Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder
10
The two-hour drive to Hartford County, Connecticut, was surprisingly painless—once they got past the checkpoint at the state line. Elijah had magnanimously held on to his “I told you so” when the border guard pored over their identification, scanning and rescanning and making a few calls before letting them through the barriers. Perhaps he’d remembered that she was carrying several sharp objects on her person. As they left the New York city limits behind, heading toward fields and farmland, trees on either side of them, Meghna could almost pretend that they were weekenders heading out on holiday. Except for the weight of the blades against her skin and how warm the steering wheel felt under her icy palms.
The car was one of Third Shift’s. A nondescript mid-luxury sedan with plates registered to an innocuous person who didn’t really exist. The heat was on low, accounting for the November chill outside but also factoring in that lion shifters like Elijah ran naturally hot. But Meghna was cold for different reasons. Cold deep inside, below the surface, and she couldn’t quite figure out why. Elijah was a perfectly acceptable travel companion. Unlike many men, he had no problem with her driving, had let her pick the music, and didn’t argue with the Third Shift-issue GPS as it offered periodic directions in Joaquin’s smooth voice. He seemed perfectly content to just sprawl in the pushed-back and reclined passenger seat, one massive arm propped against the window, and catch up on the rest neither of them had gotten the night before. All while Meghna’s body and mind were at war.
She’d veered off course before. The feeling of imbalance wasn’t new. She’d felt similar vertigo during her protest phase as a teenager—largely brought on by meeting her absent mother for the very first time and developing a strong urge to tell both parents to fuck off. And there were the weeks of partying with Chase that proved a cover could sometimes be too deep. But she’d always returned to her duty in the end. Learning how to use her powers of influence, how to incapacitate a man with the right notes of music or the right dose of poison. Traveling to Milan and Paris and Tokyo to shill makeup and underwear while taking down corporate slime. Funny how no one ever noticed the major companies losing CEOs or key board members in every country stamped on her passport. That wasn’t something she did much of anymore. The Divisive States of America had made it much harder to travel in the past five years, and she couldn’t risk being barred from reentering. Still, she’d always stayed focused. She’d known what the goal was. A million tiny rebellions that would add up to one overall victory for the Vidrohi and for people who deserved a better world.
This was different. Unsettling. Elijah Richter had only deceived her for a handful of hours, thanks to the fingerprint scanning apps on her encoded devices, but those were three hours too many. And she’d let Nichols catch them in flagrante. Reckless. Allowed Elijah to kill him. Dangerous. Thrown in with Third Shift without more than a cursory protest. Lazy. A woman who worked efficiently and alone, now making rookie mistakes left and right and turning to a cis male-helmed agency for help. Yes, her palms were icy. Her innards were frozen. And her head was clearly filled with bricks.
“We dug up everything we could find on you.” Elijah’s voice didn’t interrupt or intrude on her interior monologue so much as slip across it like a sheet of silk. “Didn’t get even a whisper of what you really are. And I employ one of the best hackers on the sodding planet.” He was looking at her, not out the window, and his expression was equal parts contemplation and admiration. “Joaquin found nothing suspicious.”
There were reasons for that. “Because almost everything hackable is legitimate—all apologies to Joaquin’s skills. I’m sure they’re thorough, but so am I.” She shrugged. “I’ve worked hard to maintain my image. As far as anyone is concerned, I’m a party girl with too much time on her hands and too much money in the bank.”
Elijah tilted his head, studying her with the same heated, speculative gaze that had intrigued her in the VIP suite. Here, it wasn’t intriguing so much as discomfiting. He saw too much. More than she should let him see. “Never let anyone in, eh? Not even your fancy friends?”
Meghna couldn’t hold back a snort of laughter. “My fancy friends aren’t that fancy or that friendly.” She kept everyone in her social circle at arm’s length, and with good reason. “The less they know about the real me, the better.”
He made a hmm noise that told her he wasn’t done with his light interrogation. “What about your parents? Do they know what you do?”
Fuck, that wasn’t a question she wanted to answer. She tried not to clench her jaw, knowing that he was studying her every move, down to her subtlest micro expression. She kept her hands light on the steering wheel despite the urge to grip tightly. “Your extensive research didn’t give you any insights?”
He shifted in the seat, honestly too brawny to sit in it comfortably. But probably also wary of telling her exactly what he knew about her background. “RK and Purva Saxena. Married for all of a year in 1986. Divorced by the time you were six months old,” he rattled off after a moment. “No custody arrangement. Your mother went back to India before you even took your first steps.”
“Sikkim,” she elaborated, though she wasn’t quite sure why. Probably because adding to his dry recitation of facts was something to do besides curse the General’s name. “So far north, it barely resembles what you’d think of as India. She runs a yoga retreat and wellness center for rich people who’d rather align their chakras than climb Kangchenjunga.” That was the official line anyway. It kept tourists and other hapless humans away from the private compound and training camp, from the one place in the world that had any centralization of Vidrohi resources.
“Highly unlikely that you’d trust her with the particulars, then. Makes your father an even less likely candidate, as he’d be overprotective.” Elijah tapped a rhythm on his kneecap with two fingers. Two powerful, talented fingers that she knew could draw music from her throat. “So you play the poor little rich girl whose mum left and whose dad overindulged her. But that’s not the real you. It’s all an elaborate ruse. A cover.”
Oh, he wished. “That’s where you’re wrong, Elijah. That is the real me. My mother abandoning me, my father filling my life with things…all of that helped make me into what I am.” Meghna had no illusions. She wasn’t some comic-book superhero with a public life and a secret crime-fighting identity. Batman making the dregs of Gotham City society pay after losing his parents. “I used money and privilege and my supernatural heritage to get what I want. You can give it pretty explanations, nicer names, but at the end of the day, there’s nothing deep or profound here. I kill people. And I’m good at it.”
Elijah laughed, not one bit disturbed by the pronouncement. As if she’d admitted to being good at knitting or part of a bowling league. “How has no one noticed that men around you keep dying?” he wondered.
“I’m very discreet,” she said dryly. But then she sat up a little straighter, acknowledging the seriousness at the root of the question. The logistics. “There are actually a few Reddit forums devoted to conspiracy theories about my career. My background. How I just ‘came out of nowhere’ and got famous. And I’ve been targeted in hate campaigns more than once for being seen with someone questionable—like Mirko. Luckily, I have a very good publicist.”
That made Elijah laugh again. “No publicist is that good.”
Em comes close, she almost said. “That’s why this is the last high-profile asshole I plan to be linked with,” she murmured instead. “I need to course-correct before it does irreparable damage to my reputation as everybody’s favorite South Asian celebutante.”
“Or irreparable damage to your life?” Elijah suggested.
“Oh, that ship has sailed,” she snorted. Sailed, wrecked, and sunk to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
“And this is what you call getting what you want?” he scoffed. “I don’t think so. I haven’t known you long, but I know enough. You wouldn’t risk everything on a lark. You’re not the kind of person who kills indiscriminately. Aston would already be dead were that the case. Half his mates too. I think what you want is bigger than that.” Damn the man for his insight. Just like she’d feared, he saw more in her than she wanted to show. “I think you want a better world, a safer world.”
And you. I want you.But she wasn’t going to admit to that aloud. Not when she was still warring with it herself. He could have her past, her mommy issues, her body, and her partnership on this op, but he couldn’t have that admission. Not yet. “I think you should spend less time analyzing me and more time studying mission specs,” she said tartly.
“All right, Meg. Q and A’s over. For now.” He made a show of retrieving his tablet, paging through docs.
She finished the drive staring out the windshield at the road ahead, letting Rage Against the Machine drown out everything but what she needed to keep. Her priorities. Aston. Ayesha. The big picture. Not the memory of Elijah’s mouth on hers or how welcome she’d felt in his arms. Sex is a tool, she reminded herself yet again. It held no significance to her. He held no significance to her. Only success did.
* * *
Meghna was frightened, or agitated. The subtle hint of fear rolled off her skin like a perfume she’d sampled at the shops. Elijah could relate. Because he was pretty fucking terrified himself—of just how quickly a simple operation had gone to shit. Again. He was supposed to be a leader, and he’d cocked things up. Literally, as Meghna had wasted no time in pointing out. The clinic was their chance to right the course. But there were no guarantees. Blueprints of the facility didn’t mean they knew what they’d discover there. There were too many unknown variables. For instance, going in after dark didn’t ensure the place would be empty. And he had no idea what Meghna was like in the field. Hell, he still wasn’t entirely sure he should trust her…but the proof of that pudding would become clear soon enough. He just had to stay alert. Stay in it. Stay the course.
Elijah made a show of stretching lazily, “waking up” from the nap he hadn’t really been taking after putting away his tablet. His fingertips brushed the car’s ceiling as he observed, “We’re almost there, eh?”
“Just a few more miles,” Meghna affirmed, automatically reaching to turn down her music. “We have everything we need?”
“Even a pair of pants for when I inevitably shift.” He tapped the small utility pouch he’d be handing off to her once inside the clinic. “And some tech from Joaquin.”
Her gaze flicked from the road to him and back again. “American pants or British pants?” she asked abruptly. Almost as if she couldn’t help herself. That surprising wit that had made him laugh from the first was another fascinating aspect of the multifaceted mystery that was Meghna Saxena-Saunders.
“I think you know where I stand on British pants.” He regretted it as soon as he said it, because he was immediately back in the tight confines of that closet as her nimble fingers undid his fly, found his bare prick, and stroked. He had to choke down the memory—again—and shift about in the already-uncomfortable passenger seat. Now was not the time for a hard-on. He was a grown man, for fuck’s sake. He had better control than this. Usually.
Thankfully, Meghna let the sexually charged moment slide, despite being the one who’d initiated it. She just nodded as if his answer was completely aboveboard. “My primary concern is the surveillance. I can’t afford to be caught on film. I’m too high-profile. No amount of fake Instagram posts will explain away my face on security footage.”
Funny how that hadn’t been a concern when she hooked up with him right outside Aston’s party. Maybe because all the night’s footage from that floor of the hotel had been erased before anyone could review it. Standard operating procedure for the criminal elite. He was just glad the Spider had pulled what it could from the cameras and the active devices. It was likely still active now, during whatever revels were still happening. He had no idea when it stopped crawling or spinning or what have you. “That’s where Joaquin’s toys come in,” he noted aloud. “You got a taste of what the Spider can do back at HQ. This time we’ll test out the Honeybee.”
Meghna sputtered with laughter, her eyebrows rising into her hairline. “You realize that sounds like a high-end vibrator?”
He snorted. Welcome to Third Shift, home of perpetual perverts. “’Quin names all of their creations after bugs. Bit of an amateur entomologist along with a professional hacker. This one’s meant to sticky up the security feed and put it on a loop. It should give us about an hour of free movement.”
She was still chuckling as she flipped her turn signal and guided the car to an exit ramp. “How did you even meet Joaquin? Your team seems to be quite an eclectic bunch.”
Understatement.Elijah grinned. He was proud of the people he and Jack had recruited over the years. All with a wide variety of strengths and skills and backgrounds. “I used to teach a few courses at a military school just north of the city. They were one of my students.” Which was why Joaquin got away with calling him “Teacha” like only his mates and his family did. Because in their case, it was literal.
“What?” Meghna looked like she was trying to put together two ill-fitting pieces of a puzzle. The casually dressed charmer who’d demanded her phone plus military training. There was a reason it didn’t quite add up.
“’Quin’s parents sent them to the academy,” he explained, hoping his tone conveyed the proper amount of disgust. “They sent a queer enby kid to a school full of attractive boys to straighten out,” Joaquin had marveled on more than one occasion. “Buena suerte, Mami y Papi.”
“Proper Dominican Catholics. Father was career army. ‘Our child can’t be queer. Can’t be nonbinary.’ You know the homophobic song and dance. And one day I’m faffing about in the grading software, and a D for Joaquin Serrano goes right to an A. While I’m logged in.” He’d spent a few minutes wondering if he’d hit the wrong key or the software was glitching before he’d realized what had happened. “So I look up their room number. Track them down in the dormitories. I find this kid with a hardware setup worthy of the CIA, wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Binary is for code, not gender’ and a shit-eating grin.”
Meghna laughed again. The sound was like bells or a cascade of water. Something he wanted to use as a mobile ringtone for the rest of his life. “What did you do? Turn them in to the administration?”
“Fuck no.” He’d hated the academy’s headmaster. Colossal bastard who thrived on control and didn’t give one shit about providing actual education. “I told Joaquin that if they finished out the term with an honest B average, I’d give ’em a job when they graduated. They did. And I did. They’ve been with Third Shift ever since,” he said with no small amount of pride.
He didn’t want to play favorites, but he played favorites. Joaquin and Grace were his most cherished operatives. One the kid he might’ve had if he’d married young, the other the adopted sister who reminded him of the three blood sisters who constantly took the piss out of him in their WhatsApp chat. Amani, Ciara, and Naomi would love Gracie. A pea in their pod, that one. She and ’Quin, along with Jack, made him miss all the family he’d left behind in England just a little bit less.
“You really love them, don’t you?” There was wonder in Meghna’s voice. As if she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around the concept. “Not just Joaquin but your whole team.”
Elijah responded with a noncommittal grunt. Not because he was afraid to admit how much he cared but because he wasn’t sure he should admit that to her, this woman he still didn’t entirely know. Except for how she tasted and how she sounded when she came.
She yet again accepted the moment for what it was and moved on, changing the topic. “We’re just about there.” Was this how she navigated all the parties on Aston’s arm? Dancing lightly from thing to thing before anyone could get too suspicious or too uncomfortable? “Two miles till we reach the turnoff where we stash the car. It should be dark soon.”
The sky was already graying, providing them cover. Not just for their mission but for whatever this messy thing was between them. Elijah pulled out his tablet and swiped through the blueprints and headshots, memorizing every detail anew. He’d let Meghna do the same before he wiped it clean. Pity they couldn’t do the same with their slate.