Page 34 of Boardroom Mask

He keeps leaving. That’s the part I can’t stop turning over. He keeps showing up and he keeps leaving and I keep being alive at the end of it. How doesthatmake any sense?!

He’s had chances to do what he said he’d been sent for. Real ones. He had me pinned to a wall in the dark with no phone and no power and nobody coming, a gun pressed into my spine. He could’ve done it then. Or if not then, he could’ve poisoned me at the coffee shop, snatched me off the street, dragged me anywhere he likes.

He hasn’t.

Which means one of two things. Either hecan’tkill me… or hewon’t.

Both options interest me. Because either way, the man who told me he was sent to kill me is failing to do it, and that failure is a crack. A crack I can fit my fingers into and pry open.

He has a weakness.

Me.

And that gives me power.

The sound, when it arrives, doesn’t come from the door.

It comes from behind me.

A scrape, a soft thud, and then the whisper of fabric against the windowsill. The window I shut. The window Ilocked.

I snatch the Taser off the table and spin in my chair. The Masked Man is already inside, one leg still swung over the sill, and I don’t think; I just squeeze. The Taser crackles and spits its twin darts into the dark and they sail…

… past his left shoulder, to embed themselves in the curtain with a pathetic littlethwip.

“Shit,” I breathe.

He straightens up to his full height and looks at the darts hanging from the curtain fabric, then back at me. The mask covers his nose and jaw. His pale eyes are calm above it.

“You missed,” he observes.

“Yes, asshole, I can see that.”

He strides across the kitchen, long legs chewing up the ground between us. I try to fire again but nothing happens—the cartridge is spent. One shot, that’s all I had.

Then his hand is around my wrist. He twists, not hard enough to hurt but enough that my fingers open and the Taser falls.

I try to yank my arm back, but he doesn’t let go. He reels me out of the chair and into him, my back flush against his chest, both my wrists gathered in one of his hands and pinned against my stomach. His other arm wraps around my ribcage, locking me in place.

I can feel every inch of him pressed against me. The heat of his body soaking through my clothes. The rise and fall of his breathing against my shoulder blades. That smell—cinnamon, sandalwood, musk—filling my nose until it’s all I can process.

My body does something awful: It relaxes. Not all the way, not even close, but enough. The taut line of my spine softens a fraction against him.

“Let go of me!” I demand.

He holds on for one more second. Then he releases my wrists and steps back.

Moving casually, like I just invited him over for a nightcap, he pulls out my chair and nods graciously toward it, as if to say,Rest yourself, if you please, my lady.He must not realize that chivalry and home invasion don’t typically go hand-in-hand. When I refuse, he shrugs and sinks into it, as nonchalant as ever. He leans back, crosses an ankle over the opposite knee, folds his hands in his lap, and looks at me.

“Sit,” he says.

“Don’t tell me what to do in my own apartment.”

I don’t move. My wrists are tingling where he held them. The Taser is on the floor way off to my left, spent and useless.

He pushes the other chair out from the table with his foot. It scrapes across the tile and stops in front of me.

“Sit,” he says again. “I just want to talk.”