Slow Agony (Assassins, #2)(11)

I turned back to the “specials” and continued to read. “Wait for two minutes and then go to the bathroom. Fold this piece of paper up and put it in your pocket.”

I read it over and over again, looking for some hint of emotion in it somewhere.

There wasn’t any.

Sure, I knew that I my reunion with Griffin wasn’t under ideal circumstances. People were trying to kill us. That afforded us a certain amount of leeway to ignore our feelings. But seeing him again was tearing me up inside. Didn’t it matter to him at all?

I folded up the piece of paper. I put it in my pocket. I pretended to peruse the menu. I wasn’t expecting anything overt from Griffin. He couldn’t do anything that would jeopardize us. But I knew him pretty well, and if seeing me meant anything to him, I couldn’t tell.

I got out of the booth I was sitting in, picked up my duffel bag, and walked to the back of the restaurant, where the bathrooms were.

There was a woman inside, sitting on the sink and dangling her feet. “Leigh?” she said, smiling.

I shut the door. “Who are you?”

“I’m Sloane,” she said. She had dark hair and a wide grin. “I used to be Op Wraith like Griffin. I’m helping out.”

“Oh,” I said.

She pushed me into one of the stalls. “Change into these.” She handed me a backpack. It was unzipped and I could see clothes inside. “Give me your clothes.”

“Why?” I said.

“Quick,” she said.

I yanked my shirt over my head and dangled it over the top of the stall. “Here.”

I changed as quickly as I could. When I emerged from the stall, Sloane was wearing my clothes. She had on a long blonde wig. “I’m going to be you.”

I nodded. This was starting to make sense. “Do you think he’ll go for it?”

“It should throw him off for long enough,” she said. She gestured to my duffel. “You should move your stuff into that back pack. He could have seen you come in with that bag. We wouldn’t want to tip him off.”

“Right,” I said. I took my clothes out of my duffel and shoved them into the backpack.

“Almost forgot,” she said, digging out a baseball cap. “Put your hair up under this.”

“Okay,” I said, taking it.

“Wait in here until you hear a knock on the door. That’ll be Griffin,” she said, slinging my duffel bag over her shoulder. She swung out of the bathroom.

I waited. I’d never met this Sloane person before, but there had been a lot of assassins at Op Wraith. I couldn’t have met them all. I tucked my hair into the ball cap, adjusting it in the mirror. Did I look like a different person?

There was a knock. I opened the door.

Griffin was there. He was no longer wearing his waiter uniform. “Come with me.”

And I followed him.

*

“So did we lose him?” I asked. Griffin and I were in a car, cruising down I-68, away from Cumberland. We hadn’t spoken once. Not when he led me to the car, not when he started it up, not when we sped out of the D’Atri parking lot.

“I don’t know if he was even there,” said Griffin. “The Marcel I knew wasn’t exactly great at surveillance.”

“You know him then.”

Griffin’s mouth twisted into something like a smile. “Oh I know him. I know him very well.”

“How?” I said. “Knox said he didn’t think he was Op Wraith. Marcel said something about jail, and I thought maybe...” Oh. Jesus.

Griffin’s jaw twitched. “Yes, Leigh. I know him from jail.” He turned to me for a second, his expression blazing. “You want to guess how?”

I swallowed. I turned to look out the window. Griffin had been imprisoned as a juvenile, when he was only sixteen years old. Because of the way he’d been tried, he’d been put in adult prison, and he’d been raped and abused while there. “I’m sorry.”

“Whatever.”

“Look,” I said, “you may have left, but that doesn’t mean I stopped caring about you.”

He didn’t respond.

I looked down at my hands, not sure what to say.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” he said.

“Didn’t what?” I said.

“Didn’t act like that. You and I both know that you don’t give a damn about anything except yourself. You proved that.”

I bit my lip, tears threatening. “That isn’t true.”

“Oh,” said Griffin sarcastically, “now she’s going to start crying. Great.”

“Fuck you,” I muttered, swallowing my tears. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“Crying about it doesn’t fix it, you know,” he said.

I took a shuddering breath. “Griffin, that Marcel guy wants you for some reason. He killed my friend, and he threatened me, but it’s because he wants you. So maybe it wouldn’t kill you to be a tiny bit nice to me. I’ve had a hell of a day.”

He turned back to me, fury in his eyes. But then it seemed to drain out of him, and he turned back to looking at the road, defeated. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be a dick. Hearing his name though... It’s not exactly making it easy for me to be in a good mood.”