Game of Dust and Ashes (Book Two in the Covert Operations series)

Two

The apartment was filled with smoke.

I should have found this surprising. Or worrying. Maybe both. The first time I'd come home from work to see smoke spilling out from underneath the doorframe and out into the hallway, I'd been cautious. I'd pulled my GCCO-official firearm from its holster at my waist and turned the knob slowly. I'd breathed in a scent of the putrid air and stepped inside, ready to shoot.

Today, things were much different. I was different and much more prepared to see the smoke. It wasn't as alarming as it once was. It didn't make my heart quicken with fear and I didn't even consider reaching for my gun.

Instead, I pushed the door open and asked "What's for dinner?" and watched as Cedric stepped out of the kitchen, a blue apron tied about his waist and brandishing a spatula.

The inside of the apartment was much smokier than the hallway had let on. I shut the front door and immediately headed to open the windows so that I could let the smoke out. Cedric tossed me a tea towel so that I could begin waving the smoke away. The fire alarm had yet to go off, surprising giving the amount of smoke that was currently infiltrating my apartment.

Cedric grinned sheepishly from the mouth of the kitchen. "Well, we were going to have crepes stuffed with mushrooms, onions, spinach, cheese, and bacon but..."

"But...?" I hedged.

He sighed and walked over to me. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me close so that I had to crane my neck to look up at him. "I kind of burned the mushrooms and onions and the grease from the bacon may have started a small fire and, well, the crepes themselves look slightly charred so I abandoned cooking and ordered some Indian take-out. It should be here soon."

I laughed. It wasn't all that surprising. I could say a lot of things about Cedric. How he was the best analyst the GCCO had to offer. How he was sweet and caring. How he made me feel both completely safe and alive for the first time in years. But the one thing I could not say about him was that he was a great cook. He burned almost everything he cooked. The one meal he could make without fail was cereal.

"You ordered me Chicken Masala, right?" I asked.

"Of course."

"Good." I reached up so that I could kiss him lightly on the lips. "You're the best."

Cedric winked. "I know."

I rolled my eyes and stepped out of his arms so that I could walk into the kitchen. It was still pretty smoky and there were burnt onions and mushrooms stuck to one of the skillets on the stove. I ignored the mess and instead reached for a glass from the cupboard to fill with water.

"How was work?" he asked as I leaned against the sink and took a sip. He spoke with a slight lilting accent. He'd grown up in a small town in Western Belgium and had lived there until he'd moved to Switzerland to work for the GCCO.

He stared at me with his bright blue eyes that were the same colour as the sky on a clear, cloudless day. His copper hair had grown out from the buzz it had been when I'd first met him.  Now, the soft waves of it were clearer and it was accented by the line of rough stubble across his jaw. There was a bandage taped against his forehead. A week earlier, he'd suffered an injury on the job—an Op. had required an analyst in the field in order to manually install software, instead of remotely hack into as normal protocol, which would allow our agents to bypass the firewalls in the computers of which they were trying to garner information from.