Six(54)

Granted, I got it—their work was a lonely business. I was certain there was some study that linked their personality types with high sex drives. I’d seen it firsthand with Six.

“Mmm, I think you could use some right now.” Her fingers twisted around the hem of her boatneck tee as she pulled it up and over her head. Nothing but a lacy bra underneath.

“Oh, come the f*ck on!” I threw my hands up in the air. “Are you so sluttastic you just wave that shit around for any dick to come knocking?”

Her lip curled up, and she turned my way. “Listen up, you little shitstain, I will f*cking end you right here and now.”

“Whoa.” Five stepped between us. “Ladies, let’s take it down a notch.”

Six moved to stand next to me.

“I’m about to take her down a notch.” She turned to Six. “Seriously, why do you still have this thing around?”

“She has information.”

One’s eyes widened. “You’re keeping her around for that, or to keep your dick wet? Because last time I checked, you broke every bone in a guy’s hand until he told you what you needed to know. If that didn’t get it, you filleted their skin.”

Ouch.

Nine stepped forward. “She’s unnecessary baggage. Get the information and get rid of her.”

“Wait. I don’t think that’s needed,” Five said. “I don’t think you’re seeing the bigger picture. She’s pure f*cking camouflage gold.”

I had no clue why, but I had Five batting for me, while Six became more and more tense beside me.

“Lacey’s life isn’t up for discussion. She’s alive, for now, because she is of use.” His eyes narrowed on One. “And not just to keep my dick wet. That’s an added bonus.”

Five licked his lips. “Are you sure I can’t—“

“No.” Six cut him off.

One pursed her lips, face red as she shot murderous daggers at me. She picked up her shirt and pulled it back on.

“Come on,” Five said as he walked past her toward her bags. “We rented the adjoining room.”

She didn’t break her glare, and I didn’t back down. Because I was insane, it seemed. Pissing off an assassin.

Maybe I needed some caffeine to get my head on straight before she took it off in a literal sense.

Moving back to my perch on the bed, I watched silently as they interacted. Nine and Five moved bags through the connecting door and into the other room while One directed, and Six cleared his rifle from the table.

They were oddly the same and different in the way they moved. Fluid, assured, and strong. Precision and accuracy. It was amazing how in tune Nine’s aura was with Six’s. They even had matching blank expressions.

I didn’t know how old any of them were. Even the ME’s report on Three only gave an age range, but I had a feeling they all fell into the same.

One, who was beautiful on the outside, showed fine lines around her eyes and her hands no longer held a youthful fullness. She was snotty, superior, and slutty. With what she did to Five, I could tell she was jealous of me. She’d probably used her * to gain favors with the men, to gain some control over them, but with another female around, she became furious that they weren’t fawning all over her.

Five appeared a bit younger, but then again, that could have been his personality. Something told me he was the baby of the group, but even being the baby put him in his thirties.

Nine was all business—a lot like Six. But he held that air of authority, of cockiness. Being the highest ranked of elite killers could do that to an ego, I supposed. They all seemed to respect him.

Then there was Six. For weeks I’d studied him, tried to figure him out—my Mr. Mysterious. The best guess I had was that he was on the upper side of thirty-five.

All in all, I was rooming with a scary bunch of people, whose combined body count was probably in the hundreds. They were all cold and calculating, but there was something in Six, a detachment, that seemed to make him the bigger threat of them all. Then again, I knew him the best. I hadn’t seen the rest in action.

And I thought being in a room with two of them was bad.

Four was bound to be an adventure.





For almost half an hour, they’d been spinning theories. It started after Five returned with dinner. Most of it I didn’t understand, code words and super-secret spy things.

So, I sat there, listening, perking up at a name I recognized.

“What about Jason?” Five asked.

Three deadly heads stopped talking and turned to look at him.

“Jason?” One’s eyes were wide. “Impossible.”

“Why?” Five asked as he shoveled another fry into his mouth.

Nearly every meal since we met him involved fries. He was a fry-aholic. They were offset with vegetables and meat, but there was almost always fries.

“No.” One shook her head. “He knows everything about us.”

Six nodded. “Exactly. He’d be the last person we’d suspect.”

“Or the first,” Nine said. “It could be that Home is just using him as a mouthpiece. He could be sending us to our deaths and not even know it.”

“Why now, though?”

Six shrugged. “Disbanding us could be costly.”