“I’m glad you asked. This glitter looks plain and boring in the tube. Just regular, shiny, vegan glitter, no parabens, no sulfates, no whatever else is de passé these days. Nothing to write home about.”
“You would write home about glitter,” he said, laughing, and then wishing he hadn’t as his throat seized on the inhalation of the bitterly cold air.
“I have an entire blog about glitter, thank you very much,” she said haughtily.
He laughed again. It hurt. He didn’t care.
“But this glitter, Asif. It is everything. Because it glows in the dark,” she whispered that last sentence.
“Okay,” he said as he pulled the detonator from his pocket, disguised as a pack of cigarettes. If this place had a halfway decent security system, or even just a metal detector, they would have discovered it. But as Lane never missed an opportunity to point out – correctly – rich criminals were dumb criminals.
He’d just attached the detonator to the bomb and was setting the timer when Chanté responded.
“Okay? Asif, think. Imagine. Me, naked on stage, my body covered in pink, glow-in-the-dark glitter. All of the lights in the room turned off,” she said in the sultry whisper that he always found terrifying in its ability to bring him to his knees – even if he didn’t always show it, especially not to her.
He opened and closed his lips. He couldn’t tell if his mouth was dry because of the cold or because of the image she’d put in his head.
“Yeah,” he croaked. “Okay. Got it.”
She giggled. “So what are you doing at the Imperial Soviet Casino?” She asked nonchalantly.
“What? How do you-”
“One,” she said, and he could just imagine her lifting a delicate finger as she said it, “Your Australian-Kiwi accent is good, but not good enough to fool a native. Two, I could have sworn I heard someone yelling in a Russian accent earlier. That didn’t necessarily mean that you were in Russia, but it was a clue. And then three, you sound cold. You need a coat.”
“I have a coat. Had. It’s a casualty of the mission at the moment,” he said defensively. “Anyway, I refuse to believe that that’s how you know where I am.”
“Oh no, I started tracing your call as soon as I picked up. The other clues were just fun breadcrumbs.”
Asif exhaled as he set the timer for twenty-five minutes and walked back toward the door. “You hack my accounts, trace my calls and bug my apartment. It’s starting to sound like you love me,” he said, a rakish smile on his face that she couldn’t see, but he knew she would hear in his voice.
“I only bugged your hotel room one time. Get over it.” He heard the eye roll in her voice. But she stopped him dead in his tracks, his hand stilling on yet another door handle, “And you already know that I love you.” She said the words ‘I love you,’ as if they weren’t as explosive as the bomb he’d just armed. As if that feeling was so simple. She always had.
The problem was that he couldn’t say them back. “I’m… I should go. Things are going to get loud here in a minute,” he said.
He could practically see the sad smile spread across her lips. He hoped she wouldn’t cry this time. He hated when she cried. Especially when she cried over him. He was absolutely not worth it.
“Always keep your eye on the exit, right?” His heart broke at how bitter his own words sounded coming from her mouth. “Don’t die, Asif,” she said and hung up before he could respond.
He slipped down the staircase and back onto the balcony. The fight below had escalated into a standoff, at gun point no less. He guessed finding a marked card in your hand would cause any gambler to leap to the conclusion that the house was cheating. And he guessed that when accused of cheating, any casino owner would pull a weapon. And definitely if someone aims a gun at your head, you have to aim one back, right? That’s how these things worked with the rich and idiotic at least.
But since most casinos were rigged and all of the players in this casino were wagering the equivalent of a working-class family’s annual gross wages on each hand, cheating seemed a strange hill to die on. But Asif had never presumed to understand the rich, he simply used their greed against them. It had barely taken two hands for the already suspicious gamblers to notice the small marks on the presumably fresh pack of cards he’d planted at the table before the games started.
He stepped back onto the casino floor and checked his watch.
“Kareem, there you are,” Asif’s asset said, sidling up to him. “Where have you been?”
Asif smiled his best, most charming smile that made everyone on the other end of it weak in the knees. Everyone except Chanté, his brain shouted at him.
“I had to make a phone call,” he said slowly, trying to ease himself back into the Australian-Kiwi accent the target recognized. He’d accidentally slipped out of it on the roof while speaking with Chanté. Or more accurately, she’d pulled him out of it as she always did, tugging him toward the real and authentic at every turn. He hadn’t fully descended into the Boston accent he used so infrequently these days, since they hadn’t been on the phone long enough, but he’d come close.
“I had to make a phone call,” he said again. “Business,” he added vaguely. The target nodded and the tension in his eyes melted away as he happily accepted Asif’s lie and filled in the many holes in his story. Something Asif had known well before he’d joined The Agency was a useful truth in this line of work: the best lie is the one with as few details as possible. “Now what’s this?” Asif asked, gesturing toward the standoff.
“Apparently,” the target said in his crisp upper-class British accent, his eyes dancing with mirth, “someone’s been stacking the deck.” They both turned to watch the two Russians pointing guns and spitting threats at one another in their native language.
“What are they saying?” Asif asked, even though he was fluent.
“I’ve no idea. But this is awfully exciting. Don’t you think?”
Asif smiled and placed a hand on the target’s back. He turned to Asif, his cheeks already flushing. “This isn’t the kind of excitement I prefer,” Asif replied in an intimate whisper.
He watched as the target gathered all of the suggestions he’d laid out before him. They were out on the street – bundled in their coats, waiting for the valet to return their car, the target’s hand stroking Asif’s crotch – in no time. The asset leaned down to whisper something dirty in Asif’s ear. Asif raised his hand to grasp the target’s neck and surreptitiously check his watch at the same time.
“Don’t die, Asif,” Chanté’s voice whispered in his head.
Finally, the valet arrived. Asif grabbed the keys and jumped behind the wheel. They had five minutes to get as far away from the casino as possible. When the target leaned over to unzip Asif’s pants and lower his mouth to Asif’s lap, it was a blessing honestly. He was so focused on sucking Asif’s dick that he didn’t even register the loud bang of the bomb detonating behind them.
The explosive pack was strategically placed at the building’s weakest structural point to crumble the roof and collapse inward, keeping the damage fairly contained. He watched the building partially cave into itself in the rearview mirror.
Likely no one had been killed. That wasn’t the point of this mission anyway.
“See Chanté, I didn’t die,” he murmured to himself.
“What?” The asset asked, lifting his mouth from Asif’s wet cock.
“I said that feels amazing,” he responded with a smile. The asset smiled back and lowered his head again.
Hi everyone!
If you made it this far, I hope that means you enjoyed Kenny and Maya’s story. PINK SLIP was supposed to be a novella, but about halfway through writing it I had an idea about Kierra’s roommate and then I wrote Kenny picking her up at the Dublin airport. I don’t plot, but those two characters were completely out of left field. Their appearances made that story balloon (stressfully), but I knew I wanted to write this book. WHICH ALSO BALLOONED! Sorry f
or the caps. Writing these two and everyone else was so much fun at times and definitely not fun at others. :/ But I’m happy it’s done and I’m happy it’s out there for you all to read. And I hope you enjoyed the ride.
If you liked it, please consider rating and reviewing on Amazon and Goodreads. And as always, please tell a friend if you think they might like PRIVATE EYE. (My books and I are an acquired taste. I guess recommend responsibly? lmao)
And last of all, if you really like the spies, I’m happy to tell you that I do too! My next few releases are all in this series. Look out for Kierra, Monica and Lane on a quick New Year’s mission with Carlisle (you know the guy who annoyed Asif in the alley) called, NEW YEAR, NEW WE. I also clearly really loved Kenny and Maya because I'll have a Valentine’s Day short with them coming in February called, HIS ONLY VALENTINE. Look out for the preoder link on my twitter. And if you wondered what Lane got up to in the Midwest, who Caleb is and why Lamont is so broody, I wrote that story too! Look for BANG & BURN in March.
As always, I’m usually on twitter wasting my time and talking about my crush on Brian Tyree Henry. Feel free to talk to me @katrinajax or add me on goodreads. I’m around. <3
Other books by
Katrina Jackson
Welcome to Sea Port
From Scratch
Inheritance
Small Town Secrets
Her Christmas Cookie
The Spies Who Loved Her
Pink Slip
Erotic Accommodations
Room for Three?
standalone stories
Encore
Layover
Private Eye Page 32
