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“Whatever,” she barked at us both.
Her friend — a shorter, even bitchier-looking brunette — took her hand from her cosmopolitan just long enough to flip us off. I smiled at her sweetly.
“Honey, you have something on your chin.”
The friend frowned, and made the mistake of touching her chin.
“No, the third one down.”
Jax threw back his head and laughed at my insult. He laughed so long and hard that both women grabbed their drinks and stepped away from us.
“Let’s go,” the first brunette told her friend. “This bar sucks ass anyway.”
“Maybe you suck ass, and the bar is fine,” I quipped. “Ever consider that?”
They left in a huff. I turned back to Jax, who was still grinning as he took his seat back.
“That was fun, actually,” I admitted.
He grabbed his beer and toasted me. “See? Come to the dark side.”
I chuckled. “Well, it was only fun because they deserved it.”
Mid-gulp, Jax shook his head at me. “Trust me,” he said, wiping his mouth with one big forearm. “Everyone deserves it.”
“But—”
I stopped mid-sentence and turned, as his steel-blue eyes shifted abruptly over my shoulder. There, just inside the front door, was the man from the driver’s license photo. Telengard looked shorter than I’d always pictured him in my mind, but just as intelligent and calculating. Just as capable.
My pulse quickened, but even more concerning to me was a deep, rising anger. My rage was more powerful than I thought it would be, especially now that he was here. It would be a lot harder to keep in check.
“Speaking of deserving it…” Jax muttered, cracking his knuckles again.
~ 45 ~
HARPER
I walked behind Jax at first, letting his massiveness shield me from our target’s view. Preston had lured him here by using the spoofed phone to text message him as a friend. And so Telengard stood there for several moments, scanning the crowd.
Eventually the hostess sat him down at an empty table. Telengard took off his jacket, and draped it over the back of his chair. By the time he pulled out his phone to check on his friend, we were already there.
“Hi,” Jax said cheerfully.
He led the way, dropping into the chair right beside him. The man couldn’t have looked more surprised.
“Uhh… hi,” he said awkwardly. “I umm, I’m sort of waiting for—”
His words died as I slid into the chair directly opposite him. By now my heart was thundering away in my chest. I could feel the blood in my face. It was everything I could do to keep from scratching his eyes out.
“Oh,” Telengard said, his face breaking into a friendly smile. “Hello, Harper.”
He actually had the balls to extend an arm, as if to shake my hand. A quick glance at Jax told me he was only waiting for the signal, and he would snap that arm clean off and give it to me as a souvenir.
“You have no idea how amazing it is to finally meet you,” he said, eventually putting his hand down. His voice was so genuinely cheerful it only deepened my rage. “You’re an absolute genius, you know. Someone I look up to and admire, very muc—”
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kick your balls straight up your ass right now,” I seethed.
The man sitting across from me leaned back and chuckled. “Interesting visual.”
