Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
“Too hot?”
“No.” She takes another bite, bigger this time. “That’s incredible. What the hell?”
I try not to let my grin get cocky. “Told you. Secret family recipe.”
“There’s no way this is just grilled cheese.” She’s already halfway through the first half, and something warm spreads through my chest at the sight. “What’s your secret?”
“Butter on the outside, mayo on the inside. And the jalapeños have to be pickled, not fresh. Fresh ones are too sharp. These have more depth and just a touch of sweetness.”
“Mayo on the inside,” she repeats. “That’s disgusting and brilliant.”
“Story of my life.”
She finishes the first half and reaches for the second, and I realize I’m just standing here, watching her eat like a fucking creep. I make myself another sandwich, more to have something to do with my hands than because I’m hungry. The domesticity of this—the two of us in my kitchen, sunlight streaming through the windows, the smell of butter and cheese—feels dangerous, like something I could get used to.
Can’t have that.
“So,” Mia says, licking a smear of cheese off her thumb in a way that makes my dick twitch, “shall we continue the interview? Or are you just going to feed me until I forget why I’m here?”
“That was the plan, actually. Death by grilled cheese. Very slow, very delicious.”
“Morbid. I like it.” She pulls out her tablet and sets it on the counter, tapping the screen to bring up her notes. “Where were we? I believe you were about to tell me all your deepest, darkest secrets.”
“Oh, was I?”
“You were. You just didn’t know it yet.”
I flip my sandwich, buying time. “What do you want to know?”
“What do you do when you’re not saving the world? When there’s no crisis, no press appearance, no Dr Julia Van Veen breathing down your neck.”
“This.” I gesture vaguely at the penthouse. “I come here. I exist. Sometimes, I watch TV.”
“What do you watch?”
“Whatever’s on. Old movies, mostly. The kind they don’t make anymore.”
“Like what? Iron Man?”
“Like Casablanca. The Maltese Falcon. Anything with Bogart.”
“Oh, ancient films. Got it.”
I slide my sandwich onto a plate but don’t eat it. “Emma got me into them. She had this theory that old movies were better because people had to actually talk to each other. No explosions, no CGI, no AI, just dialogue and chemistry. You could tell all the story you needed to tell with just two people in a room.”
“She sounds smart.”
“She was the smartest person I ever knew,” I tell her. “Smarter than me, that’s for damn sure. She could’ve done anything, been anything.”
“But she chose activism.”
“She chose to give a shit.” I meet Mia’s eyes across the counter. “That’s what got her killed. Caring too much about people who couldn’t care less about her.”
The silence that follows is heavy, charged with things I don’t know how to say. Once again, I feel I’ve said too much. Mia sets down her tablet, her expression softening in a way that makes my heart feel water-logged.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “For what happened to her. For all of it.”
“Yeah.” I look away, out the windows at the city sprawling below, at life going on. “Me too.”
She’s about to say something else—I can see the words forming on her lips—when my watch buzzes.
No. Not now.
I glance at the screen. Emergency alert. Art heist in progress. MoMA. Armed suspects, civilian hostages.
Fuck.
“I have to go,” I say, already moving toward my bedroom.
“What? Now?”
“Armed robbery at the MoMA. Hostages.” I reach the closet in my bedroom, grabbing my suit. Contrary to popular belief, in emergencies like this, I pull it on over my existing clothes to save time. The nanotech in the fabric makes it slide over my shirt and jeans like a second skin, familiar and suffocating all at once. “I’ll notify Danny on the roof. He’ll take you home in a minute.”
“Nate—”
I stop. She’s never called me that before. Just Vanguard, like everyone else.
“Be careful,” she says quietly.
Something twists against my ribs. It makes me want to cross the room, cup her face in my hands, and kiss her until neither of us can breathe.
But that’s all too much, too soon for what we are to each other.
Because she is just a journalist doing her job.
So, I just nod, open the glass doors, step onto the balcony, and launch myself into the sky.
The Museum of Modern Art is chaos when I arrive a minute later.
Three armed suspects, all wearing masks, all carrying weapons that look military-grade. They’ve got a dozen hostages corralled in the Tang Wing while NYPD has set up a perimeter outside, but they’re outgunned and out-negotiated, and they know it.
I don’t bother with the front entrance.
I crash through the glass ceiling and drop into the middle of the gallery like a nightmare in black, shards going everywhere, alarms blaring.