Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 140965 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 705(@200wpm)___ 564(@250wpm)___ 470(@300wpm)
She divided the food into two bowls. He didn’t ask what it was, but it smelled edible.
“I guess that makes us a pair of serial killers,” she teased and brought his bowl to him.
He kept his head down. As serial killers went, he could have been labeled one. He wished he had more remorse for those he’d killed, but he didn’t. They were in his sights for a reason. Anyone able to annihilate an entire village of peaceful people didn’t deserve to share the earth with others. But then some would say he didn’t have the right to judge.
“That bother you?”
“What?” She perched on the end of the bed rather than at the small table that she’d been using as a desk.
“Don’t pretend you weren’t in my head. That I think that way. That I don’t let the deaths of men like that tear me up at night.”
“It doesn’t tear me up, so why should I judge you more harshly than I do myself? I wasn’t sent here to talk them into going home to Daddy. I was sent to kill them. I might cry over the people in that village, I might even obsess over them, but you won’t catch me crying over the deaths of the ones who orchestrated that.”
Draden shook his head. “Why the hell did it take me this long to find you?”
She sent him a small smile and indicated the bowl he held. “You won’t be singing that same tune when you taste that. It’s calories and it contains all the vitamins you need, but Whitney didn’t believe tasting good was a prerequisite for food in the field.”
He studied the expression on her face, but more importantly, he stayed connected to her, reading the sorrow for the villagers in her mind. She didn’t compartmentalize the way he did. He could feel anger. Rage even. Ice-cold fury. But he could push the sight of them aside. He could look at them as something other than fellow human beings, mainly because he wasn’t certain he looked at himself as a human being. It was clear his little peony couldn’t do that.
There was kindness in her and compassion. Two characteristics he didn’t have. Or at least, not in abundance. He was the perfect killing machine. He didn’t need to feel bad. Once unleashed, set on a course, he followed it until it was done. He knew why he was wiping out the MSS. To him, it wasn’t political. He wasn’t a political man.
The MSS had murdered an entire village of their own people. Those people had been peaceful, doing their best to live on their own, not asking anything of anyone. He didn’t care why the MSS had targeted them or what the overall agenda was. The terrorists had committed an atrocity against humanity and had to be stopped because they would continue to do so. That was a good enough reason to wipe them out, and he didn’t give a damn whether others agreed with him or not.
Then along came his little peony.
“Stop it. Stop calling me that. And don’t think of me as that.” She gave him the most adorable little frown.
“Peony?”
“It sounds awful.”
“Did you ever look up the flower?” He took his first bite and nearly choked. “Woman. Are you fucking trying to kill me? Why didn’t you warn me?”
She burst out laughing. “Don’t be such a baby. I did warn you, and you deserve it for calling me Peony. And you already asked me that.”
He watched her eat two spoonsful of the thick broth. He was going to have to suck it up and eat the disgusting stuff because she wasn’t besting him, not over food. “I didn’t call you peony as in your name. I called you ‘my peony’ as in the flower.” It bothered him that he’d repeated himself. He didn’t do things like that, but his brain felt chaotic.
She rolled her eyes at him, and his heart did a weird stuttering thing. She was potent. Beautiful. Lethal. Funny.
“Shit, Shylah, we’ve got to figure this virus crap out. I figured I’d kill as many of those bastards as possible, record what I could for Wyatt and Trap and then put a bullet in my head. Along comes this woman that I didn’t think was a possibility in my life and we’re both supposed to fucking die, which isn’t happening by the way. What kind of crap is that?” His head was throbbing, and his body felt hot. Fatigue ate at him and every muscle hurt. She sat there looking unaffected.
She was amazing as far as he was concerned, everything he ever could have wanted in a woman, and he barely knew her. She’d been taken by Whitney as an infant and been experimented on. He’d raised her as a soldier and a piece of property, yet she retained such incredible kindness and compassion. She loved her friends, embracing them as deeply as possible, as if they were siblings.