assume I was whispering sweet nothings into my lover’s ear. Instead, I was taking stock. How many we had on us. No Deal yet. He was impossible to miss, all six feet and nine inches of him. I spotted a few undercover agents, one on top of the hotel roof with a sniper rifle.
“You’re very nice and everything. Honestly, I’m very flattered, but I’m here to try to save my brother and, in turn, my niece. She has—”
I interrupted him and put my hands on his neck.
“She’s beating cancer. I heard.”
I didn’t say that his niece and his very predicament were a message from my dead sister.
She and I were all we had. We grew up in a foster home that was fairly industrial. We weren’t allowed to have details on our parents until we were at least eighteen. Losing her took my will to live until I became a fighter to find her. But she would send me the most obvious sign in the world that I wasn’t supposed to go down as easy as target practice on a beach: my sister’s name was Lexa, too.
“We owe this group so much money and we can’t pay it. I think they might kill me. I’m going to try to offer them something…anything. Lexa’s going to make it.” His words came out as a flood, drenching his worries to a complete stranger straddling him topless.
Then I saw Deal come out of the door closest to the fire exit. He was packing heat, though he could’ve gotten a gun from any of the places they were tucked in around the property.
I put my attention on the man underneath me. “Do as I say and you’ll live.”
“Okay. One hundred percent.” He nodded with his eager words.
A breeze slipped across the beach. A white scrap of fabric came free from the beach bar and twirled in the air. I grabbed it as it flew in front of me. I snatched out of the air and gave it a sniff. Vanilla and orange Creamsicles. I almost rolled my eyes. After all these years, all this silence as I’d begged for a sign that she was still alive, today, right now, I get pummeled with her name and her scent. I let the fabric fly free.
My Lexa had never been a subtle one.
Deal stopped to speak to the undercover agent who was pretending to drink at the bar. We made eye contact and a slow smile slid across his face.
He had a scar from his eyebrow to the center of his chest. I put it there. Our history thrummed between us. Deal was the one they’d sent out to kill me, of that I was sure. They couldn’t trust me. And I bet me showing up in the lobby had rung every alarm bell they had. Because it couldn’t be this simple, could it? The most wanted woman in the world strolling into the very headquarters that demanded her head on a pike? I would assume an ambush if I were them.
Deal seemed to get impossibly taller as he blocked the sun for my scared dude friend and me.
“You’ve got a great big set of balls.”
“I always have had a bigger set than you.”
His sharp bark of laughter had emotion in it if you knew him. And I knew him better than anyone.
“I heard you tore up some guys in Spain.”
“I heard you like to wear women’s panties at night.”
Deal’s eyes narrowed while my muscle-bound nerd breathed heavily between my boobs.
“So how do you know Paul here?” Deal shifted his weight and let his shirt mold to his firearm. It was an unnecessary threat. I knew he was armed.
And he assumed I would be armed, even if I was a tiny bit suicidal.
“I meet people all the time, baby.” I bit my tongue after my words. To swing from sitting and waiting for it all to end to having hope that I might have something to fight for was dizzying. But I dealt in the sudden. I adapted. That’s how I’d gotten here anyway. Not sure if it was right or healthy, but it was where I was.
Uncle Case put his hands in the air. “You guys know each other? I mean, I’m not hitting on her. I know that’s how it looks right now, but—”
I covered his mouth with my hand. “Shh. You’ll make it worse.”
Deal reached out and touched my cheek. I leaned into his hand. “Still so beautiful. And unpredictable.”