Kai shot me a hard look. “We will circle back to that erroneous statement when we get back to your safe house. Why don’t you tell me why you needed to burn off steam? Is this about Mo’s history with the Guild?”
I scoffed. “What clued you in, smart guy?”
The glare he sent my way was pure fire, and it made my nipples ache. “I can imagine you weren’t expecting to hear any of that. The Guild probably keeps its members fairly in the dark on these less moral projects.”
That really made me laugh. Fuck, I wasn’t even drunk, I was just high and floaty from the fight.
“What’s so funny?” Kai did not appreciate my mood, apparently.
“You,” I snickered. “You’re funny, Big Man. You think anyone in the Guild has morals? That’s cute. You do realize we do anything for the right price, don’t you? The fact that someone was contracted to impregnate your sister then steal the baby? Not even slightly shocking. Nor is it even close to the worst thing I’ve seen in the Guild.”
His hands tightened on the steering wheel like he was picturing them around my throat. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to fuck him just once. Sex didn’t need to involve emotion… it could just be a physical act.
“So what was that fight all about?” he demanded, the edge of anger in his voice warming me inside.
I wet my lips, then sighed. Fuck it. What did I even have to lose by sharing some honesty with Kai? Especially after everything Mo revealed about her past. She didn’t need to tell me any of that, and it’d clearly pained her to do so. I sure as fuck hadn’t done anything to earn her trust.
“I didn’t know about Project Remus,” I admitted. “And I had no idea that babies were being stolen from their mothers at birth… but it’s not a huge stretch to guess they had paid off the right hospital staff and forged the documentation. It really wouldn’t be hard with the Guild resources.”
He said nothing, just waiting for me to elaborate.
Fuck it. “The orphanage thing, though? The Guild raising little baby assassins and spies with no family ties and no one to report them missing if they die on a job?”
Kai made an irritated sound. “We have evidence.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t doubt it. I’m the evidence. Theoretically I was surrendered by my birth mother at just a day old, but now you’ve got me questioning whether that’s really what happened.”
His reaction was to stomp on the brakes, spinning his head to look at me in surprise. “You—”
“Watch out!” I snapped, shoving his head down and reaching for one of my guns in the back seat. Because when he braked our car, I noticed we had a tail in the wing mirror reflection.
It was someone on a motorcycle that quickly caught up with us when Kai stopped our car abruptly. The red of our taillights glinted off the metal of a gun in the biker’s hand, and a split second later, our windshield exploded in a shower of safety glass.
Fucking car rental company was going to fleece me for that.
“What—” Kai started, but I wasn’t paying attention to him.
I twisted in my seat, aiming for our attacker’s wheels and shooting them out with two clean shots before I even unbuckled my safety belt.
“Stay here,” I told Kai, climbing out of the car and walking casually over to where the motorcycle had just crashed into the ditch a hundred yards or so past us.
The dude who’d shot at us was scrambling to his feet, stumbling and tripping as he tried to escape the wreck of his bike. I let him get back up onto the road before shooting out his knee, because fuck if I wanted to go climbing down into a ditch tonight.
“Ah, fuck! You bitch!” he screamed, writhing on the road in agony as he clutched his mangled knee. “I’ll kill you! I’ll fucking kill you!”
I arched a brow as I drew closer, inspecting him for a gun and finding none. He’d probably dropped it when I popped his tires.
“You will, huh?” I replied with a smile. “How do you think you’ll manage that?”
Placing my boot on his chest, I aimed my gun at his forehead. He had a scruffy beard and sallow eyes, his gut showing a preference for beer. He also wore a Dogwood Death Squad patch.
“This is very bad news for your gang,” I murmured, tapping his patch with my toe. “What on earth possessed you?”
The guy was pale and sweating, pain and fear etched across his face as he glared up at me. “Three mil, bitch. That’s what.”
I squinted down at him, then wrinkled my nose. “Three million? Someone put a hit on me and only offered three million? Oh, honey, you got fucked. Hard. Where’s the hit listed?”
The man just sneered, so I sighed and shot him between the eyes. I didn’t need him to tell me… the Guild wouldn’t mess around with a joke of a contract price like that, nor would they shop it out to amateurs. This was something else entirely.
Blood pooled around the biker’s head, a small trickle dribbling from the entry wound and running down his temple. Fucking idiot.
Turning my back on the dead man, I nearly ran straight into Kai, who loomed just a few feet away with a close-guarded expression. Apparently, he didn’t follow my instructions to wait in the car.
“Get in touch with Vega,” I snapped at him. “Let him know that he needs to clean this up and that I don’t appreciate his guys taking a hit on me.”
Kai’s brows hitched, but he said nothing. Just followed me silently back to the car that sat in the middle of the road, doors wide open and windshield shattered. So much for having a heated ride.
“Wait!” he barked when I started to get back into my seat. I paused, then realized what he meant. Glass was scattered across the seat, and even though it was safety glass, it could still cut. I stepped aside as he swept his sweatshirt over his head.
My lips parted to offer a sassy quip about this not being the time or place for a strip show, but then he wrapped the clothing around his hand to brush the glass off my seat.
“What a gentleman,” I murmured, shooting him a smirk before sitting down.
He brushed off his own seat, then knocked out the rest of the shattered windshield. Before he started the car again, he pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed someone.
“Hold this,” he said, handing me the phone as it started ringing on speakerphone. He started the car, accelerating past the body of the Death Squad idiot and heading back toward our safe house. Without a windshield, the ride was noisy, so I cranked his speaker up to its loudest.
The call connected and a familiar, unwelcome voice answered.
“Sam,” Kai barked, and I resisted the urge to end the call simply to be petty. Kai glanced at me like he knew what I was thinking, but relayed the information for Vega anyway. Saved me tracking down the gang leader’s contact details or paying for a cleanup myself. The cleanup crews in this area charged a lot.
Kai finished his instructions to Sam, then nodded at me to end the call. The following silence was so thick it was suffocating, and I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.
Eventually, I sighed. “If you have something to say—”
“I don’t,” he cut me off.
It made me shoot an accusing glare at him, but then he raised a hand to scratch the back of his neck, and I spaced out a little. Goddamn, he looked good with only a tight T-shirt on. His Royal Marines tattoo was closest to me, and I couldn’t stop my mind wandering to the time on the island when I traced those inked details with the tip of my tongue.