Just Bob (Assassins Inc. #1)(13)

I should know.

For the first time since I started as an assassin, I was suddenly ashamed of what I did. I was also starting to wonder how many of the people I had taken out were actually bad guys. I usually did a good amount of research into a mark, but even I was fallible. I could have missed something.

I certainly had with Bob.

It made my heart ache a little to know how close I had come to killing my own mate. As part of my recon, I always liked to get my mark’s scent in case I had to chase after them or take them out in the dark. If I hadn’t taken that chance with Bob, I would have followed through and killed the guy.

“Are you really a shifter?”

I smiled at Bob’s curiosity. He might be a little uncertain, but that in no way distracted from his inquisitive nature. “Yes, baby, I’m a—”

I sniffed the air when something not quite right tickled my senses. It was faint, just a whiff, but it hadn’t been there five seconds ago. I knew the scent, and it made my blood run cold. There was only one person on the planet with that particular combination of smells.

I used my enhanced senses to search every nook and cranny of the apartment where someone could be hiding. I sniffed again when I didn’t see anything out of place. The scent was still faint, but still there, lingering as if to taunt me.

“Shade, what—”

I quickly covered Bob’s mouth with my finger, hoping not to freak him out too much. His eyes widened and I saw a tint of fear darken the brown orbs staring back at me, but Bob snapped his lips closed and didn’t say another word.

I quickly reached over and turned the stove off and then held tight to Bob’s arm as I led him out of the kitchen toward his bedroom. We needed to get dressed and get out of there.

I stopped when I reached Bob’s bedroom and pushed the man behind me. I should have known escaping wouldn’t be that easy.

“Stone.”

The other man nodded, not lifting his hand from where he was petting Mustachio. The man didn’t even get up from where he was lounging back against the bed pillows.

At least he had made the bed,

“Shade,” the man replied.

Fuck! This wasn’t good. Stone was given his name because he was a stone-cold killer with no emotions. He never felt remorse or regret. Hell, he never felt hate or love or happiness or sadness or anything else.

The man had no emotions.

“Don’t hurt the cat,” I told the man.

Bob would be devastated.

“You haven’t fulfilled the contract, Shade.” A small frown creased the skin between the man’s dark eyebrows. “I would ask why that was, but the smell of sex in here…” The man’s lips twitched as if he was amused, except that was an emotion and Stone didn’t have those. “Fucking a mark is one way to take them out. I might have to try that sometime.”

I growled.

Loudly.

“Bob is not a mark,” I snapped out.

My fear for Bob’s life was warring with my anger at Stone. He was the one man I wasn’t sure I could take out. We were pretty evenly matched.

“The contract on his head says otherwise.”

“The contract is wrong.”

“They doubled the payout,” Stone replied. “I don’t think it’s wrong.”

Damn, damn, and double damn.

“He’s my mate, Stone.”

I doubted a human would have seen the split second stilling of Stone’s body. It was just a heartbeat of time. But I saw it.

“I can’t let you kill him.”

“Our kind doesn’t have mates,” Stone replied.

I knew he wasn’t talking about panthers, because he was one. He was referring to being an assassin, and normally I would have agreed with him, except proof that we were both wrong was pressed up against my back.

“I knotted him, Stone.”

No matter the shifter species, you could only knot your mate. It was one of the ways we knew we had found our true mate.

“Someone wants him dead, the sooner the better.”

“I know.” It made my stomach roll every time I thought about it. “I think it has something to do with his work.”

“What?” Stone asked as he tried to look around me. “Is he a secret agent or something?”

“No, he’s an accountant.”

“Junior accountant,” Bob said quietly.

I smiled. “He’s a junior accountant.”

It was odd to see Stone’s eyebrows draw together as the man frowned. I could see he was truly confused, which told me just how weird this situation was. “A junior accountant?”

I nodded.

“For who?” Stone asked. “The mob?”

Actually, that wasn’t a bad idea.

“We don’t know, but the kill order came down through Sinclair.”

“Then it’s not the mob. The mob doesn’t use Sinclair.”

“That we know of,” I replied. I didn’t know the man that well.

“No.” Stone shook his head. “Sinclair might be a lot of things, but unethical isn’t one of them. He only takes sanctioned contracts. He refuses to take any contracts from anyone involved in drugs or human trafficking.”

Huh.

A handler with principles.

Who’d have thunk it?