“Not for him.”
“For us. For Star. Definitely not for him.” She shoved the gun at me. “Do it. She’ll appreciate it.”
“She won’t,” I predicted, pressing my hands back against my chest to avoid the weapon.
Team Star or not, the woman was completely deranged.
How had Star described her?
Yeah, that was it—as temperate as a Category 7 hurricane.
Which, considering Cat 7 was only a hypothetical, didn’t say much for this super soldier’s sanity.
My refusal had her scowling. “If you’re too chicken shit—”
“What is this? Kindergarten?” I laughed. “I’m very comfortable in my masculinity, agent, so you can’t peer pressure me into killing him. Star wants him dead, sure, but she’s got a plan. No smart man gets in the way of a woman with a plan.”
Her gaze locked on me for a handful of moments. “I can’t deny you’re smart. Tonight alone proved that. They really expected the Eagle’s Claw platform to hold up under your cracking.”
“This wasn’t a part of the scheme?”
“Nah.Thisis improv. Fortuitous chain of events, remember?”
“Nothing is ever that fortuitous,” I drawled, peering around the boardroom. “What’s going on, Temper? Why am I here? Why did he want to speak to me? The Head of the NSA doesn’t shake my hand every time I work on a case for him.”
She hitched a shoulder. “You’re lucky that I wormed my way onto this division at Star’s request. That guard outside the door was supposed to take you out.”
“For dinner and dancing would be wishful thinking, I suppose?”
“Very wishful thinking.”
“I knew my gut was right.”
“Why do you think I got you the pizza?”
“Last meal just in case this didn’t work out? Except this isn’t a plan, is it? It’s improv.”
She clicked her fingers. “Exactly. They wanted you to be incapable of cracking the platform, then they were going to kill you so you couldn’t discuss Eagle’s Claw with anyone. The place is a ghost town so no one would see you come or go.”
“The coders saw me.”
“The coders don’t count. You’d be a cautionary tale of what happens when they don’t behave. Plus, that kid, the emo one, was supposed to be the next you.”
Ego tasered to shreds, worse than Reinier’s current state, I scoffed, “How the fuck could anyone believe that piece of shit messaging service would withstand a cracker?”
There was always someone better than you out there—I’d been battling Star for that crown for the past eighteen months and had no trouble sharing it when the situation warranted it, but that code had been a sieve.
I’d have been able to build something better when I was twelve.
Temper shrugged. “They manipulate the media so much that they’ve started to believe their own fake news. Either that or you’re just as good as Star says you are.”
That pricked my attention. “She’s talked to you about me?”
“She has. But this isn’t Kindergarten, remember? I’m not going to tell you if she likes you.” Her eye roll told me what she thought about that. “What are we doing with Reinier then?” Her hand tightened around the gun when he groaned and started to wriggle on the floor. “I could always shoot him—”
“He’s Star’s,” I dismissed, reaching for her wrist and holding it firmly in my grip.
She tipped her head to the side. “She’s gone AWOL.”