“Good night.” He pulled away, wanting to turn back and kiss those fuckable lips. He didn’t though.
After getting back home he went straight to the basement. Clicking on the screens, he saw her standing at her backdoor. She had her fingers to her lips.
Had she been imagining it, too?
Get your head out of your ass!
Boss had given him a job, and he needed to stop thinking about his sexy little neighbor, and focus on the job at hand.
Even as he berated himself, he couldn’t look away, nor could he turn the computer screen off. In that moment, leaning against the door, she looked so vulnerable. Everyone else in her world had walked all over her, taken advantage and not given a shit about her. Was it so wrong to want to be the only person who was different for her?
Chapter Five
Shadow leaned back on the worn leather sofa. The place reeked of a high school locker room, stale donuts, and cheap coffee. Norm
ally he handled his business with Maurice by phone or text, but his assignment was proving to be more complicated than he hoped.
“He’s had facial surgery, and I’ve already counted over a dozen body doubles,” said Maurice from his chair in front of the keyboard.
“We already know this,” said Shadow. He’d been doing recon on his mark for weeks, but the asshole was always one step ahead. Last night, Shadow had come seconds from pulling the trigger on a look-alike, only to discover it was another cold trail. It was too close of a call for his taste. “I need something I can use. Something that’ll give away the real target. Boss doesn’t want any mistakes.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Fuck. Tattoo, birthmark, something the doubles won’t have. I need to be one hundred percent certain before I blow his bastard’s brains to kingdom come.”
Maurice adjusted his glasses as hundreds of pics flashed across the numerous screens. “Give me a minute.”
Shadow tapped his foot. He was impatient about getting this job done, but also couldn’t get Riley off his mind. Since she barged into his life, he’d been slowly torn down the middle, his two worlds colliding. He needed his life at Killer of Kings—it was all he knew, and it kept the demons at bay.
Then there was her.
His carefully crafted veneer of normalcy helped him experience everything he’d lost, a life forever out of reach. He remembered the simplicity of having a drink with Riley under the stars. He could fall hard for a girl like her. As fucked up as it was, he already envisioned a future with his nosy little neighbor. They could play out all the fucking fairy tales, and scrub the past from their memories.
Only Shadow knew better. There was no going back, no happily ever after.
“You know Boss has me do a thorough background check on all his staff, right?”
Shadow narrowed his eyes, leaning over to rest his elbows on his knees. “What are you trying to say, Maurice?”
“Some of the reports say you’re a sociopath. That you have an attachment disorder so severe that you can’t function in normal society. Others call it PTSD.”
He ground his teeth. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Boss thinks you’re getting too close to one of your neighbors.”
“My personal life is none of Boss’s business. Or yours,” he said. “How about you do your fucking job and leave my past where it belongs? If you haven’t noticed, it’s been a long time since I was a little boy at the mercy of the system.”
His blood pressure rose to the point he could only hear his heart pounding in his ears. He usually kept his cool, but his past still managed to piss on his life and warp his thoughts. Shadow had been forced to watch his mother’s health deteriorate for years. Even in those final months, she refused to get medical help. Holed up in their tiny apartment, in the seediest part of the city, it had been just the two of them. When things got desperate, he resorted to stealing to bring food home. And painkillers. And cigarettes. He’d only been nine years old.
Then the years of foster care. The brutal beatings, the starvation, the lack of any affection. He’d gone through all the stages of hell until there was nothing left but emptiness.
He survived on the streets from thirteen onward, another miserable chapter of his fucked-up life. The more he reflected, the more his muscles tensed. When Maurice cleared his throat, Shadow realized his hands were in tight fists, his knuckles turned white.
“I just wanted to say that a report can’t define you. Sometimes they’re not worth the paper they’re written on.” Maurice gave him a little smile, then turned back to the monitors. “Ah, there we go.”
Maurice expanded an image. It was a small, insignificant tattoo in the web of his target’s thumb and first finger.
“What is it?” Shadow asked.