Jude grimaced and took a long drink from her own bottle. “Fuck you, DeLuna. I’m probably the fittest librarian in the world.” She limped heavily over to where she’d left her cane, then shot me a teasing smile. “Maybe you need to stay with me more often, kick my butt back into shape.”
“Oh, honey, that boat sailed a long ass time ago,” I teased, nodding to her leg. She knew what I meant. The broken leg that had ended her future as a mercenary had been a thorn in her side ever since. Multiple surgeries and an infection had left her with extremely limited mobility in her left leg. The fact she was at the gym with me at all was impressive.
She wrinkled her nose at me, but it was in good humor. We were close enough that we didn’t take offense to teasing, and I knew better than anyone else how much her leg still hurt her—emotionally as well as physically.
“Come on, Mackenzie, that bottle of vodka in your freezer is calling our names.”
Jude scoffed. “It’s ten in the morning!”
I shrugged. “So what? You don’t have to be back at work until Monday, right?”
She groaned and shook her head as we headed through to the gym’s showers. “You’re so fucking bad for my liver, DeLuna.”
Grinning, I headed into a shower cubicle to rinse off the light sheen of sweat from our workout. I’d been staying with Jude for almost a week and hadn’t even caught a glimpse of Leon. I’d thought surely he would have found me by now; I wasn’t exactly hiding. Edinburgh was quite literally the current home of the Guild, and he knew where Jude lived. If he had wanted to, he could have turned up on her doorstep the very next day.
But he hadn’t. Nor had he even so much as called.
What the fuck? I’d thought my parting note was pretty fucking clear… shit, I’d used his own blood to write my challenge out on the mirror. There was no way he could have missed it.
So why hadn’t he tracked me down? Was he reconsidering that unofficial kill order? Just because he wasn’t going to kill me that night didn’t mean it wasn’t a possibility another night.
Angry again, I washed my body with the harsh smelling gym soap, then towel-dried. I really needed to day-drink and wallow in self-pity.
I should be scared. Leon was fucking insane, and he was an executioner to boot. If he’d decided to kill me…
Well, if he’d decided to kill me, I would probably be dead. So, fuck being scared. I was angry. Had the sex really been so forgettable that he wasn’t going to bother coming after me?
“You done in there or what?” Jude called out, jerking me out of my depressing thoughts.
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered back, dressing in clean clothes and stuffing my sweaty workout gear into a bag. “Let’s go.”
Jude arched a knowing brow at me as I stomped out of the shower cubicle, but when I shot her a glare, she just shrugged and said nothing. I knew she knew what I was shitty about, though. She was my best friend for a reason.
She held her tongue the whole way back to her apartment, but to think she was doing anything but biding her time would be stupid. She waited until I’d mixed us both martinis—dirty—then pounced once I’d taken that first mouthful.
“So, are you going to tell me the whole story about what happened with Leon?”
I held the vodka in my mouth a moment, narrowing my eyes at my friend, then swallowed. “Do I have to?”
She shook her head, taking a more delicate sip of her own drink. “Have to? No. I don’t think anyone on this earth can make the infamous Danny DeLuna do anything she doesn’t want to do. But if you can’t tell me… who can you tell?”
I parted my lips to reply, but she cut me off.
“Stanley does not count.”
Damn. “Okay,” I replied, then licked my lips. “I see your point.”
So far, I’d given Jude very vague information about my whole tryst with Leon. She knew he’d rescued me from Ares the arms dealer and that I’d gone into hiding with Leon while we “completed” my mission. She knew that much from when I’d called her prior to Leon and me fucking each other half to death. Then I showed up on her doorstep a week ago in a sour mood and gave her fuck all information about what had happened since we last spoke.
“Drink up,” she told me with a smirk, “then start spilling your guts. I’ve given you way too long to feel sorry for yourself, now it’s time to start bouncing back.”
I rolled my eyes but gulped the rest of my martini and went to make another.
“So obviously I know you and Leon got your fuck on,” Jude started as I mixed my drink, “and even as cagey as you’re being on those details, I can tell it was excellent dick.”
The vivid memory of Leon’s pierced dick flashed through my mind, and all the things he’d made me feel with it. I groaned and my pussy quivered. “Yeah, it was okay.”
Jude snickered. “Okay sure. It was okay. That’s why you’re moping about him not chasing you down after you disappeared in the middle of the night after literally telling him never to contact you again?”
I carried my martini back to the couch and flopped down beside her—careful not to spill any booze. She’d stocked up on Copper Wolf vodka just for me, and I loved her to death for it. She was more of a Grey Goose girl, herself.
“It sounds stupid when you say it like that,” I grumbled. “Telling him to lose my number was clearly a challenge. He didn’t strike me as the type who just gave up so easily.”
My friend gave me a skeptical look. “Because he’s an executioner.”
Yeah, I’d told her that part. I had to, given I was placing her in danger by staying with her.
Jude sipped her drink again, then puffed out a breath. “I have to admit, I would never have picked that one. He seemed so… I dunno. Nerdy? I fully admit I had zero confidence that he would find you when Ares abducted you.” She winced. “Which now I feel awful about, because he clearly did have the skill.”
I laughed. Jude had doubted Leon enough that she’d been launching her own search using some of the other Guild mercenaries we were on friendly terms with. Leon, with Carlos’s help, had just reached me first. “Yeah, well… I underestimated him too. I guess that’s sort of a requirement of the job though, right?” My mind skipped back to my time on the island… to Kai. But I quickly pushed those memories away once more and focused on my best friend. “So you already know we fucked and that I left him in the middle of the night. What else do you wanna know?”
She glared. “Uhhhh, some details for starters? This was no normal one-night stand, and you fucking know it. What aren’t you telling me? How did you find out he’s an executioner? You never explained that part.”
I licked my lips. I wondered what she’d say if I admitted to finding out because I woke up with his knife at my throat, my own blood trickling down my skin. Or what she’d say if she heard how we tried to kill each other and ended up fucking… over and over and over. Shit, my pussy was heating again just thinking about it.
“Um, he told me,” I said instead, vague as shit but not totally lying. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Can we talk about something less depressing?”
Jude huffed. “Like what?”
“Like… why the Guild is trying to have me killed unofficially?” Yeah, that’s what I considered a less depressing topic. “Last I checked, I’ve been nothing but loyal, so what the fuck have I done to make someone want me dead?”
I hadn’t told her that Leon actually tried to kill me, nor had I told her that I knew who one of the Circle really was. Just knowing Blanchet’s identity was breaking some major Guild rules, and I wasn’t going to be careless with my friend’s fate like that. Yes, it could be argued that I was putting her in danger by staying with her instead of going home, but she was injured, not incompetent. She could still put up a good fight if necessary.
Jude nodded, her fingernail tapping her martini glass as she thought. “I agree on that point, you’re probably the most loyal mercenary ever born into the Guild.” She shot me a teasing smile. “But I don’t think you’re being targeted specifically. I mean, yes, someone clearly wants you dead, but it’s not just you.”
My brows rose in surprise. “What do you know, and why have you been holding out on me, Judith Mackenzie?”
She smirked. “Oh, because you tell me everything? Besides, I just heard this last night when I was working late, and you were already out cold when I got in. I overheard Franklin talking with someone on the phone.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Overheard?”
Franklin—uptight old bastard that he was—had been an impressive mercenary in his own right back in his prime. He was careful enough not to be overheard if he was talking Guild business within the library.
She gave a sly shrug. “I have my ways, DeLuna. Anyway, you wanna hear this or not?”