Chapter 13

13

The drive back to the city was uneventful. However, observing how Viktor morphed back into the cold, calculating leader of AGS was fascinating. He was on the phone the majority of the time, just as she was on her laptop. Satellite service was spotty so she would take the occasion to ruminate about what had happened in the last twelve hours.

She.

Was.

Conflicted.

Viktor had fucked her over the kitchen counter. Like the previous evening, there was an urgency in his touch, in the way he drove inside her. He was always the dominant one during sex. She could count the few times he’d allowed her to be on top. And she was fine with it. But was she really enough for him? She didn’t think she would be the type to go deviant. She was thankful that Viktor didn’t want to share her. She didn’t like to share or be shared. And though Morgan painted an interesting picture of two men inside her at the same time, her stomach churned, not because she thought it was revolting, but at that moment, she couldn’t imagine another man’s touch except Viktor’s. It was an all-consuming need. She craved his touch, and only his.

But therein lay the conflict for her. Her independent nature was rebelling. She could take his dominance in bed, but somehow the control was spilling into their relationship. She was more stubborn than most women, she’d admit to that, but it was only because her overbearing father made her that way. One had to be strong not to be trampled by one Trenton Cole III. He was a ruthless businessman, and a cold domineering father. In the end, he couldn’t control those closest to him because his children had inherited his own dominant streak. That side of Marissa was now screaming at her relationship with Viktor. She was falling in love with him, probably already was in love with him, and that was suppressing her own controlling nature. But how long before they would clash and end up hurting each other?

“Don’t think about it.” He was off the phone and had glanced briefly at her.

Marissa huffed and looked out the window.

“Iz.” The tone quiet, but commanding.

She gave up on the scenery and turned her gaze to take in his strong profile. What was she so scared of?

“I know I dumped some serious shit on you back there at the safe house,” Viktor said, keeping his eyes on the road. “With our jobs at our respective organizations, our relationship dynamics could be quite complicated.”

No shit, Sherlock , Marissa thought snidely.

“We can’t overthink this, Marissa,” Viktor said, a rough-edge honed his voice. “Duty and responsibility versus what we feel for each other, there’s bound to be conflicting interests.” He cut her another brief look. “I can feel the resentment sliding off you. We’re facing a challenge ahead with the nerve gas. We’re going to disagree. I’m not going to want you to take risks, and if I have my way, you’re going to feel diminished because I want to protect you. I get that. It’s a delicate balance. Hell, I see that fight between Maia and Jack all the time.”

“What are you trying to say then?”

“You’re a strong woman—”

“Don’t patronize me, Viktor—”

“I’m not. It’s the truth because that’s one of the things I love about you,” Viktor paused. Marissa suspected he wasn’t quite ready to say the L word again, but he added, “You have no idea how much I admire your intelligence and your courage even if the danger you put yourself in makes my teeth hurt. I’ve accepted that’s who you are and it’s your job. But I can’t turn off my instinct to protect you or be worried about you.”

“Or be pissed at me.”

Viktor chuckled. “Or be pissed at you.”

“You seem to be in control where your agents are concerned. I wish you’d show more faith in me to take care of myself like you do with Maia. I know I’m not in her caliber, but I do manage,” Marissa said quietly.

There was a pronounced silence before Viktor finally spoke. His voice was flat and cautious. “Maia and I have a complicated understanding. I trained her when she was very young. I think with as many missions that have gone south where either of us thought the other was dead, we’ve accepted we’re living on borrowed time. We’ve kind of accepted that sooner or later one of us is going to bite the dust.”

“That. Is. Sick!” Marissa exclaimed.

“Things have changed,” Viktor qualified. “Maia has something she wants to live for more than her job.”

“Jack.”

“Yes.”

Marissa didn’t want to ask the next obvious question. She feigned a yawn, rested her head back, closed her eyes and mumbled, “Happy for them. ”

Viktor’s big hand closed over hers, linking their fingers. He raised them and kissed the back of her hand.

They spent the rest of the trip in silence.

She felt like a coward.

They arrived at AGS later that afternoon, and the place was crawling with construction workers and Guardians. As usual, she and Viktor maintained an impersonal distance and he was walking slightly ahead when Tim motioned to him with a phone in his hand.

Viktor muttered an excuse and took the call in his office.

John Edmunds from Marissa’s team on the South Africa zee bomb mission, intercepted her and slung an arm around her shoulder. He lowered his head and whispered conspiratorially, “Thank fucking Christ you’re here. Some of us were contemplating knocking Viktor unconscious because he was in a shit mood the past few days.”

“AGS did get attacked and you’ve lost a couple of people,” Marissa pointed out. “I wouldn’t be in a chipper mood either.”

“Viktor can compartmentalize stuff like that. But his woman missing? Unchartered territory,” Edmunds murmured. “The only reason Burns still has his head is because Viktor has become more sympathetic lately. The loss of Holly has hit all of us hard. We’ve noticed changes in him, Ms. Cole. He seems almost human, and we know it’s because he has you. But hell, next time you two have a falling out, don’t take the entire world with you.”

“Duly noted,” Marissa responded. She knew Edmunds wasn’t blaming her, but was simply reiterating the consequences of their relationship.

“Marissa!”

It was Maia. The redhead came up to her and tucked her arm in Marissa’s, pulling her away from Edmunds. “Thank God, you’re back.”

Marissa exhaled in resignation. Somehow, she knew she would be getting the third-degree about disappearing again.

“I don’t like the plan.” Viktor paced the length of the briefing room. Marissa was in a chair getting a makeover from their CIA cover specialist who had just taken off the cast from her face.

“You already agreed to it,” Marissa replied, picking at the residue from her skin. She hated this part of the process, but the CIA destroyed facial casts after each mission, so she had to do this all over again. “Stop vacillating.”

They hadn’t found Owen Reed, but they’d gone through the list of members of his unit that were dishonorably discharged for the Afghanistan massacre. Henry Logan lived in Bluefield, WV near the abandoned mine where they had found Jack. Logan disappeared with no forwarding address the day after Jack was rescued. Two of the other men from the unit, Garett Fletcher and Morris Tyrell, owned a dive bar in Chesapeake, WV, near the capital of Charleston. Satellite images showed a small town with rows of houses amid acres of grassy land. The AGS tandem of Manning and Edmunds ran separate reconnaissance missions in the past two days disguised as truck drivers passing through the I-64 artery. There was a truck stop near the bar, which made it a popular watering hole for locals as well as transients.

“You think you can pull off this disguise,” Viktor scoffed. “You were a primary target. Owen Reed will make you in no time.”

The cover specialist, only known as Dolores, snorted. “Your confidence in the CIA is quite charming.” Touching Marissa’s head of glossy, dark brown hair, she said. “I’d hate to frost these strands.”

“You are not touching her hair,” Viktor barked.

Dolores glared at Viktor, and her man glared right back. “If she’s going to pull off skanky waitress at a dive bar in West Virginia, she needs streaks of awful highlights and big hair.”

Turning back to Marissa, Dolores added, “We’re going to change your nose a bit.” She looked down at the cast. “Make it a bit thicker. We’ve gone through makeup on how to make this all blend in, right?”

“I’ve done this before,” Marissa assured the cover specialist.

Dolores took out a needle and syringe and brought it near her upper lips. Viktor was a blur of motion as he knocked the apparatus out of Dolores’s hands.

“What the hell are you doing?” Viktor thundered.

“That’s it!” Dolores screeched. “Either you tell this big oaf to step out or we do this at Langley.”

Marissa massaged her temples, feeling the onset of a headache. “Give us a minute, Dee.” The CIA cover artist glowered one last time at Viktor before exiting the room.

“I could send in a different agent,” Viktor said before she could get in a word. “I’ve got two who can pull this off. When we talked about altering your appearance, it was prosthetics, makeup and contacts. Getting lip injections wasn’t part of the plan, and neither was dyeing your hair.”

Marissa waited patiently for Viktor’s tirade to end. “First of all, I’m not dyeing my hair. They’re called highlights. Second, the lip injections we use don’t last. So I get nice, big pouty lips for only two weeks.”

“Dye, highlights, they’re all fucking the same to me, and I like your lips the way they are,” Viktor argued. His face mottled with rage. “And I’ll be damned before every drunk Tom, Dick, and Harry take a look at your plumped-up kissers imagining them wrapped around their cock. ”

Marissa’s jaw slackened before it snapped shut. She was finally getting an idea of where Viktor’s head was. “Let me get this straight, big guy. Are you against me going undercover because Reed might recognize me or because you’re jealous of guys who are imagining my mouth on them—”

“Or pinching your ass,” Viktor finished.

She eyed him contemplatively. “If we have to work together on this, Viktor, I can’t have you interfering.”

“That sounds like an ultimatum, sweetheart,” Viktor said quietly, his face draining of emotion. Blank mask. She had not seen that for a while, but every time he went all stoic, it was like going two steps forward, one-step back. But she had to nip this in the bud. This wasn’t the first time he’d manipulated their mission, so he could watch her back. And Yeager was starting to notice, so she volunteered to go undercover in the dive bar in West Virginia.

“Take it however you want,” Marissa retorted. “Now. I want Dee to be comfortable and I need to get this shit done. So I’m asking you to leave the room, and send Dee back in here. I’d appreciate it if you’d leave us alone.”

Viktor’s eyes turned glacial, and his jaw worked convulsively as if he had something more to say. In the end, he nodded slightly, turned around and stalked out the door.

“Two Coors Light, Jerry.” Marissa hopped on the lone empty seat at the bar, smiling at the bartender before casting a furtive look at the new customers who just came in. It had been four days since she had started at Fletcher’s Bar and Grill and she had not seen hide nor hair out of Garett Fletcher or his friend Morris Tyrell. So much for being hands-on owners. What Marissa discovered from Fletcher's girlfriend, Sheila, who happened to be the manager, was that he took off suddenly for a week. Getting a position as a waitress wasn’t serendipity. It was a precisely orchestrated scheme. After doing reconnaissance for two days, Edmunds and Manning figured out which waitress would hurt the operations of the bar if she disappeared. So they took her into custody. Marissa walked in all dressed up in tight jeans, low-neck t-shirt, and cheap tall boots and applied for the job.

A harried Sheila shoved a bar apron at her and muttered, “If you can start tonight, the job is yours.”

Marissa kept her alias as Olivia West, and managed to impress Sheila that night. This was actually her third time working undercover in restaurant service; although, this was the first time she had to dress up as a skanky waitress. She had also once gone the stripper route in Eastern Europe. Thankfully, Tyrell and Fletcher didn’t own a strip joint. Otherwise, she suspected, Viktor would never let her take the job.

“Here you go, peaches.” Jerry handed her the beer. She collected her order, and made her way to her section of the restaurant and set the beer in front of her two customers. One was a man dressed in a sheepskin jacket, weighing about three-hundred pounds, with a red puffy face, which probably meant his liver was overworked. The other man was reed thin under his wool jacket, a beard covering a sallow face, and with rotting, yellowing teeth, he gave her a toothy smile—he was probably a smoker and a drunk, too.

“Anything else I can get for you? Your burgers should be out in five minutes.” Marissa maintained her distance. She’d had her share of ‘handsy’ customers, and, hated to think that Viktor was right.

“What’s the rush, sugar?” sheepskin jacket guy said. “Big John here can take care of you.” He patted a pudgy thigh that was definitely pushing the constraints of his denims.

“Busy night, sweetie,” she replied. “Holler if you guys need anything.” And she quickly retreated to the front of the house. She parried several advances all through the night, but thankfully, the rest of her customers weren’t as disgusting as those first two.

At about 11:30 p.m., when the bar was hopping and the kitchen was winding down, two men—one wearing a fleeced-denim jacket and the other wearing a leather coat—walked into Fletcher’s Bar. Marissa managed to hide her surprise when she recognized Morris Tyrell and Garett Fletcher. Fletcher was of medium height, a bit taller than Marissa, but very stocky. Judging from his barrel-like torso, the man had let go of his trim-muscled self as an Army Ranger and had let a few too many beers give him a slight paunch to his belly. Tyrell wasn’t a big guy and was about Marissa’s height of five-five, and appeared unhealthily lanky. He had the look of a substance abuser.

Grabbing her tequila shot orders, she walked back to her table when Fletcher stepped in front of her. Marissa didn’t like his leer as he studied her from head to toe.

“You the new girl?” his gruff voice asked.

“Yes, I am,” she replied. “Olivia.”

“Sheila did good,” Fletcher declared. “Me and Tyrell here would like some dinner. Get us a pitcher of Bud.” He pointed to an empty table. “We’re sitting over there.”

Marissa watched the two men stagger out of the bar. It was 1:00 a.m. and she had cashed out half an hour ago and moved her clunker of a car into the wooded area of the parking lot. Both Fletcher and Tyrell had pinched her butt the entire night. She bore the indignity, but was really sorry that Sheila had to witness the asshole behavior from her boyfriend. How could the other woman take it and not give him shit? It was none of Marissa’s business, and she should remain detached, but when Sheila apologized for Fletcher's behavior to her, she couldn’t keep quiet any longer .

“Seriously, Sheila, you can do better than this,” Marissa hissed. “Why do you put up with him? You’re the one running the place. He needs you more than you need him. I doubt if he knows anything about managing the bar.”

“I love him,” Sheila whispered. “Always have. He wasn’t always like this. When the Army kicked him out, he changed.”

Marissa closed her eyes. And when the CIA fucked him over. Damn it.

“I’m sorry,” Marissa said. “It’s not my place to judge. Especially since I’ve been here only a couple of days.”

“So glad I hired you,” Sheila said. “The last girl, Candy, she’s a good waitress, but she wants Garett. I know they were sleeping together. At least, she’s up and left him. But you be careful, Olivia. Garett and Tyrell, they’ve got their eyes on you.”

Marissa’s mind had wandered off to informing AGS to interrogate Candy, who they had in their bunker, about anything Garett might have told her, but her mind snapped back with Sheila’s warning. “What do you mean?”

“Garett and Tyrell like their kicks with women. That’s how I know Garett loves me, in a way, because he doesn’t share me. But I know that’s what they had with Candy, and with her gone, they’d be looking for a replacement.”

Oh, God , Marissa thought. This was the second ménage discussion she was having in a span of a week.

She followed them now. The men were using one vehicle, Fletcher was driving. He dropped Tyrell off at a typical ranch-style house. Given the size of Tyrell’s residence, it couldn’t be the likely place for storing chemical weapons.

She knew Fletcher lived up this road, and if ever he was working with Reed, his expansive ranch-style house on about ten acres of land would be the more conceivable location for the nerve gas canisters. There was also another structure about seventy feet from the main house.

Watching Fletcher's car turn into the long driveway, Marissa drove past the house, and made a U-turn a mile up, and headed back to her motel. When she got to the motel parking lot, she took out her cell phone and made a call to Tim.

“It’s about time you called,” the analyst said.

“In case you didn’t know, I have a day job.”

Tim chuckled. “So, what do you have for me, girl?”

“The packages are in,” Marissa said. “I want you to keep an eye out for any comings and goings on their properties.”

“Roger that.”

Marissa ended the call. Because of the less than secure connection, she kept communication brief. She had only talked to Viktor once since the time she arrived in Chesapeake, WV. Her man had not made another comment about her appearance when she showed him her final look. But his eyes said it all. And so did his actions. Spurred by a mixture of lust and anger, he took her savagely the night before she left for her assignment. Marissa blushed as she remembered how Viktor fucked her on the hood of the car after they had pulled into the garage. He bent her over the Charger, shoved her jeans down, nudged her underwear aside, and drove into her.

“You like that,” he growled into her ear as he moved inside her. “You like to be treated like a cheap fuck?” He came violently, pushed away from her instantly and helped her back into her jeans. Then he dragged her up to his loft, shoved her into the bathroom, and ordered her to take off all that makeup. If Marissa wasn’t mistaken, she had just caught a glimpse of his Dom mode. She had allowed him to dictate to her, although, part of her wanted to rebel because she knew his mood was driven partially by what she had to do for her job. After she had showered, he didn’t wait for her to dry her hair. He picked her up and tossed her on the bed. He fell on top of her, ordered her to hold onto the slats of the headboard, yanked her legs apart, and fucked her hard all over again .

Marissa was ashamed to admit to herself how erotic his total domination felt. She almost feared she was a submissive after all. She shook her head as she got out of the car and made her way to her room in this fleabag motel.

Her phone was ringing. She shot out of bed in full alert and grabbed her smartphone. “Yes?”

“The packages are moving.”

The line went dead. That was Tim on the phone though. Marissa looked at the time, three-thirty in the morning. It was still a couple of hours before dawn. She could probably go back to Fletcher's place and do a stake out. She pulled out her cat-suit, all black and made of flexible leather. She was lucky that the snow had melted in the past few days; otherwise, it would be a challenge to blend into the shadows of the night. She zipped up her light thermal jacket, grabbed a ski mask, and left.

Forty-five minutes later, she was crouching on a hilly mound, training her night-vision binoculars on the property. She parked a mile up on a graveled shoulder that was shaded by some evergreens. Hopefully, at this time of the morning, no one would wonder about an abandoned vehicle. It’d be suicide to go on the property right now because Garett Fletcher had four Rottweilers roaming around freely. Now wasn’t the right time to tranquilize them without knowing for sure that the nerve gas canisters were there. She’d been given a week and a half to find something. Otherwise, she was going to be recalled back to DC.

It irked Marissa that the SK nerve gas was low priority right now for all the agencies. The difference between the FBI and the CIA, besides the latter working mostly on international cases, was that the FBI dealt with crimes already committed, seeking to bring perpetrators to justice, while the CIA focused on prevention and evaluating threats.

This explained why the FBI and Homeland Security were expending so many resources on Al-Qaeda that even Viktor had been drawn in. Last she spoke to him, he had been helping take down several Al-Qaeda cells that were scattered around the eastern seaboard, which was why she had no back up of any Guardians. All her black ops team members, including the ones detailed to her by the DoD, were deployed in Afghanistan. Marissa had a feeling if she didn’t turn up actionable data soon, she’d be pulled out of this mission and dumped into the Al-Qaeda one.

The CIA had deemed the attack on AGS a vendetta, and even the tip off from Stan Morgan did nothing to change the minds of their top brass. Yeager supported Marissa, but his boss—the CIA director—wanted all available assets on Al-Qaeda.

Her attention was drawn to a commercial truck, pulling up in front of the second house. The house was all lit up now and men were moving crates inside. It was hard to tell what the crates might contain. Marissa’s heart skipped a beat when she caught a glimpse of one of the faces who could very well be Owen Reed. He certainly had the build for him. After another twenty minutes, the men had shut themselves in the house.

It took her maybe an hour to get to a CIA substation. It looked like a shack from the outside, but the interior was setup with sophisticated communication systems. Marissa looked through a retinal scanner before she was allowed inside. She hooked up her laptop and called Yeager.

When her boss came on the line, she immediately said, “I need you to divert some resources for a raid on the Fletcher property.”

There was a pause and then, “Do you have positive ID?”

“No. But I’m sending these pictures to AGS to process. They have a visual on the property right now.” Marissa said. “Can I have Guthrie back?”

“She’ll be free soon. The Al-Qaeda cells were a dead end.” Yeager's tired voice informed her. “They were just a minor splinter group sympathetic to the cause and had no involvement in the attacks on DC at all.”

“So Viktor was right,” Marissa said. And the directors of every government agency can kiss his ass. She knew Viktor was frustrated by the bureaucracy that had bogged down other missions, this one included.

“Baran was right,” Yeager repeated. “And he is pissed as hell right now.”

“All right, I’ll keep you posted.”

She called Tim.

“Hanging in there, Burns?” The analyst probably had not slept for a while and was operating on caffeine.

“Yup, what you got?”

“Possible ID on Reed.”

“You serious?” Tim’s voice perked up. “Send them to me, girl.”

“Listen. We need to move in soon. Something tells me these guys won’t stay in town for long. They’ve had more than a week to assemble the SK nerve gas. Right now, they’re probably plotting their end game.”

“Sounds ominous. Viktor should be back from New York this morning.”

“Viktor’s in New York?”

“Albany. There was some tip from several folks about a disturbing congregation of young Muslim men in a house.”

“And?”

“And nothing. These were Al-Qaeda wannabes. They downloaded instructions for a homemade bomb and have some of the materials, but that’s all they had. They didn’t need the AGS for this, and DHS could have instructed local law enforcement to do the raid. Viktor is really pissed because we’re stretched thin. He’s been dragged into every agency meeting, bored out of his mind, while he’s itching to get his hands on Reed. And he’s so damned worried about you—”

“Tim, calm down,” Marissa cut in. “I’m fine.” She looked at the time; it was almost 7:00 a.m. “I gotta go. I’m pulling a double shift at the bar. I’ll keep my eyes open. But you guys have to move in tonight, and don’t forget about the guard dogs.”

“Copy that. Most of the guys will be back this morning. Will send briefs through secure channels.”

The lunch shift was almost over and Marissa was dead on her feet. Friday lunch had been busy. There were a couple of group lunches that came in like a rowdy bunch of boys trying to be men, college kids propositioning waitresses. Sheila kept them in line for which Marissa was thankful because she had the strong urge to elbow one of the frat boys in the face after he had grabbed her boobs. Marissa just wished Sheila was as assertive with Fletcher. It was sad what love could do to a person.

She was wiping down the counters when Jerry asked her to check on some inventory in the stockroom. The storage area was an attachment to the main bar with the entrance located outside. She made a right at the hallway and pushed through the back exit, turned left and took a couple of steps to the stockroom entrance.

The door was unlocked. She cautiously turned the knob, but the door was suddenly yanked from her as she fell inside. Hands gripped her upper arms as she came face to face with Henry Logan, their missing guy from Bluefield. So this was where he was hiding out. Since when?

“What are you doing in here?” Marissa put enough squeak in her voice to sound frightened.

Logan narrowed his eyes. “I’m a friend of Garett Fletcher. I store some shit here.”

Liar, Liar, pants on fire.

“Jerry sent me here to do a stock check.”

The hands released her. “Don’t let me keep you.” He stepped aside and slammed out of the room.

Holy shit. Marissa could barely contain her frustration. She needed to call this in, but she needed to maintain her cover a bit longer. She quickly took a gander of the stockroom. She had been in here one other time, and that bedroll in one corner wasn’t here. Logan definitely was a recent arrival and he definitely was keeping a low profile. Marissa quickly made an inventory appraisal and walked back to the bar. She was passing by the office when she heard Sheila crying and yelling at Fletcher. “I don’t trust him. What are you hiding?”

“Keep it down, you cunt,” Fletcher hissed. “Do you want the whole damned bar to hear you?”

“I want him out of my house.”

“It’s my house, too, Sheila,” Fletcher replied. “We’ll be gone tomorrow morning.”

“You’re leaving again?”

“Yes.” There was a sound of a scuffle and the wall shook as if someone was backed up against it. “And if you take that tone with me again, bitch, we’re done. You don’t own me. You work for me. And if you ain’t shutting up like a good ole’ lady, you can leave right now.”

Marissa clenched her fists, wanting to charge in there and kick Fletcher where it hurt. She heard Sheila crying, so Marissa quickly made it back to the front of the house and handed Jerry the inventory report he needed. She hoped to hell Sheila had the sense to leave the bastard.

Four p.m. was the start of happy hour, and the bar was starting to fill up again. Marissa managed to shoot off a text message to Tim requesting for an update because she had not heard anything since this morning. She was getting antsy, feeling like a one-man army on this mission. She couldn’t be freaking everywhere.

The door to the bar opened, and a young man clothed in a flannel shirt and ripped faded jeans walked in. He wore a baseball cap in reverse. Nathan Stark.

He sat at her section.

“The kitchen open, sweetie?” Nathan asked. Even dressed down, he was devastatingly handsome and all the estrogen at the bar certainly noticed. Unfortunately for them, Marissa knew that Nathan was very much in love with his fiancée, Lucy Cortez.

“They sure are, handsome,” Marissa said. “What can I get you?”

“Your house burger and a Duvell, please,” Nathan said after looking at the menu.

“Fries or chips?”

“Fries.”

“Be back with your beer.” She ordered the beer from Jerry and walked off in the direction of the kitchen.

She bumped into Fletcher who was looking at her with the same leery gaze from yesterday.

“You like working here, sugar?” he asked. Marissa did not like the undertone of his question.

“Sure do!” she answered chirpily.

“You like pretty boys like that one?” Fletcher nodded to Nathan who was frowning at them .

For Christ’s sake, was this jerk acting like a jealous asshole already? She just met the man yesterday.

“No.”

Fletcher trailed his calloused thumb across her lips and leaned in toward her. “Been dreaming of these lips, sugar. You and me. Can’t wait to feel those lips around my cock.”

Sexual harassment. This man was freaking clueless. Of course, she wasn’t an actual documented employee because Fletcher was paying her under the table. So maybe he thought she was desperate for a job, hence, the lead in question. And damn if Viktor wasn’t right again.

Marissa smiled. “I gotta hand in my order to the kitchen.”

She winced when Garett Fletcher swatted her ass.

When she returned with Nathan’s order, the Guardian was scowling at her.

“You’re lucky it wasn’t Viktor who came in, or you’d be scraping that guy off the floor. Whatever was left of him, that is.”

“Shut up.” Marissa pushed him a bar napkin with the new information about Henry Logan.

Nathan quirked a brow and took a bite out of his burger.

Nathan left forty minutes later. They didn’t get to exchange more information, except to confirm that the Guardians would be moving in on Fletcher's residence tonight. Marissa was on edge, probably from a combination of adrenalin and a lack of sleep. She really wanted to be in on that raid.

Fletcher was behind the bar, and was polishing some glasses, ignoring customers and just following her with his eyes. Poor Jerry had to pick up the slack, and Sheila couldn’t be found anywhere. The other two waitresses were, thankfully, pretty competent, even without the manager around.

“Hey, Olivia, come here a minute,” Fletcher called to Marissa.

“What’s up, boss?”

“I need some of the margarita mixes from the back, can you go get them?”

“We have some—” Jerry protested, but Fletcher shut him up with a glare.

Marissa wasn’t stupid, she knew what this jerk was up to, even as she tried to suppress the bile in her gut.

“Sure thing, boss,” she said as he tossed her the key to the stockroom, a gleam of triumph in his eyes.

She wasn’t looking forward to knocking down a guy the size of Fletcher, and was hoping to escape this watering hole unscathed. She grabbed a steak knife from the utensil caddy on her way out and tucked it in the back of her jeans. She pulled out her t-shirt to cover the knife, hoping she wouldn’t have to use it.

The door to the storage unit was unlocked, although she remembered locking it earlier. She had her answer when she flicked the lights open.

Morris Tyrell was waiting for her