Loverboy (The Company #2) - Sarina Bowen Page 0,103
nab a bunk in the off-duty room and crash. But Max growled at me to come upstairs with him for a drink.
At two a.m. Just the two of us.
That’s something we used to do a lot. But we don’t anymore. Not for a couple of years.
Max must have forgotten, though. Because he pressed me against the elevator wall and devoured me with angry kisses. I didn’t leave his apartment until five in the morning.
I could have said no.
I should have said no.
And not because Max is the boss, or because either of us gives a flying fuck about the optics.
The problem is that I give a lot of flying fucks about Max. And sex with him always leaves me feeling raw and vulnerable.
I don’t like feeling raw, and I really hate feeling vulnerable.
It was a failed mission, anyway. Max is still a wreck this morning as I put the finishing touches on the mission plans in a sixth-floor conference room. “No mistakes. No extra risks,” he says curtly.
“Got it,” I assure him.
“Nobody goes into that building. But if somebody goes into that building, it’s me. You’re in the van for this op.”
“Max! You’re going to the hospital. You’re not part of this mission.” Forget the sex. Now I just want to punch him for treating me like a child.
“I’m going. Not joking, Scout. Argue again and you can watch from the control room.”
Yikes. “Has there been any news?” Has there been some terrible development at the hospital that nobody’s telling me?
He shakes his head slowly. “I’m calling in some specialists.”
“Great idea.”
I’ve heard this already, though. The Company rumor mill says that Max summoned vascular surgeons from Johns Hopkins and from Harvard. He also summoned a plastic surgeon for the cuts on Gunnar’s face, where the broken window glass shredded him. He even summoned the mayor of New York.
Okay, that last thing is probably just gossip.
“Did we get anything off the cameras last night?” Max asks.
“It’s a nightclub, Max. There were two hundred people on the cameras. But nobody who looks like our guy.”
“How’s our bookkeeper this morning?”
“I’m going in to check on him right now. How’s Posy doing, by the way?”
He shakes his head. “Not good. She won’t leave the hospital.”
“You could go and take her place,” I try. Lord knows this mission will be less stressful if he leaves me in peace.
Max gives a quick shake of his head, letting me know that I’m out of luck. “I was working on him, you know.”
“Working on … Gunnar?”
Max nods miserably. “I was going to suggest he relocate to New York. God knows who I’d find to run the California office. But he could have had a life here.”
“He still can,” I say firmly. “Stop it already.” I give him a little nudge out of my way, and then head into an interview room, where Geoff the bookkeeper is waiting. Pieter has already outfitted him with a tiny camera affixed to the strap on his backpack. “Almost ready?” I ask him.
Geoff shrugs, looking terrified. He knows that two of Aga’s men were arrested last night, after our operative shot one of them in the center of his bulletproof vest. But one man escaped. And one man died trying to get out of the basement window after Gunnar.
His gas mask failed. He died by the same chemical weapon he was trying to use on Gunnar.
“Geoff, I’ll say this one more time. You don’t have to go in there. You still have a choice.”
He shakes his head, picking up a dry erase marker and writing on the whiteboard. The State Department won’t relocate me if I don’t go through with it.
“That’s probably true,” I admit. “But you have other options.”
If I don’t do this, they go free. And they’ll kill me anyway. Let’s go, he writes on the board. I’m tired of being afraid.
I get up and open the door for him.
Duff is behind the wheel, as usual. I’m sitting in the control seat, watching the monitors.
Max is sitting on the bench, grinding his teeth.
On the monitor in front of me I watch Geoff walk up a flight of stairs. The tiny camera is so good that I can see dust motes in the air when he walks past a window.
Come on, I inwardly beg. Let’s see a terrorist in high rez.
Geoff pushes open a door, then arrives at another one. He presses a buzzer to ask for admittance.