Page 5 of You Were Warned: Part One

Take him, this is what I’m here for. Grab him, get the drive, and finish the job. But I let him walk through the door and stare at it as it closes.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I chastise myself.

I wait another thirty seconds before following him. Call me a sucker, but now I want to know what makes him tick. Jensen doesn’t strike me as a bad person. Normally the men I kill are bad. They have done horrible things—hurt people, destroyed lives—and I eliminate them. I can live with that, and I sleep soundly. This job was supposed to be easy: turn up, find what was stolen, and kill the thief. But Jensen doesn’t feel like a thief. A little morally gray with the things he secures for people, sure, but aren’t we all?

I torture evil men, but I don’t consider myself a bad person. It depends on what lens you look at it through, and maybe that’s the problem. Before I was looking at Jensen through the lens that my client gave me—thief, target, problem—and now I’m looking through my own. Though I don’t know what he is yet, I’m not killing him today, which is going to become a problem. I smile; I like problems.

For now, I need to get home to my other problem: Vesper. I can’t have the love of my life thinking that I’m missing from the island. She likes to play hard to get, but I know deep down I’m growing on her. She hasn’t tried to kill me yet, but all in good time. There is nothing like an attempt on my life by the woman I love to get my blood pumping, and after the morning I’ve had, I could use the reassurance.

Vesper

The last two weeks have been disgustingly peaceful. The Jester has been off the island. He is not dead, unfortunately; his tomatoes are getting watered and the kitchen light comes on when he is back between trips. It means he is alive, but elsewhere, which should be ideal.

He was supposed to be back today—Noa mentioned it this morning when I passed the cemetery. He tried to get me to dig a hole with him, but then I reminded him his girlfriend Valli might miss him because the only hole that I’d dig would be the one to bury his body in.

It’s eight thirty now and still no kitchen light. As I stand at my window, I decide I don’t care; instead, I grab my jacket on the way to the door and head a few houses down in the opposite direction to his house.

When I reach my destination, I knock twice—it’s our signal. The door opens and Rue’s large frame fills the doorway, wearing his usual cargo pants and a black shirt that sits tight around his biceps.

“Vesper.”

“Are you going to let me in or just stand there looking like a Halloween decoration?”

Rue steps back, and I walk past. He keeps his place spotless, maybe he picked that up during his time in the military, or he could just be a clean person. Neither of us are rostered on chases tonight, but his housemates are, thank god. Most people on the island share their house. Brawley lives with his harem, and most of them I can deal with. Kayla is pretty cool, Ares and Clay I can tolerate, but Vero needs to be electrocuted—yet his death would hurt Brawley. That’s the only reason he is still breathing.

The damn Scarecrow shares too. He has apparently turned over a new leaf, which I do not buy for one second; it’s just what amazing pussy can do. Though Valli seems nice enough, and she’s Nixie’s new lapdog. Noa is like an annoying fly at times that just buzzes around, and Cipher keeps to himself. Others have paired off into friendships, some forced together due to limited housing. I got lucky; no one seems to want to share a house with a freak like me who loves spiders—and who will occasionally let them roam free around the house.

From the back of the house, Pretty Boy squawks something. He doesn’t like me very much, and the feeling is mutual.

Rue shuts the door and follows me, so when I turn, he is coming toward me. He isn’t a complicated man, especially about this, and I mean that as a compliment. He doesn’t need anything from me; he doesn’t want anything complicated from me. Rue is happy for this to be a transaction, which is all I’m after. This is friends with benefits, if you remove the friendship part, so rather a mutually beneficial deal that satisfies the both of us.

He stops in front of me, and I tilt my head up—which I hate—as he looks down at me with the flat expression he has for everything except cooking and his stupid birds.

“You going to stand there all night?” I snap.

“You going to keep talking?”

I shrug. “Probably.”

Rue’s hand cradles my jaw as he leans down to kiss me, which is effective in shutting me up. His mouth is unhurried, and his other hand wraps around my side, pulling me in. I allow it; I don’t feel like being stubborn tonight. My jacket ends up on the floor, his hands warm on my skin, and he walks me backward until I hit the wall beside the door.

I pull back half an inch. “Bedroom. That way.”

“I know where my bedroom is.”

He kisses me again, slower this time. His mouth shifts to my jaw and then my neck, his hands sending signals to my brain that make me need him more. I tip my head back against the door and moan.

“Bedroom,” I grumble.

“You keep saying that,” he counters.

“Because that’s where the bed is.”

He laughs against my neck, then steps back toward his room, removing his shirt as he walks, and I follow behind him.

Rue is a lot of man to look at—tattoos across both arms and his chest, the dog tag he never takes off—and so broad you would think he would crush me beneath his body.

“Stop thinking,” he says when he turns to face me, tugging off his cargo pants.