Page 99 of Lethal in Pink

She pauses, her key halfway to the lock. “What did you just call me?”

“Jagiya,” I say, leaning one shoulder against the doorframe with a slow, easy grin. “Means honey. Or darling. Figured it was a step up from hotshot.”

Amiyah narrows her eyes, though the corner of her mouth twitches. “Don't push your luck, Kim.”

“Never.”

She shakes her head, turning the key in the lock with a smooth click. She steps inside, gives me one last look over her shoulder, and the door shuts with a soft thud.

I stand alone in the hallway.

The sconces hum overhead. I can still feel the heat of her breath through my shirt, the shape of her hands at my back.

My mouth just kind of stays crooked, a stupid grin spreading until I’m standing like an idiot in the empty corridor.

I walk back to my car, the cool ocean air hitting my face. I slide behind the wheel, turn the engine over, and point the car east toward the freeway. The road ahead is empty, the traffic lights cycling for no one, and for the first time in my life, I’m left with just one thought:

How did I get so fucking lucky?

Chapter thirty-five

Amiyah

The rooftop tar is baked hard under my elbows, grinding through a layer of skin after forty-three minutes of absolute, mind-numbing stillness. My breathing is dialed down to eight cycles a minute. The sharp, heavy reek of gun oil clings to my skin and the inside of my nose.

"Talk to me, Pen," I murmur, barely moving my lips against the coms mic.

Pen’s voice crackles in my ear, crisp and unimpressed. "You’re at forty-four minutes, Amiyah. Perimeter’s locked. The twins are parked in the van down the alley, ready to scoop up your mess the second you clear the roof."

"Good," I breathe, keeping my eye locked to the Leupold scope. "Tell them to stay awake. This won't take long."

Below us, Westwood hums. In the distance, past the sweep of campus and the pulse of Wilshire, the Hollywood Hills form a dark jagged line against the sky. But right here, it’s just the low drone of student traffic, a late-night siren wailing down Gayley, and the bass of some frat house stereo bleeding through a window. The building beneath me is an old commercial mid-rise, flat-roofed with a six-foot parapet wall. East-facing. Perfect sightline to Jae’s building—one of those aggressively sleek, glass-and-steel high-rises two blocks off Blackthorn campus—specifically his ninth-floor corner unit, 270 meters out.

Easy. Clean. Done.

I run the checklist on autopilot. Wind: negligible. Humidity: low. Temperature: sixty-four degrees. The LaRue OBR is braced against my shoulder, suppressor locked, the scope giving me a razor-sharp view right into his living room. The vertical blinds are half-drawn, angled enough to slice clean lines of light across the hardwood floor and the couch. Empty.

My finger rests against the receiver, nowhere near the trigger guard, because getting sloppy is how you end up in a federal penitentiary. My body is trained to treat an elevated heart rate like data, not an emergency.

Then the light in the hallway shifts.

A shadow crosses the threshold, and Jae steps right into frame.

He’s wearing only a white bath towel slung low across his hips, his skin still flushed from the shower, water droplets tracking down his spine. He moves with the casual arrogance of a man who believes he’s entirely, securely alone.

He pauses near the center of the room, rubbing the back of his neck, and as he shifts his weight, the knot gives way.

The towel just drops straight to the floor.

He doesn’t even blink. Doesn’t bother to bend down and grab it. He just stands there in the golden slant of the light, stark naked, entirely unbothered, running a hand through his damp hair as he saunters toward the kitchen.

Through the scope, the magnification is a literal curse.

It strips away every single defense I have. I can track the heavy, even rise and fall of his chest, the defined ridge of his abs, the sharp V of muscle dipping below his waist, leaving zero room for imagination. And right there on his inner wrist—the small crown tattoo. The exact spot where his pulse jumps, where his hand burned hot against my thigh when we parked behind the campus library last Tuesday, his fingers sliding under my hem just high enough to make me forget my own damn name.

My finger goes completely still.

Not on the trigger. Not near it. It just stops. Like a blown fuse in my brain.