wasn’t exactly gaining steam. I couldn’t just play secretary for the rest of my life. I needed to stop thinking about that soft kiss and take him down. I needed to seduce him instead of knocking him unconscious and dumping him in the desert. I also needed to break into his warehouse and steal tech.
I could handle a mountain lion. Right?
My heart raced at the thought of the lion, and then Dirk Dagger rescuing me all heroic, and then that brush of his lips…
“Well? What do you think?” the beer guy said, breaking me out of my favorite daydream.
I eyed my chocolate bars. Did mountain lions like chocolate? How could anyone not? “I think that my odds aren’t great. Do other girls with pink hair go to the fights?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Groupies, you mean? They usually wait at the back door, hoping someone needs some candy. Then they’re put where they look good on film. After the fight, maybe one of them will take them along to the after-parties. But you must know that, since you were heading for the back door, right?”
