Chapter Three

 

 

Oh, he liked the fact that he’d put that look on her face. She was far too flirty, but he got the idea she viewed him as amusing and nothing else. A pretty face. It oddly rankled. Odd because he’d never minded that before. A woman wanted a good time, he was her man. Something about the lovely doctor treating him like he was a lightweight bothered him.

Thought he was a stripper, did she?

“I think the elevator stopped.” Her voice sounded breathless. “Did you do that?”

And she was naïve, or he was a far better actor than he gave himself credit for. It made him wonder though why she immediately thought he’d set this up. She was suspicious? That was interesting. “I work security, love. I was joking about being an assassin.” He held his hands up, letting his shoulders fall back so his jacket opened. “See, no guns.”

He wouldn’t actually need a gun to take a person out. He might have forgotten everything about his past, but his body remembered how to kill.

It might be the only thing he was good at.

Besides, his Glock was in his bag, but she didn’t need to know that. She didn’t need to know that the messenger bag he was carrying held a Glock, extra ammo, two knives, and a taser unit. It also held a file on one Dr. Rebecca Walsh that would likely have her clawing her way out of this lift.

Her face had gone the sweetest pink. “It’s because I thought you might be a stripper, isn’t it?”

He shrugged and looked at the lift’s panel. Seven was lit up, but it was obvious they were stuck. Oddly, he didn’t mind. It might be the longest he got alone with the target, and he was going to use it to get to know her a bit. After this, Robert would be the one trying to befriend her and he would stay to the background. “A man likes to be known for his brain. Eyes up here, lass.”

She’d gone even pinker because sure enough, he caught her staring at his chest. “Sorry. I work with a bunch of doctors and medical techs. Despite what you see on TV, they are not all stunningly gorgeous. They know what abs are but not how to work ’em, if you know what I mean.”

“You look quite fit.” She was different in person, more vibrant than any photo could convey. At first, he hadn’t actually recognized her. She’d slipped into the lift and all he’d thought about was how luscious her ass was in that skirt she was wearing.

“Oh, I have to be. I wear a lot of spandex,” she said and then winced. “That came out wrong.”

“Who’s the stripper now?” She was actually quite adorable, but in a surprisingly sexy way.

He couldn’t help but think that if Robert hadn’t been such a bloody picky bastard, he would be the one standing out at the street, directing the movers. He wouldn’t be stuck briefly in here with the most intriguing woman he’d seen in forever. Well, in roughly two years, since he’d woken up with no knowledge of who he was.

“I’m a doctor,” she shot back, but her lips had curled up as though she enjoyed the flirtatious air they’d found.

He was supposed to be Robert’s husband. He didn’t want to be Robert’s husband.

It didn’t matter. They would be out of here in a few moments and he would fade into the background. Hell, he could be bi for all she knew. It could help the op because he could be Robert’s cheating bisexual husband and they could commiserate because he was fairly certain she’d divorced her husband for similar reasons.

The small phone on the panel rang and he picked it up. They needed to get out of here as quickly as possible. He wasn’t good at this part. Hell, he’d already announced to the target that he was a bloody assassin. This was Robert’s job. He was the one who would break into her apartment while Robert distracted her. That was what he was good at. “Is there a problem?”

“Oh, eh, I was hoping no one was there. Sorry. The elevator seems to be broken,” a tinny voice said. “I got an alert on my phone.”

“No shite, mate,” he replied. “And it’s definitely not empty. There’s two of us in here.”

The doc was getting into his space. “If that’s Colin, you tell him he can’t just slap an out-of-order sign on the doors this time. I’m not living here for a week, damn it.”

“Is that Doctor Walsh? Crap.” Colin sounded slightly terrified. “Uhm, look, I have a call in to someone who can fix it, but I have to get my dad to okay the cost.”

“Your dad? How the bloody hell old are you?” Owen asked.

“He’s barely twenty-two, but his father owns the building and wanted to retire,” Becca pointed out.

“I don’t care how old you are, lad. You get someone to get us out of this bloody box.” He couldn’t be in here for hours.

“Sorry. I’ll get you out of there as fast as I can,” Colin promised and the line went dead.

Owen hung up and sighed. “Does this happen a lot?”

She backed away quickly, as if she realized she was far too close for comfort. “Not too often, but the last time it happened it was several hours before they managed to get that sucker working. It depends on where we are. If we’re close to seven, they can pry the doors open and we can wiggle out. If we’re solidly in between, they’ll ask us to stay inside as long as there’s no danger. Are you claustrophobic?”

She picked a corner and slid down to the floor, somehow managing to make the move graceful. She wore a black skirt, white blouse, and a prim pink cardigan. It made her look like a sweet little schoolteacher. The bottle in her hand was a contradiction. She’d reached inside her brown-and-white striped tote bag. He noticed she had a bunch of files in there, too.

That was interesting. He wouldn’t mind looking through a few of those, but she would probably not like him making a grab for her bag.

He watched as she unscrewed the top of the bottle of wine. “Not really.”

She tipped the bottle his way. “I am. A little. Don’t worry. I won’t flip my shit on you or anything, but I’m going to start on this bad boy before it gets warm.” She looked at the green bottle in her hands. “Thank you, New Zealand, for your grapes and your rejection of pretentious corks in your wines. I would be seriously fucked if I drank red.”

She tipped that sucker up and drank a surprising amount of Sauvignon Blanc.

She was not what he’d expected.

He glanced down at her. What had he expected? Certainly not a woman who looked like a sweet librarian and talked like a bloody sailor. Who had an MD and drank like a fish and talked about male strippers like she knew a couple or wanted to know a couple.

She was a walking contradiction. Well, a sitting one.

He put his back to the opposite wall from her and let his body slide down. He pulled the strap of the messenger bag over his head and settled it into the corner before reaching into his jacket. She was speaking his language now. He pulled out his flask and opened it, holding it up because a Scotsman knew how to toast even a clusterfuck of a situation. “Cheers, lass.”

Robert wouldn’t be able to drink with her. The man was far too in control. He didn’t carry around his whiskey. He was all proper like and drank in bars out of posh glasses and not a flask.

Was Robert the right man to get close to this woman? He was starting to think they’d read her wrong. She might not need a serious, intellectual friend.

She might need a bad boy.

Her lips tugged up and she held up her bottle. “I bet you get a lot of women with that accent alone. Cheers.”

They clinked beverage containers. “Less than you would expect.” A lie, but he didn’t want her to think he was a complete manwhore. There were bad boys and then there were walking venereal diseases. He certainly wasn’t going to tell her about the women he’d gone through during his recent stay in Dallas. He’d run through the single subs at Sanctum in quick order. “So you live here?”

Small talk. They needed some small talk. Maybe he could find out a thing or two, prove he wasn’t a complete moron.

She wasn’t some file or a picture on the wall. She wasn’t a bunch of degrees or the sum of her education and her job. She was a woman.

They forgot that at their own peril.

She nodded, taking another drink. “Yep. I’ve been living here for about two years and this stupid elevator is broken more than it works. Apparently it’s an antique and the historical society doesn’t want it to change. The historical society doesn’t have to hoof it up seven flights of stairs.” She frowned. “There’s a more modern elevator at the back of the building, but I’m too lazy to walk to it. My laziness foils me again. I could be watching Doctor Who right now.”

And she was a geek, though he shouldn’t be so surprised since he knew about her secondary job. He had to pretend like he didn’t, of course. “Is that why you wear spandex? You like science fiction and comic books?”

He took a swig of his whiskey and felt the familiar burn down his throat. Normally it would relax him, make him look forward to the next drink, but this time, he was focused on her.

“I love them,” she said, her eyes lighting up. “When I was growing up, all I read were comic books and medical texts. I’m still a Marvel girl. I suppose you could say I didn’t have a ton of friends. I was always the youngest person in my class. And the oddest. I was the weird kid who fell madly in love with viruses at a young age.”

He could feel his brows rise. “Viruses?”

She nodded. “They’re the true supervillains of the world. Snakes only kill fifty thousand people a year. Influenza? Over six hundred thousand in the world every year. We’re scared of sharks and shit? They got nothing on a good VHF.”

He was getting his flu shot. Tucker had been pestering him about it and he’d viewed the kid as a mother hen, but perhaps he knew what he was talking about. “VHF?”

“Sorry, uhm viral hemorrhagic fever,” she explained, pushing her glasses up her nose. “VHFs come from one of six virus families, all nasty. I’m a particular fan of filoviridae. Filovirus virions are pleomorphic. That means they can come in different shapes. Some are like a six or a U. They have these long filaments. I remember the first time I saw one under a microscope. Zaire ebolavirus. I stared at it. So small and so destructive. We still aren’t certain exactly how the fuckers replicate.”

He had no idea what she was talking about. “And you were a child studying this?”

“Yep. My dad was a doctor. My mom was a college professor. I got a bunch of brains,” she admitted. “I used to follow my dad around on rounds. The patients thought it was sweet at first, and then they would get disconcerted when I would offer a second opinion. Having a kid in pigtails arguing diagnoses is apparently scary. I was hell on teachers. Now I kind of wish I’d studied engineering and mechanics. I don’t suppose you know how to fix an elevator.”

“I could shoot it if I had my guns,” he admitted, not bothered at all with his slight lie. She wouldn’t be as comfortable with him if she knew how well armed he was. “I’m quite good at close combat, but it doesn’t have a throat I can go for or balls I can kick.”

She winced. “I thought balls were sacred to men.”

“Not in a fight they aren’t.” He was comfortable around her. Way more than he would normally be. There was a reason he didn’t date. He seemed to have lost most of his charm when he’d lost his memory. “In a fight all that matters is winning. I’m not talking about some posh MMA fight. I’m talking down and dirty, someone’s dying fight.”

She chuckled. “I don’t know how many people would call a cage fight posh. You sound like you were in the military.”

He rather thought he still was. Oh, they didn’t call themselves that and they served no country, but they ran like a unit most of the time. “I was SAS for years. That’s British military. I might not know how to fix a lift, but I can fly a helicopter. I can use almost any weapon known to man and I’m skilled at martial arts. Best thing I do now is step in front of bullets. I’m a bodyguard. I’m working for a firm here, providing security for celebrities and politicians, and rich people who need to feel like they’re celebrities.”

This was the part where he explained that his husband, Robert, had taken a job with a bank here in Toronto and they’d moved from DC. Robert had worked for the bank for years and when he’d had the opportunity to transfer, they’d taken it. He should explain that they’d been together for a couple of years and recently married in an intimate but lovely ceremony.

The words stuck in his throat and wouldn’t come out. He took another drag off the flask.

Friendly wasn’t the way to play this woman. She wanted to flirt. She was attracted to him and from what he understood, she didn’t have a lover.

Then there was the fact that he was attracted to her, too. He didn’t want to cut off that possibility. Not if he didn’t have to, not if he thought this was the better way to go. He was alone in here. He needed to follow his instincts.

Or you could follow the bloody plan, take a step back, and if it all fails, it’s not your fault because you followed the bloody plan.

“I’m a doctor.”

“No shite.” He chuckled. “You’re either a doctor or some kind of evil genius who’s going to set a virus on the world.”

“Well, if I was an evil genius, that’s exactly what I would do,” she admitted. “But I’m not. I work research. Neuro.”

He sighed and decided to play it the way a bodyguard who didn’t work intelligence would. “You’re going to have to use layman’s terms. Remember? I take bullets, not classes.”

“I research the brain, more specifically degenerative brain diseases. I’m hoping to find new therapies, even a cure for dementia and Alzheimer’s.”

For the first time she spoke softly, almost shyly.

He’d found something to poke and prod. “The way you talk I would think you would have studied viruses.”

“I thought I would when I was a kid,” she admitted. “Things changed as I got older.”

Because of her mother? He didn’t like how that thought made him soften toward her. That was the funny thing about getting to know the target. It often made them human. “What sent you into…neuro?”

She was quiet for a moment. “My mom died of Alzheimer’s, well, complications from it. I started studying the brain so I could understand what was happening to her. And then I kind of wanted to beat it, you know. It took her from me. I wanted to destroy it. I still do.”

“I lost my mum.” He wasn’t sure why he’d said that but she had a hollow look on her face that made him want to connect to her. It felt right to talk to her. Hell, he’d never talked about this with anyone but Ariel, and only because she wouldn’t clear him for play in The Garden or Sanctum until she felt like he’d faced it. He’d never faced it. How did a man face the loss of someone he couldn’t remember?

“Did she get sick?”

They hadn’t covered this in his briefing. Probably because he wasn’t supposed to go this deep with the target. He wasn’t supposed to be stuck in a lift with her. “She was killed in a break-in.” He swallowed hard, the emotion welling up hard and fast. “She and my sister. The men who…well, they were caught.”

Her eyes had widened. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry to hear that.” She was silent for a moment and they both took long drinks. “Now you protect people.”

“And you try to save them,” he acknowledged. “Maybe it’s tragedy that sets us on a path. Maybe it’s the way we get fucked up that leads us to where we’re supposed to be.”

She held up her bottle again. “To fucked-up lives.”

He could drink to that.

She set her bottle down. “I’ve got a sandwich. You want half? I’ve got some chips, too. Now I wished I’d given in and gotten those cookies I wanted.”

Damn but she was pretty. “I’ve got a chocolate bar in my bag and a couple of protein bars, but they taste like shite. We should ration them. I’ll share it all with you if you’ll tell me why you wear spandex and just how tight it is.”

A glorious grin transformed her face. There was the glowy girl he’d seen, the one who utterly fascinated him. “Deal. Let me tell you all about the magnificent Captain Neuro.”

She passed him half the sandwich as she began to talk, and Owen got the idea that he was in trouble.