Page 7 of Nine of Swords
Not one bit.
Hell, I don’t even know his damned name.
7
Blade
I lookover at Sydney as she sleeps in the passenger seat of the black SUV that I was given for this assignment. It’s barely eleven at night, not quite three hours since we left the condo in a hurry, and she’s out cold. We spent the first fifteen minutes of this trip in conversation. Formal introductions were done, and I gave her the spiel on needing to lay low since both her place of work and home were no longer safe. It’s only after I assured her that this arrangement was temporary that she nodded and calmed down.
At the moment, her head rests on the black tinted windows, her hands stuffed into the pockets of a zippered sweatshirt she took from my back seat when we left her place.
My sweatshirt.
Seeing her in my clothes is doing something unexplainable to me.
I fucking love it, but I need to stay on task.
At a stop light about twenty miles from the safe house I picked, I send an encrypted check-in message by text to Aiden. He promptly replies, and we update each other on what’s gone on.
Me:Target is still in play. Will arrive at hold in place location within the hour.
Aiden: Copy that.
Me: Request for confirmation of secondary recon site retrieval.
Aiden: Already left site with gear packed. Will deliver on arrival.
Me: Copy that. Additional request for target site item retrieval if site is an all clear.
Aiden: Can do. Target site is an all clear. Please identify the item for pickup.
Instead of replyingwith details on what I want Aiden to get from Sydney’s condo, I attach a photo of the items. I took a snapshot of them while I did our standard site recon and installed surveillance equipment, and knowing now how much they might mean to Sydney, I make a judgment call. She would want them close to her.
Aiden replies quickly with,
Aiden:Target’s physical items for retrieval is confirmed. Nothing like playing catch-up. Over and out.
I shakemy head and smile. This is yet another reason I can’t complain about working with Aiden Stone. The man is systematic and diligent. It’s less than three hours since we left Sydney’s place and already, he’s cleared the scene, took out the men who came after her, and packed up all my gear at the deserted commercial unit where I was keeping an eye on Sydney during the times where she was at work in her trading firm office.
From his comment about playing catchup, I can tell Aiden will want to do a debrief of what went down. Nothing about the last few hours has been normal. We’ve both seen worse shit go down before, but we were never caught this unprepared so soon. It almost felt like we were caught with our pants down from the moment the first attacker followed her from that office beside hers. The men that came after Sydney seemed to know as much about her movements as we did, like they were working from the same playbook, or with the same intel as we were.
But that’s not possible. It can’t be, because I’ve been doing daily sweeps of both the condo and her office. There’s nothing at either location except for the equipment that I installed myself. The video and audio feeds were all programmed to encrypt prior to being sent over a secure satellite connection, directly to me, Aiden and our base unit. Not even the client has access. So how is it that did these fuckers gained entry to her condo building and made it in to her place so easily? How did they bypass all the primary and secondary security measures Sydney installed? It just didn’t make sense.
Unless…
No.
I shove the possibility of an inside man working for the other side. It’s impossible. There are literally only three of us with access to the live feeds. Me, Aiden, and one staff technical analyst at our base camp. I’ve worked with these men before. None of them have ever gone rogue. They’re loyal to a fault.
Refusing to entertain the possibility, I promise myself that now that Aiden has cleared the condo, I’ll triple check the place again as soon as I can find some time. Ideally, during my next four-hour recovery break. It’ll eat into my sleep, but I won’t get any sleep anyway, not until I figure out how this happened.
Letting out a heavy breath, I look over at Sydney again. Her GO-bag and purse are on the floor of the front seat, tucked tightly between her legs and high heel office pumps. The girl didn’t even have a second to take off the sheer black pantyhose she wore to work that morning. My guess is that her GO-bag has at least one pair of practical footwear for her temporary stay at the safe house. But secretly, I sure hope she’ll keep those fuck-me heels on the entire time.
Maybe even while she sleeps.
A smile creeps up my lips as I picture her in my bed wearing only those heels and that pantyhose, her legs wrapped around my hips, those heels high in the air as I fuck her. My focus is on the roads ahead of me, but I can’t stop my eyes from quickly glancing over at her to scan up from her heels, along her fabulous legs to the side of her hips. I wonder if those are pantyhose at all. They can also be those sheer stocking that stop near the tops of her thighs, held up by sexy black garter belts. That might be impractical for the office, but not impossible.
8
