I KNEW something was up the next morning the moment I entered the kitchen and saw all the guys talking around Julius’s card table of army figures. They spoke quietly, not even glancing over as I grabbed a glass of water. I lingered for a moment, trying to catch a snippet of conversation.
Then it clicked.
This scene looked familiar. It was exactly what I’d seen when they’d been planning their last mission. I watched as Julius moved a few figures across the board, and Talon readjusted one, saying something in his usual low tone. Blaze shifted from foot to foot as he added a few lines to a sketch on the whiteboard, and Garrison monitored the expressions of his friends rather than the board itself.
I itched to go over and find out what they were up to now, but… this was their work. If they’d wanted me involved, they’d have asked me, right?
They were doing so much to help me without my even asking them to, without my having any hope of repaying them in any material way. I didn’t want to overstep and sour the budding peace we’d made.
The restless itch didn’t leave with those thoughts, though. I turned and headed back to my room, which held both my cot and the guys’ exercise equipment. Working out was always my go-to method of burning off tension.
As I stepped onto the treadmill, I paused. How much was this habit my own, and how much was it simply something Noelle had drilled into me?
My hesitation only lasted a few seconds. My trainers had pushed me to stay strong and lean, but when I’d decided that I needed a release in the middle of the night, it hadn’t been Noelle who’d compelled me to do sets of cardio exercises. I’d turned to that outlet of my own accord.
I set the pace slow to start, a brisk walk that transformed quickly into a jog. When my legs felt warm and supple, I turned the jog into a sprint and finished the last quarter of a mile. As the second mile rolled around, I sprinted half of it and slowed to a jog. By the time I finally slowed to a walk again, my breath was coming a little rough. Good.
I took myself through some stretches, and then I jumped into a weight training rotation that had me sprawling on the floor, breathless and satiated. The rush of exhausted exhilaration after a good workout was something that I’d never be able to top any other way.
Well, maybe I’d found at least one other way recently. My attention settled on the weight rack for a moment, remembering Talon’s firm hands hefting me up there, his body scorching against mine, his cock filling me. A giddy flush rose over my body.
I stood and strode toward the cabinet against the wall, pulling out a scratchy towel and wiping away my sweat. When I brushed the towel over my face, I caught a hint of laundry detergent, but it had been overpowered by the reek of male perspiration. Despite being clean, the towel still smelled of musk from overuse.
I couldn’t stop myself from running it over my face again and breathing in the scent deeply. It reminded me of Talon—of how sweaty we’d gotten during the collision of our bodies in that very atypical workout the other day.
The exercise hadn’t totally burned away my restlessness, though. My nerves still twitched with uncertainty. I needed something more.
I stalked out into the common room to find the guys had vanished while I’d been working out. Steffie had arrived and was wiping down the kitchen sink. Giving her a wide berth, I paced from one end of the apartment to the other. That didn’t help. I clearly wasn’t going anywhere.
“Full of bees,” Steffie said in her dry voice.
I turned toward her. “What?”
She swiped her cloth across the kitchen island. “Full of bees. It’s what my mother always used to say when I couldn’t sit still. Like I had a hive riled up inside me. A frequent problem of Blaze’s, you might have noticed. Seems like you’ve got the same difficulty at the moment.” She shot me a crooked smile that didn’t totally fit with the grandmotherly vibe of her gray-and-white streaked bun of hair and softly plump figure.
“Yeah…” I wasn’t sure how much to say to her. The guys had introduced me briefly to the woman who took care of their cleaning and errands, but I’d barely spoken to her before. Did she even know what they’d found out about who I was and why I was here?
I ambled over and started unloading the dishwasher, which was both something to occupy myself and a show of solidarity. Joining someone in their work was one way of forming a connection. I’d mostly used that trick with targets I was planning to kill, but there was no reason it couldn’t work with a potential ally.
Steffie raised her eyebrows but didn’t shoo me away. When I was halfway through sticking the dishes back in the cupboards, I judged it safe to venture, “How long have you been working for the crew anyway?”
“Oh, years and years,” she said. “I watched them train Garrison in. But obviously I have seniority over all of them.” She winked at me.
“So, what, they put up a job application online or something?”
She burst out laughing: a rich, vibrant sound that spoke of a big personality within her subdued exterior. “That wouldn’t do for work like this. No, I was… part of a job, and they decided it was a good idea to keep me on to do jobs for them.”
It was hard to keep my jaw from dropping. I had a sudden image of Steffie stalking through dark corridors alongside the guys with a gun in her hand, which would have seemed totally ridiculous if not for the glint in her eyes. “A job? I mean—I know what kind of jobs they do.”
“Yes, they mentioned that the air had been cleared.” She moved to start wiping down the front of the fridge, scrubbing hard at a few stray splatters of food. For a minute, I thought she might have decided she didn’t trust me enough to say anything else. Then she sucked in her breath.
“They’re good boys—you should know that. I’d been sold to the people they were hired to go after. People who used me as a slave. I’d been with them for years too. I hardly remembered… I didn’t have anything but my name when Julius set me free. But he saw something in me and he knew I’d been cleaning for the men who’d ‘owned’ me, so he suggested that I could look after this apartment for them. And then when that worked out, other properties they wanted kept up. And other responsibilities on top of that.” She shot a glance at me over her shoulder with a quirk of her lips. “I know a good situation when I’ve got one. I made myself as useful as possible.”
The thought of Julius extending that offer of kindness to her wasn’t too hard to believe after he’d opened his home to me too, but hearing her explanation sent a waft of warmth through me. These men were killers, but they weren’t just that, any more than I was.
“You have your own place now and everything?” I asked.
“Oh, yes.” Steffie beamed with obvious pride. “Blaze found the perfect apartment for me nearby. I pay for it all myself with my earnings—a woman needs some independence. Now I have a space just for me.”
I could tell how much that mattered to her. Maybe I understood that emotion more than she realized. I’d had a space of my own in the household, but even those rooms hadn’t really been mine. Everything that’d belonged to me in the household had been constructed around their needs and what they wanted from me.
“I’m glad you got out of that awful situation,” I said honestly.
Steffie nodded and went back to her cleaning. “They didn’t have to offer their hands to help me up, but they did without hesitation. I’d do anything for them. I’d kill for those boys.”
Her faint accent that I couldn’t quite place thickened her words, and I could hear the slight warning behind them. Hurt them, and you’ll regret it. But after the rest of her story, I respected her more for her vehement devotion.
“They’ve earned it,” I said, and she smiled again.
With the dishwasher empty and Steffie reabsorbed in her tasks around the apartment, I meandered over to the television. I hadn’t had much chance to make use of it in my past life. Maybe it could provide the stimulation my body insisted I still needed.
I picked up the remote and flipped through the channels, wishing I knew how to bring up that show Blaze had tracked down for me with the spy lady and her husband. None of the scenes that flashed by me grabbed my attention. I started hitting the button so hard that I’d already switched channels when my gaze caught an image that made my heart stutter.
I flipped back as quickly as I could. The newscast was just cutting away from Damien Malik’s face. “With Representative Malik’s proposal shut down by one swing vote, it remains to be seen what steps he’ll take next to forward the party’s agenda,” the reporter said in that droning monotone they all seemed to use.
Then she started talking about a heatwave in Alabama, as if I cared about that. I glared at the TV, but the force of my will couldn’t make the show switch back to talking about Malik again.
Oh, well. It wasn’t as if it’d sounded like what they were talking about connected to the household anyway. It’d just be easier for me to understand Noelle’s interest in the man if I knew more about him.
What had his recent proposal been? Something to crack down on criminals, like the guys had said he liked to do?
I shut off the TV and leaned back on the couch with a deep sigh.
A familiar baritone voice carried from one of the bedroom doorways. “You look like you’re contemplating the meaning of life.”
I jerked straighter on the sofa and turned to meet Julius’s assessing gaze. Something about the boss of the crew always made me want to impress him, to show how together and capable I was—as if I hadn’t already proven that in both my dealings with his crew and the history of assignments they’d only just realized belonged to me.
“Not exactly,” I said. “Just the meaning of the household.”
“Come up with anything?” he asked, ambling over.
I couldn’t stop my gaze from lingering on the ample brawn of his massive body flexing beneath his fitted T-shirt and dark jeans. Anyone with eyes could have recognized that he was one prime specimen of manhood. The kindness Steffie had told me about somehow brought that appeal into even sharper relief.
I shook myself mentally. Less than a week ago, I’d hooked up with Talon. Yesterday I’d been admiring Blaze’s looks and kissing Garrison. And now some part of me was wondering what it’d be like to have the man in charge pinning me down on this sofa?
Was there really anything wrong with that? If I was interested in all of them, and they were interested in me…
Maybe there wasn’t a problem with that, but I didn’t actually know that Julius was interested in anything other than maintaining the order in his home now that I’d crashed into it.
“No,” I said, remembering his question. “I guess that’s the problem.” I turned back around and frowned at my hands in my lap. “Every part of my body is clamoring to do something. To take action. But I don’t have anything to do.”
Julius leaned against the back of the sofa at the other side, a few feet away but close enough that my skin tingled with my awareness of his presence. “What did you do at the household when you were between missions? It doesn’t sound like they had you constantly on the go.”
“No,” I admitted. “I guess it’s just… I’m not really between missions, am I? I’m on one right now—the one to figure out where I came from, who exactly took me, and why—but I have no idea how to carry it out. So far Blaze has been doing all the work. I don’t have any innovative computer programs I can put to use.”
Julius hummed, the warm sound washing right through my nerves. “Well, I’m not sure I can help you with that mission, considering I don’t have any action I can take toward it either while Blaze is still working his technological magic. But how would you feel about putting your skills to use in other ways in the meantime?”
My gaze shot back to him, a jolt of adrenaline racing through me at the implication of his words. “What did you have in mind?”
Julius smiled, his deep blue eyes brightening at my enthusiasm. “How would you like to work with the Chaos Crew on a job?”
I blinked. It was hard for me to imagine being part of their work. The two jobs I’d witnessed—after or nearly at completion—had been a totally different style from my type of job. The way the crew worked was purposefully messy and, well, chaotic. And they obviously had their roles down in perfect cohesion and cooperation.
He continued before I could reply. “If you’re not comfortable with it or you want to recover more from your injuries before pushing yourself, you’re under no obligation, but I’d love to see the infamous Ghost at work.”
I bent my wrist, not feeling even a tinge of pain from it anymore. The car accident that had bruised my ribs and sprained my wrist could have been so much worse, but even a wrecked car couldn’t get the drop on me for long. I no longer needed the brace, and aside from an occasional twinge of pain in my ribs, I was good as new. No weaknesses to hold me back.
“What is the job?” I asked.
“It’s a fairly straightforward one. Go in, kill the assholes we’ve been hired to kill, get out. We’re taking care of it tonight.” He cocked his head. “Having watched you fight while injured, I expect it’ll be quite a show seeing you fully in action.”
Was that a flicker of another kind of interest in his eyes? I’d swear I caught a hint of the same heat that was trickling through me at his nearness, but it was there and gone so quickly I couldn’t quite tell. Julius didn’t hold up walls of defensiveness the same way Garrison did, and he wasn’t as impassive as Talon seemed to be naturally, but he kept his emotions close.
“I usually work pretty differently from you and the crew,” I had to point out.
Julius shrugged. “It’d be a trial run. Maybe it’ll turn out to be a bad idea… or maybe it’ll be a brilliant one.” He shot me a rare smile that showed his teeth—and nearly melted the panties right off me.
I still wasn’t sure about the whole chaos thing, but the prospect of getting to do any kind of work sent a thrill through me. And this was an awfully immense show of trust. Julius had enough faith in me to invite me along and let me take part in the kind of job he staked the crew’s reputation on.
That alone felt like more than enough reason to jump at the chance.
I only had one more hesitation. I’d been forced to kill people for years—people I now knew might not have done anything all that wrong. Going forward, I could make those decisions for myself.
I studied Julius’s expression. “Are we sure that the people you’re taking down deserve it?”
Julius analyzed me right back, scanning my face as if evaluating my motives for asking the question. It really was very simple. The killing itself didn’t bother me, but I wanted to know who I killed and why I killed them. The idea of murdering someone innocent—someone who didn’t deserve the brutal wrath reaped by the Chaos Crew—made my skin crawl.
Maybe Julius could read some of that with his gaze. “It’s important to you that we don’t kill innocents.”
“Yes,” I said firmly. “It is.”
He smiled again, slower and softer, but somehow this one sent an even deeper surge of attraction racing through me. “Good. We feel the same way. I believe in dealing out justice alongside the chaos. We require that our clients provide information on the targets’ background, and Blaze confirms it independently. We only accept jobs that involve marks who’ve been doing plenty of destruction of their own.”
A sense of certainty clicked into place inside me, as if this was exactly what I’d been waiting for. “All right,” I said. “I’m in.”
