Playing God (Helford #2)

(12) Hostage

“Nina Abraham,” he continued, his voice that same purr, meant to disarm and unsettle me but it was barely enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. He took a slight step closer to me, gingerly, as though not to startle a jumpy animal. “Well now, Miss Abraham, you are certainly a surprise to see here.”

“I shouldn’t be,” I said, “seeing as you were the one who followed me here.”

The itchy feeling in the back of my mind, the paranoia of knowing that I was missing something, relaxed. He had been what I was missing. He was outside my apartment three nights ago; he was standing on the city street corner as I passed by; he was following Jonathon and I down La Rambla, a shadow in the light, the object that barely escaped my peripheral vision.

I allowed myself a heartbeat of time after I spoke to completely hate myself. I should have seen him earlier. I should have been paying more attention, but Woodburn was right.

The headaches always made it much more difficult.

But that was no excuse why this assassin was standing in front of me and laughing loudly, as though I was trying to be funny, knowing I should have caught and murdered this man, that I should have seen him before I really did. The thought was frustrating, but I knew there was no reason I should hang myself up in the past like this when I was needed so much in the present.

I met the laughing man’s eyes and smiled like I found this event just as amusing. I could feel all the eyes on my back, wondering how I was going to play this game.

“If you knew I was there, and you knew I was following you, then doesn’t leading me here make you a traitor?” he asked me quizzically, tilting his head curiously like a puppy. Like a wolf on the prowl. I smiled.

So that was his game.

“It is only being a traitor if I wanted you to find us,” I pointed out delicately. “I do recall shaking you on La Rambla.”

He shrugged. “I’m the best at finding people.”

I once had a mentality like that, and I felt so pitying of him, because he had no idea how much that state of mind was going to get him killed. It would slowly destroy him. Helford would let it and, eventually, he would destroy himself so that Helford wouldn’t even have to waste the manpower.

I bit my tongue. It was no use attempting to humanize this man who would not care to hear that I was trying to mold him in my mind as being a person, a human being with emotions and abilities and bosses that were lying to him every moment of every day, pinching his cheek and telling him he is special when he is really expendable. I stared him down, but it didn’t matter if that was all we ever did—we could do anything we wanted to pass the time, because this team was here just to make sure we didn’t go anywhere. We were waiting for something, someone. I couldn’t help but to be curious.

“To whom should we be expecting a visit from?” I asked him lazily, enjoying the solid stoic mask that never slipped from his face. That was his greatest weakness. “There is no other reason we would be here if we weren’t waiting for something or you would have come in here open firing.”

The man smiled at me. He was young, older than me, older than I had been when I thought I sat on top of the world. He was pale and naturally ginger, his hair thick and messy on the top of his head, and I kicked myself for not having seen him earlier, but I knew he had been wearing a disguise—red hair sticks out too much in certain crowds. He was average height and average weight, average looks, the perfect guy to blend into the crowd. It was easy not to notice what he looked like even when you were staring right at him, like a magnetic pull made your eyes cross and skip right over him.