“Are all of your safe houses this well guarded?”
“No.” His eyes stared at the computer and I had the impression that he was avoiding looking at me.
“This one must be special.”
“It’s vulnerable. The security system makes it less so.” He gave a lazy shrug.
“Uh huh.” Not the whole story, but that was okay. It was his story to keep.
“We’ll be safe, Ava. Go get some sleep. We don’t know when we’ll have another chance.”
I chewed on my lip and thought about it. Sleep didn’t sound that bad, but how could I trust that nothing would happen to me while I slept? What if he decided to ditch me? What if someone came looking for us while we were unconscious?
“How do you do it?”
“Do what?” He raised one eyebrow.
“Sleep, knowing that you have enemies.” I played with the hem of my sweater.
“I trust my equipment.” He stood up and held his hand out to me.
“It must be pretty good equipment, then.” I felt my cheeks flush at the unintentional flirtation. But that smile was playing across his lips again, and I liked seeing it.
“Yes it is.”
I let him pull me to my feet. I grabbed the pistol from the chair arm and let it hang loosely in my fingers. Tugging gently, he pulled me toward the bedroom where he had gotten my clothes earlier. The room was dark, but he flipped on a light on the small table next to the bed. I watched as he pulled back the blanket and fluffed the pillows. He turned to look at me once he was finished and stuck his hands in his pockets. That simple gesture made him seem somewhat vulnerable.
“It’s not fancy, but it’s comfortable.”
“It’s great. Thank you.” I looked at the bed and forced myself to smile. If he wasn’t an assassin I would think he was trying to be sweet.
“Get some rest.” He turned and paused by the door. “I’ll be on the couch. Nothing will get past me.”
“Will you be able to sleep?”
“Don’t worry about me, Ava. This is a normal day for me.”
He closed the door without looking back. I sat down on the bed and took a deep breath. The bed was comfortable and if I wasn’t running for my life I might even have appreciated the charm of the little cottage I was stuck in, but right then I was too busy trying to make sense out of the craziness that had completely taken over my day.
Eventually I lay down and tried to get comfortable. Owen was right; I needed to sleep. Exhaustion weighed heavily on my shoulders and I felt like there was a beach’s worth of sand under my eyelids. While my mind was racing, my body was waving a white flag. There would be time to worry about everything in the morning. If Owen decided to bail on me, I’d figure out something. If he decided to kill me…well, there probably wasn’t much I could do to stop him.
I shivered and pulled the quilt up higher on my shoulders. Deep down, I didn’t feel threatened by Owen. He’d had his opportunity to ditch me and hadn’t done it, but I still wasn’t sure about his motives. Did assassins have scruples? He might be British, but he wasn’t exactly James Bond. He did his job for money, not out of duty to Crown and Country. He wasn’t Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible, either. Though I had a feeling he lived in a world that was cold and lonely much like those two characters.
My eyes drifted shut as I contemplated my murderous knight in shining armor. Even in my dreams I couldn’t escape my reality. Rachel at the coffee shop made a gun with the foam on my café mocha before chasing me down the block with a knife, but the worst were the ones about Mr. Song. He was walking through the building where I used to answer phones and the lights were flickering. I chased him past airplanes that were half-built, begging him for forgiveness, but he never stopped, never looked back. Instead he stopped at the door to the engineering wing, his shoes drenched in blood, and knocked.
“Please forgive me!” My fists clenched. There was blood on my hands, caked under my nails.
“Ava.”
“I didn’t mean to kill you.”
“Ava.”
“Please!” I reached out to touch Song.
A hand closed on my shoulder and I woke screaming. Owen looked down at me with sad eyes.
“Shh. You’re okay. It was just a dream.”
I took in a lungful of cool air and choked. Bile rose in my throat and I covered my mouth. Pushing past Owen I ran to the bathroom and got rid of last night’s soup. I clung to the cool porcelain and wept as quietly as I could. I tried to choke back my sobs but there was no stopping them. My eyes burned and every muscle in my body felt as if I had just completed a marathon by the time I was finished. Pushing away from the toilet I leaned back against the bathtub and rubbed the back of my hand across my nose.
Owen knelt down next to me and held out a wet wash cloth. “Finished?”
“Think so.” I took the wet rag from him and pressed it to my face. “Sorry ‘bout that.”
“No need to apologize.” He sat down on the floor and leaned against the tub next to me. “I thought it would happen yesterday.”
“You thought I would break down and toss my guts yesterday?” I leaned my head back and looked at him from the corner of my eye.
“Killing isn’t easy. The first time is always the worst.”
“Did you throw up after your first… kill?” Hit? Mark? Murder? I didn’t know the lingo.
He let his head fall back and closed his eyes. I watched as he swallowed and wondered if he was reliving it in his head.