“Stay with me, Tiger Lily. We'll get out of this together if you stay with me.” Dillon nodded, clinging to the sound of his voice, trying hard to absorb the calm and control he projected. He kissed her cheek and gave her a hard squeeze.
“Good girl. You stay behind me, no matter what. Trust me.”
Mouth dry, Dillon let him step out of the stall first. He held his hands up, and Dillon followed him out when he waved his fingers at her.
“You piece of shit, how the hell did you get in here?” Nasa demanded immediately, seemingly completely unconcerned by the dark-haired man facing them down with a sinister black pistol aimed squarely at Nasa's chest.
It took all the courage Dillon had to look at him directly. At Ghost.
In every way, he was unremarkable. About six feet tall, of average build and weight, muscular but not overly so.
His black tee matched his black cargo pants; his belt, gloves, and boots all a matte black leather. His skin tone was a deep golden brown with faint tan lines on his face from where he'd been wearing sunglasses.
His face looked nothing like Dillon remembered it, and while Nasa told her Andrew Stanfield's eyes were a unique greenish blue, the man before them had brown eyes. Brown, and every bit as lifeless as they'd been the day he sat down beside Dillon in the hospital.
Ghost extended his thumb and index finger to point up at the ceiling. “There's a pipe strong enough for a hard point on the roof. I rappelled down late last night and got in through the window in the third-floor supply closet. Hello, Duchess.”
That voice, it echoed across her memories and made her stomach churn as she fought back the fear. Dillon dragged in an unsteady breath, the scent of Nasa's soap filled her lungs, steadying her every bit as much as the feel of his belt where it bit into her hand.
“Hi, John,” she managed to force from between her clumsy feeling lips.
The smile Ghost gave in answer was hideous, like some caricature or a monster out of a movie. Slap some white paint on his face, smear some blood-red lipstick from one ear to the other, and he could audition for the scariest clown in cinema history.
“Do I remind you of someone, Dillon?”
“Do not speak to her,” Nasa bit out viciously. “Don't even fucking look at her. After what you did, I should—”
Ghost cut Nasa off with a hard glare. “What I did was save her life and send her to you. You're welcome. Now, I'm going to need that flash drive, Nasa, and don't play games with me. Not today.”
“What, you got a date?” Nasa snarled.
“Sure. We can call it that. The USB, now, or I'll shoot you both and take it off your corpse. Which would be a shame considering all the effort I've put into keeping you alive.”
Dillon sucked in a shallow breath, struggling to stop trembling like a freaking leaf. She had a gun, and she had a dog waiting for one word to burst into action. She could do something to stop this.
He’s just a man, and men can die, Dillon repeated the mantra over and over in her head, letting it settle over her and bring her calm. Today was not the day she died, and Nasa wasn't going down either.
“You go right ahead and shoot me, fucker,” Nasa challenged coldly. “The sound of the shot will echo twice as loud inside this tiled bathroom, the shelter manager upstairs will hit the panic button, and the entire building will go into lockdown. You can try for that window again, but every door in this place is set in a magnetized steel frame.
“Soon as that panic button gets hit, the doors close, and you'll be trapped in here with us until the calvary arrives.
"Shoot, and let's see you try to talk your way out of jail again when the cops hand over the security footage to the FBI.”
Ghost's eyes narrowed to dangerous slits, annoyance briefly flashing across his face. “I'd call you a liar, but considering the lengths the Duchess went to in order to fortify her home, I believe you.”
“How did you get into my house?” Dillon asked, unable to suffer the curiosity any longer.
Ghost turned his dead eyes back to her and smirked. It wasn't even a real smile, just a mockery his face made in order to appear human. “I deployed a quick EMP charge and used a big magnet to unlock the deadbolts.”
An electromagnetic pulse would have been enough to temporarily short out her system, and it wouldn't have registered as a power outage since the house used only solar.
For some reason, Dillon found herself staring at the gun Ghost held, and it wasn't long before she noticed it looked familiar.
“Is that my Firestar?”
Ghost tipped the barrel down just slightly to glance at it and shrugged. “I figured if I had to shoot anyone to get back what's mine, all the better if the cops were looking at your stolen—unreported—registered weapon.”
Son of a diabolical bitch!
“You prick,” Nasa hissed furiously. “Tell me you're on assignment, working for some arm of the government, and you're taking down the Leviathans from the inside. Tell me you killed Andrew Stanfield to take his place after Stanfield raped Susan and ripped her apart while Pike watched.
“Tell me why you didn't go through with killing all of the people who called you their brother and that you've got Wren stashed somewhere safe until you're done with this case.
“Tell me all that, tell me the truth, and not only will I give you what I found, you can walk out of here with no resistance from me, and I won't continue to fuck around with the Leviathans or continue my
