LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Hey, Nikki, this is Jonathan,” he said into his phone after he’d unpacked, leaving a message after the beep. “Just made first contact with Miss Scientist. Let me say, you picked one hell of a last contract for me.”

      Jonathan unpacked quickly, not as neatly as he’d noticed said scientist’s room to be, and reflected on what he knew about the woman next door. He hadn’t been lying—it wasn’t much. Nikki had received the reports from the analysts and made the decision to only tell him what he needed to know in an effort to preserve some of Kathryn’s privacy. What Jonathan knew was that the scientist was dedicated to her work and that work was a secret.

      But that didn’t mean he wasn’t curious as hell as to what it entailed.

      A quick knock on his door pulled him from his thoughts. He was surprised to see Kathryn standing on the other side. Her expression had softened, but only slightly.

      “I want to apologize for being frosty,” she greeted him. “I just, well, my work is a sensitive topic and this convention is very, very important for my career. My father tells me that sometimes I tend to get a little too into the zone and can lose sight of my manners.” Jonathan hadn’t expected an apology. “So, why don’t you come with me to the Chinese restaurant a few blocks down and we can get reacquainted?”

      “I appreciate the offer, but you know as part of my job I’d go anyway,” he pointed out. Kathryn gave him a wry smile.

      “I’m inviting you to eat with me,” she corrected. “Not sit creepily behind me like a weird stalker.”

      Jonathan stepped back to retrieve his wallet and walked out into the hall. As she shut the door, he snorted.

      “You apologize and then call me a stalker. I feel like you don’t often apologize to people.”

      Kathryn crossed her arms over her chest, smile gone.

      “I don’t.”

      The walk down to the lobby and out to the street was silent. Their conversation hadn’t stalled. It had stopped completely. Jonathan walked at her side but kept his eyes in a constant sweeping motion of their surroundings. It was late afternoon and the streets were packed even tighter than when he’d first driven in. Gaggles of pedestrians crowded the corners of blocks and only half waited for the Walk sign to flash green before darting across the street. Jonathan wondered if Kathryn had been to the city before. She walked with purpose and little doubt. Jonathan followed without question or comment.

      Two blocks from the hotel, they hung a left into a small, one-room Chinese restaurant. It was dark and surprisingly quiet despite the street noise. The handful of patrons paid them no mind as they slid into a booth against the wall. Before they could settle in, a man took their drink orders. Jonathan checked his sight line to the door again and then decided to break his client’s quiet.

      “So you’ve been here before?” he asked, motioning around them. “Which means you’ve been to New York before?”

      “Yes, to both. An associate who is based in Buffalo frequents a lab here and commutes just to eat the chicken fried rice when in the city.” She shrugged. “Not the healthiest traveling diet, but I had to admit I was impressed the last time we ate here.” Kathryn paused before smirking. “And I’m somewhat of a fast-food queen back home, so take my word for it as a weighty stamp of approval.”

      “Noted.” The timing couldn’t have been better for the waiter. He came for their orders and Jonathan decided to test out the scientist’s theory. He ordered the chicken fried rice.

      “So home, that’s in Florida?” he asked, eyes scanning the new couple who’d just entered.

      “Yes, where the humidity is king. I’ve lived there almost all of my life, with the exception of school.”

      “You moved back when finished, then?”

      She nodded.

      “Out of graduate school I was offered a somewhat rare job at a lab that was located near my father.” She shrugged. “At the risk of sounding like a child who can’t crack it without their parent nearby, I couldn’t have hoped for a better setup. I love my father dearly, so back to Florida and its god-awful heat I went.”

      Though it was out of sight, Jonathan felt the burn of the tattoo on the back of his arm. Not a physical pain, but a memory that often flared to life when the past swarmed him.

      “There’s nothing wrong with staying close to family,” he said, truth in each word but no experience within them.

      “And what about you, Mr. Bodyguard? Where’s your home?”

      A simple question and one he had fielded time and time again.

      “I moved around a lot growing up. Never in one place for too long.” He shrugged. “When Orion started up in Dallas, I decided that I liked that city best. As someone who’s traveled the world for the job, you can take my word for it ‘as a weighty stamp of approval.’”

      She smiled. Jonathan wondered how often she used that expression.

      “Noted. You know, I’ve done some research of my own on Orion Security, and I must say that as a service of bodyguards, it has a fascinating track record,” she began, lacing her fingers atop the table. Jonathan had wondered when she’d bring up Orion’s history. He’d had no doubt that a woman whose life was so poised in research would do her own. He sat up straighter and nodded.

      “We’ve had a few interesting cases.”

      “Ha! Interesting? If I recall correctly, last year one of your fellow bodyguards was instrumental in bringing down an underground drug-running organization that the police had no idea existed.” Jonathan shrugged but couldn’t stop the smile that sprung to his lips. The bodyguard to whom she was referring was none other than Mark Tranton. What she didn’t know was that the media had been forced to keep the identity of his equal partner in crime, his now-fiancée, Kelli, and her daughter out of the public eye.

      “Each case—each client—is always interesting. It’s just part of the job.” Kathryn seemed put off that he hadn’t divulged more, but she clearly wasn’t done with the topic.

      “I also found a newspaper article about a woman named Morgan Avery,” she said after a moment. Her expression softened just as Jonathan felt his body tense. At the moment he realized maybe he shouldn’t underestimate the woman sitting across from him. While Morgan Avery was in no way a secret, it was a truth rarely connected to the agency. When he didn’t respond, Kathryn took it as a sign to continue. “You used to work for Redstone Solutions, elite bodyguards, if I read their bio correctly. Morgan came to Redstone for protection but was turned away.” Jonathan felt his hand start to fist. He moved it to his lap. “You quit a few weeks after she was killed.”

      He didn’t know if it was her lack of questions that put him so suddenly on edge or if it was hearing the history of Morgan made so brief. Especially when her death had created an inexplicably vast chain of events that had so completely altered his life, as well as the lives of those he cared about most. Kathryn’s eyes had narrowed a fraction. A researcher studying a subject. A scientist seeking answers. If he didn’t answer in some part, he was sure she wouldn’t let it go. Plus, how long had it been since he’d talked about Morgan?

      “I was on a team of three. We were in the office, just having come off two back-to-back contracts, when she first came in,” he started. “Young, beautiful and utterly brilliant. She was an astronomer in training who had won a spot in a prestigious program in England. It was a pretty cutthroat competition, and after she won it, she started getting threats. So bad, in fact, that she contacted us. Like you said, Redstone was viewed as a security service for the elite.”

      “Which translates to money, and I’m guessing she didn’t have any,” Kathryn supplied.

      “She was a student—she had nothing to give. So she was turned down multiple times. Even when our office’s secretary went to the higher-ups on her behalf. She didn’t have the

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