by M. A. Grant
He’d have a while to wait, it seemed, as the game continued without a moment’s pause. Vasilica took her shot and swore when she missed. Cristian moved up to the table and finished out the game with three swift, well-placed shots. Vasilica groaned, though she didn’t seem too bothered with the loss. Constantin chuckled and leaned in to murmur something to her.
Atlas didn’t catch it. Cristian had his full attention as he sauntered closer, cue resting lightly over his shoulder. The pose stretched his shirt over his chest and Atlas fought to not stare at the clearly defined lines of muscles shifting beneath the cotton. Okay, maybe he stared for a moment.
Cristian noticed. He invaded Atlas’s space like he had the night before in the hall, stopping mere inches away this time. He was close enough Atlas caught a light hint of chamomile mingling with the detergent clinging to his shirt. If Atlas breathed too deeply, their shoulders and chests would brush together. He ignored the prickling over his skin, a warning against the forced proximity, but remained in place, waiting for some kind of recognition from his charge.
His stubbornness won him the battle of wills. It took an awkward silence, but Cristian finally asked, “Are you playing?”
The mildness of the question surprised him. Maybe Cristian only acted out to authority figures like his father or Helias, and Atlas had just been unfortunate enough to get caught in the crossfire. Maybe they’d work this out here and now. He could hear his CO’s hoarse voice barking out, First rule of engagement: only engage if the target is hostile.
“Not during my shift,” Atlas replied.
Cristian smiled and tilted his head, peering up at Atlas through his lashes. “Then you’re useless to me. Wait outside until we’re done,” he purred. When Atlas didn’t move, his tone sharpened. “Do you know how to obey? Do I need a whistle to train my father’s lapdog?”
The target is fucking hostile.
Behind Cristian, Ioana and Andrei shifted. He flicked his gaze to them, only to be met with hard stares and growing frowns. Movement to his left. Constantin had taken a step forward, closer to the corner of the billiards table. His phone had been tucked away, leaving his hands free. Vasilica’s hand rested lightly on the crook of Constantin’s elbow, but it wasn’t a hold that urged him to caution. It was a sign of solidarity, a promise to back him if things got ugly.
Atlas was outnumbered and there was no chance in hell these four would mind their own business if he decided to disobey Cristian.
The brat knew it. He smiled and flicked his hand toward the door. “Shoo, puppy. The adults have games to play.”
With no other choice, Atlas turned and left the room. He tried to ignore the laughter following him out into the hall. The click of the door shutting at his back reminded him of the finality of a gunshot, of a confrontation ended by force and might, rather than diplomacy.
Cristian’s taunt was far too accurate as Atlas loitered in the hall. The other people passing through shot him understanding looks. A few glanced at the door behind him, then offered him a faint smile of commiseration. They didn’t have to say anything else. The pity in their gazes delivered the message to him just fine—Glad I’m not in your shoes.
No wonder other agents had walked away from the job. If Cristian was this much of a nightmare when he was stuck at home, how bad would he be once they left the property? Or when they were at a private event or out shopping or doing whatever else it was Cristian did for entertainment? Maybe he could talk to Decebal and find out if this was normal behavior. He preferred to not call in the boss so early, but if Cristian’s life were truly at risk, it might be worth the blowback to have the lines of their positions clearly drawn by the actual employer.
Atlas stewed over how to bring up the issue while he waited for Cristian and his gaggle of cronies to finish their game. It was a long, boring wait before he heard movement behind the door. The soft thud of footfalls moving closer and the murmur of mixed voices filled him with such relief he actually moved away from the door so he wasn’t blocking their exit. Ioana emerged first. She didn’t spare him a glance, simply strode away and headed up the stairs. Constantin and Vasilica came next, side by side and chatting about needing a snack. They pulled a hard right and headed for a different door, probably one leading toward the kitchen. Andrei came out last.
He paused in front of Atlas, who had to crane his head back to look up. The man was an intimidating sight. Broad shouldered, barrel-chested, and with an expression of supreme disapproval, he glared down at Atlas like he was personally responsible for the dull night.
“Cristian is waiting for you,” Andrei rumbled. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the partially closed door. “Do not make him upset.”
“I have no intention of it,” Atlas lied.
The mountain before him gave a huff to indicate his obvious disbelief of the statement before sauntering away toward yet another door in the hall. Scattering like rats from a fleeing ship, it seemed. Atlas took a moment to steady his breathing before pushing open the door into the billiards room.
“You wanted to see me?” he began, only to trail off at the sight of an empty room.
Cristian was gone.
Damn.
Atlas popped back into the hall to call for Andrei, but the area was strangely deserted, like it had been the previous night. No one around to talk to at all, in fact. Atlas pulled the door closed, granting him the privacy of the room, before letting his head drop forward to rest against the well-stained wood.
It was a brilliant setup. No one in the house—even those who weren’t part of Cristian’s inner crew—would dare go against the boss’s son. Fine. He could handle this. How hard could it be to find his missing charge?
There was no point returning to the hall. Cristian hadn’t snuck out that way, a fact made obvious by his friends’ slow and steady exits from the room. They’d been buying him time. So where the hell had he gone?
The room looked secure. One door in from the hall, none out. No windows, thanks to rooms on either side. Nothing but sturdy bookcases in the back left corner and a comfortable, if dimly lit, sitting area and small wet bar to the right. Atlas avoided the bar and the scattered wineglasses, still stained with hints of dark wine. There was no chance Cristian would be hiding behind the bar, laughing silently to himself. This was a test. Cristian was trying to expose Atlas’s incompetence, to get him fired before he had a chance to prove his value.
He pulled up the grounds map on his phone. It offered little help and only confirmed his original assessment that the door was the only way out of the room.
Okay, so no obvious exit. Maybe there was some kind of hiding place instead? He’d never personally found or used one during his tours, but some of the diplomats he and his platoon had protected had spoken of them. Small, hidden spaces designed to offer a few hours cover until an extraction team could arrive.
He took another slow walk around the room. The only place he could think to hide such a space would be by the bookshelves, where the seams and joints of the hidden door could be camouflaged by the ornate, carved facing of the shelves. Scanning them was tedious. It was too easy to be distracted by the carefully dusted rows of books. The aged and foreign books lent age and gravity to the space, which even the billiards table couldn’t detract from. Eventually, he gave up reading the spines and instead turned so he could look at the shelves from an angle. That’s when he spotted the book pushed back too far on a shelf.
Another foreign title, the faded gilt letters pressed into the aged leather of the spine. It was almost disappointing that nothing happened when he pulled it out and examined it. No Scooby Doo trapdoor opened beneath his feet, there was no grinding of gears as an Addams family wall split. He slid a hand into the slender gap left behind, feeling for something, anything...and found a loop of wire against the back wall of the bookcase. He tugged it down with two fingers. Behind the bookcase, he heard a metallic cl
ick and a corner of the case shifted forward a half inch. He replaced the book, stepped back, and carefully tugged at the now free corner.
There wasn’t a hiding place behind the door. Instead, Atlas found a narrow hall waiting for him.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered.
Going down a creepy, secret hallway was not on his list of first shift activities. There wasn’t another choice though. He needed to find Cristian and prove himself capable of handling whatever assholery was thrown his way. Regretting every life decision that had led him to this point, Atlas closed the bookshelf behind him and followed the dim lights to the right. The hall eventually met a set of stairs, which led downward to a different door.
This one was jarringly modern, a solid metal thing with a keypad that also didn’t show up on Helias’s map. Refusing to give up, he scanned over the list of codes provided for the property’s buildings.
Every delay meant Cristian was getting farther and farther away, a fact that grated on Atlas as he tried a code and was met with a flashing red light from the keypad. He reviewed the mixture of English and Romanian names, but didn’t see anything in English describing the new lower-level door.
It took a moment for the door pad to reset so he could try the code linked to the first Romanian word. Failure, and another wait. The same thing happened with the second word, and the third. Every failure honed his resolve. If he had to go through the entire damn list, even if it took the rest of his shift, he would. On the fourth attempt, the lights flashed green as the code took. He quickly put an asterisk near that code and slid past the door.
The new space was sleek, contemporary industrial architecture at its best, completely different from what he’d seen in the house above. The rich woods were replaced with smooth, concrete walls whose white paint reflected the warm light from the handful of inset ceiling fixtures. The black and silver pipes overhead emerged out of one wall and crossed to the other, unhidden and unconcerned with aesthetics. The only similarity between the upstairs and this new area was the sense of space. He could see everything, with no hidden corners or lines blocking his line of sight. That openness made up for the lack of windows, hiding the hallway’s subterranean placement well. He tried the same code on the door at the far end of the hall, surprised when it worked again.
His unexpected appearance surprised the people in the next room. They jumped up off the comfortable sectionals. A few steadied glasses of red wine, which must mean they were off shift. He wasn’t, and didn’t have time to waste on pleasantries.
“He was here?” Atlas asked.
The people looked at each other, holding a silent conversation Atlas didn’t have time for. He picked the largest of the group, took a threatening step toward him, and asked again, “Was he?”
The man nodded and pointed a hand toward one of the doors lining the richly decorated walls of the room. Experience had taught him no one gave information away that freely.
“Is that where he actually went, or where he told you to tell me he’d gone?”
The man frowned and dutifully pointed at a second door. Cristian’s game wasn’t over yet. The ploy was frustratingly obvious though. Did Cristian really think he was that dumb?
Atlas went to the first door, ignoring the calls for him to stop. The room beyond was small, with a glittering piano and little else, though a narrow door in the back corner beckoned. Feeling more and more like Alice in some demented Wonderland, Atlas pressed forward. He couldn’t wait to tell Bea this story. Maybe she could negotiate him some kind of bonus for the levels of bullshit he had to go through. No wonder Todd had quit.
At least this newest hall he stepped into was quiet. The doors here were ajar, as if people came and went freely, without concern for privacy. The bedrooms seemed large. They were all painted in varying shades, with a mixture of furniture types, clearly individualized for whoever was staying in them. One even boasted a backlit display of small knives he wouldn’t have minded getting a closer look at. Most of the bedrooms must have shared the decadent bathrooms set here and there between rooms. Supplies littered the counters in some, and it was impossible to miss the reflection of his shadow over large expanses of glass and stone showers as he passed. Flickering light escaped from one of the rooms farther away, an indication that someone was at least watching—though maybe not listening—to a TV.
The thick carpet underfoot muffled Atlas’s steps as he neared the door, but he paused anyway when he heard familiar voices behind it.
“He’s probably panicking right now,” Andrei’s bass rumbled.
“I bet he’s gone to find Helias like the rest did,” Vasilica said. “All bodyguards are the same.”
Atlas wrinkled his nose at her smug tone. She didn’t know him. She sure as hell didn’t know how skilled he was at finding and protecting others, thanks to his training.
“He might stick,” Ioana argued, and his estimation of her rose a bit. At least she was more cautious about dismissing him than the rest. “Did you see the way he was watching us?”
“It was hard to miss,” Cristian said smugly.
“What are you going to do about it?” Ioana asked. “Your father won’t let you run off another one.” She was a planner. If there was any hope of surviving this job, he’d have to either find a way to earn her trust, or find a way to avoid her direct ire.
“I have no intention of running this one off,” Cristian promised. “I just want to...ruffle him a bit. It was so easy to earlier.” His silky, teasing words made Atlas’s gut clench low and hot.
“Cristian—”
“Trust me, Ioana. We’ll leave him to panic before reappearing miraculously at the end of his shift. You saw him earlier with Helias. He’s stubborn and far too confident in his abilities. He won’t go to anyone else for help. He’ll swallow down his complaints and stick out the job. He’s used to suffering.”
“You say that like it’s a good thing,” Ioana said.
“That’s because it is. The longer he’s here, the more we can play with him.”
He didn’t need to hear any more. Atlas retraced his steps back to the piano room and reflected on Cristian’s unnervingly accurate description of him. Only a handful of people had ever been able to read him so well. His grandmother. Bea. His platoon. And Bea was the only one still alive. For Cristian to have cataloged him, defined him, after so few meetings...
He’s used to suffering.
Fuck, he needed to come at this job from a different angle. He needed to throw Cristian off, find a way to fake like tonight hadn’t already gotten under his skin.
“Sitrep, Marine,” he muttered under his breath.
What did he know? Clearly Cristian expected him to tear the compound apart in his search. To take hours to do so. He didn’t expect Atlas to be competent enough to find him. So, Atlas’s intelligence was his greatest asset against the brat. It was a starting point.
He paused at the piano, sliding a finger over the ivory keys as he passed, too lightly to draw any sound. The same reverence he’d felt when sitting beside Mrs. Adams during their weekly lessons after church remained even now. It might be nice to try playing again, put the lessons his grandma paid for to use. But that wouldn’t be possible today, so he kept on.
Nothing but an empty sectional greeted him when he left the piano room behind. The group he’d run into earlier had left no trace of their presence, not even an empty wineglass. Atlas shook his head. At least he didn’t have to threaten anyone to keep his visit down here secret.
It didn’t take him long to return to the billiards room, though it took a second to find the latch to let him back in through the bookcase. He grabbed a napkin from the bar, along with a spare pen he found by a restocking list, and sketched out the undocumented section of the house he’d just familiarized himself with. He updated his list of security codes with additional notes. Once those tasks were complete, he
stuffed the napkin in his pocket, returned the pen, went to the table, and racked the balls. He hadn’t played in a while.
Hours later, shortly before dawn, the bookcase door creaked open and admitted Cristian and his wayward group. Cristian came to a standstill mere feet into the room. Atlas bit down on the inside of his cheek to hold his smile in check and adjusted his bridge hand for the shot. The hit was perfect and the far ball dropped into the pocket. Only then did Atlas murmur, “Mr. Slava.”
“What—” Cristian began, taking two more steps forward before drawing up. “You—”
“Knew you’d never disobey your father’s direct order to stay within the property’s bounds,” Atlas finished for him.
“But I—”
“Was perfectly safe downstairs,” Atlas agreed.
Cristian made a choked sound. “You knew?”
He sank a shot off the cushion, though it wasn’t as clean as he would have liked. God, he really did need to practice if this was how rusty he’d gotten. He rose from the table, slowly stretching to his full height so he could look down at his charge, who still stood there with his speechless friends at his back. “Knew what? That you’d slipped out through a hidden door and into a quiet room down below to compose yourself after seeing me again?” Now, despite his best efforts, the grin broke free. He shrugged. “You left a book nudged back from the rest. Wasn’t too hard to figure out from there.”
Cristian didn’t move, but his friends turned and glared at Andrei, who wilted under the weight of his failure. Good. It’d be hard for the man to act as an accomplice again if Cristian doubted he could perform a simple task correctly.
Atlas found a new position and finished out the last of his shots, sinking the balls easily. The table cleared, he faced the group once more. Andrei and Constantin wouldn’t meet his gaze. Ioana watched with steady interest. At her side, Vasilica glowered as though Atlas had personally offended her by being the better player. Only Cristian, standing ahead of them, mattered. The blend of emotions running riot over his face proved Atlas had played his hand correctly.