Page 28 of Baby One Last Time
“No, it won’t.” We would never be partners again. We’d pursue different missions with new teams and rarely, if ever, cross paths. And even if we did, there were the damn rules he was no longer willing to break. Except... “Where were all your precious rules last night?”
“Last night was...” His eyes drifted closed. “Last night was nirvana.” He opened his eyes. “Last night is one of the reasons I’m begging you to trust me.”
“You begging me. That’s a first.” I pulled open the door to leave.
“Cynthia, say it. Say you trust me.”
I glared at him over my shoulder. “The begging’s new, but this trust conversation is old, and I’m done with it. We’re not playing that game anymore, Wilder. We’re not doing anything together anymore, except surviving this fucking mission so we can get the hell out of each other’s lives.”
I stalked out of the room and out of his reach. The steel security door slammed shut behind me. Luckily, he didn’t follow me, or he would have seen me sink to my knees and sob. Just for a minute, though. Then I stood and walked back to my room. Dignified. Composed. Professional. Away from my ex’s rejection and straight into the waiting arms of an almost-full bottle of Macallan.
Part 3
The Miami Pete Job
Chapter 8
The next morning,we headed to the airport in shifts, taking three different vans, both to avoid schlepping through the airport in a conspicuous group of nine, and to allow space in each vehicle for ourselves, our luggage, and a small cache of weapons we were taking with us. I rode with Bond and TJ. Mai was probably on the first transport, given her love of all things early. I didn’t know which shuttle Derek had caught. I only knew he was long gone from the building by the time I dragged my sorry, hungover ass to the curb to catch the last ride.
I wore all black in the hopes that no light would reflect off my clothing and into my eyes to exacerbate the pounding in my head, and the darkest pair of sunglasses I owned to obliterate any evidence of the LA sun. With my eyes and much of my face covered by the mirrored lenses, I probably didn’t look half as shitty as I felt.
As the van hummed along bumpy roads, Bond pulled a plastic bag out of her medical kit and handed it to me. “Vomit into that and not on us,” she told me.
Yeah, so I didn’t look that hot after all.
After a few minutes of eye-closed silence, I blinked and caught TJ staring at me.
“Something wrong?” I asked. Smooth.
“You tell me,” he said.
I struggled to sit up straighter and pulled off my shades. The pulse in my temples made me wince. “Just a little hungover.”
“I’m glad you cleared that up,” Bond said. “My professional opinion was some kind of rare and fatal disease. I was ready to put you on bed rest.”
I managed to focus my aching eyes on her. She smiled. Joking, then. Not pissed off. I glanced at TJ. His neutral expression looked less amused, but I saw traces of concern in his narrowed eyes and in the slight twitch of his lip.
“I don’t make this a habit, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Who said I was worried?”
I quirked an eyebrow right back at him.
He sighed. “Right. I don’t need to say it with my words. Any chance you’ll teach me how to keep my thoughts from showing on my face for you to read me?”
It was a question he should ask of Derek, not me. But I wouldn’t say that out loud. Instead, I said, “I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, the reasons I can’t read some people. In my experience, it’s usually because they don’t experience the full range of human emotions.”
Bond leaned forward. “Like sociopaths.”
“And psychopaths and people with other pathologies,” I said. And probably those who were really good at lying to me, especially when I wanted so badly to believe them. And definitely those I let get so close to me, they were under my skin and in my head. Without some distance, as in Derek’s case, I suddenly realized, I couldn’t read see the emotions clearly enough. I kept that to myself, too.
TJ didn’t look any more relaxed.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” I asked.
He nodded slowly. “I guess there is. And maybe it’s something you need to hear.” He glanced at Bond. There was definitely an unspoken conversation going on between them, but I couldn’t work out the details. “It’s about you and the team.”
“Oh.”
