Slow Agony (Assassins, #2)(24)

Griffin considered. His expression changed. It hardened. “Maybe I do.”

“Of course you do,” said Sloane.

“Why’s he after you, anyway?” said Silas.

Griffin shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in years.”

“So you don’t know what he wants with you?” said Silas.

“How do you know him, anyway?” said Sloane.

Griffin drank more of his beer.

“Does that really matter?” I said. I could tell Griffin didn’t want to talk about it.

“It might,” said Silas. “We don’t know what his motives are.”

“He’s... twisted,” said Griffin. “He likes to manipulate people. It’s probably all a game to him. I don’t know why he picked me, though. Maybe I made an impression on him.”

“You knew him before Op Wraith?” said Sloane.

“Um, shouldn’t you guys be focusing on strategy?” I said.

“Yeah,” said Griffin. “Trust me, we don’t know enough about his motives for them to be helpful.”

“Okay,” said Silas. “Well, we have a little more than a week to get this together, so we better get cracking, huh?”

*

The rest of the week passed in a flurry of preparation, and I was left out of most of it. It was decided fairly early on that I would be positively no help on this mission, so I was going to stay behind in the house while the three of them went to kill Marcel.

That was fine with me. I knew I wasn’t very good with a gun, and I didn’t want to get in anyone’s way. I stayed to the periphery of their strategizing conversations, and I didn’t try to engage Griffin, even though he was now around constantly.

He looked so gorgeous, and I wanted him. I wished I could find some way to make him see that we were meant to be together. But he was consumed with working on the plan to take down Marcel.

So the days passed. Maybe things went quickly for everyone else. They were busy. I was bored most of the time. I had a stack of romance novels that Sloane had gotten from a yard sale, and I’d been reading those. But that was before Griffin was around all the time, and... somehow, they weren’t nearly as entertaining anymore.

In romance novels, there was always something keeping them apart that blew up at the last minute. He didn’t know that she was only pretending to be a noblewoman, and when he found out that she was actually a peasant woman, the wedding was called off.

Then there would be pages of despair. At some point, though, he’d miraculously show up on his stallion, and take her away from the little hovel she lived in. They’d get married anyway.

And everything would be perfect.

But real life wasn’t like that.

Griffin wasn’t coming back on his stallion for me. He wasn’t prepared to overlook the fact that I was pretending to be a noblewoman.

Maybe it was because what I had done seemed worse to him than lying about my social class. Maybe it was because all romance novels were nothing like real life. How many young, virile, handsome dukes could there possibly be in England during the Regency period anyway?

I didn’t know.

I tried not to think about it. I tried to watch Griffin without wishing he was mine.

Mostly, I tried to stay out of the way.

I did insist on coming along to the shooting range. The others were only brushing up, but I needed a good bit of practice. I wasn’t particularly good with a gun. I’d only had a few lessons with Griffin, and when I thought about them—thought about how his body had been so close to mine as he’d shown me how to hold the gun—well, it was distracting and not in a good way.

Sloane took some time to give me some pointers.

“You need to relax,” she said. “You’re tensing up, and it’s making you shaky.”

She seemed to be able to explain things better than Griffin. Or maybe it was only that she peppered all her advice liberally with, “Oh my God, I couldn’t get that down at first. I screwed that up so much. Don’t worry, you’re fine.” She was very reassuring.

Anyway, it might have been my imagination, but I thought my ability to shoot was improving.

Beyond that interlude at the shooting range, I did absolutely nothing for the entire week.

But finally, it was the night before Griffin was supposed to meet Marcel. He stayed at Sloane’s and Silas’ house overnight so that they could get an early start the next day, and they all went to bed early, because they wanted to be at their best the next day.

I tossed and turned, thinking about how I’d be alone in this house all day tomorrow. I was going to be so worried. But I agreed with them that it was better for me to stay here. And they were all trained assassins. They knew what they were doing. They’d be okay. I hoped.

Still, I wasn’t having an easy time sleeping, so I got up and went downstairs. There was leftover Chinese in the refrigerator, and I thought I’d make a late-night snack.

When I got into the kitchen, Griffin was there. He was eating his own Chinese food at the kitchen table. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, just a pair of shorts, and I remembered that I used to be able to put my hands all over his skin when it was bare.

But now I had to keep my distance.

“Doll,” he said. “What are you doing down here?”

“Looking for Chinese leftovers,” I said. “Guess we’re on the same wavelength.”