Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three by Alexi Lawless Page B

thick brows and fringe of eyelashes, just a couple shades darker than his light brown hair. No matter how you cut it, Avi was a good-looking devil. Rox suspected he knew it too.
    She knew he was a smooth operator. After all, she’d done the background check on him before Sam asked Avi to help her out with the mission to kill Ibrahim Nazar a few months back. But Rox didn’t need Sam to tell her what you saw with a guy like Avi wasn’t always what you’d get. Men like him knew how to make their way in a world like hers—at the seams, moving sideways through delineated shades of gray, trading one identity for another like a change of clothes. That’s what made him a good agent. That’s what made him so hard to find.
    It had taken Rox longer than she would have liked, though she’d managed to finally track him down. And though she was loathe to bring in another player at this point, she needed his help and his contacts to get to Lightner. After months, she’d finally gotten close. She felt it in her bones, like a cat that knows the mouse is just inside the wall. Which was why she was standing in Avi Oded’s apartment now, waiting for him like an ex-girlfriend, looking for clues as to where he’d been and what he’d been up to.
    When Avi had loped out of his apartment building this morning, he’d been wearing board shorts, carrying his surfboard, looking casual and relaxed as he headed for the sand. He didn’t look like a spy. He didn’t look like a military operative who’d been one of the youngest and most impressive reconnaissance officers Sayeret Matkal had seen in a decade. But he was. And for a second, she could have sworn he looked right at her, though it was difficult to tell under his shades. Not that he would have recognized her. They’d never met face-to-face.
    Today Rox was dressed casually in tight jeans, high-heeled espadrilles, and a loose bohemian blouse, wearing a wig with long, loose honey waves. Her oversized Chanel sunglasses hid half her face. She looked like a chic Israeli chilling out on her day off, not the Chicano fixer she was.
    A sound at the front door made her turn. Rox moved swiftly to step behind the door, surprised he was coming back so soon. She drew a compact Kahr CW9 gun that was small enough to fit nicely in the back of her jeans but packed a big enough punch that she wasn’t worried about the slim, single stack magazine. Rox mounted and screwed on the suppressor to the gun’s muzzle as the door knob turned.
    The door opened about a foot. Rox stepped back just enough to aim about head-height at whoever was entering.
    There was a momentary pause, so fleeting—she nearly missed it. As if whoever was coming in stepped right back out into the hall. She moved forward, gun up when the door suddenly slammed open, smacking her right back into the wall.
    Rox grunted in pain, but managed to hold onto the gun.
    Avi stepped around the door, looking right at her, his own sidearm pointed at her face, his body and hair still wet from surfing.
    “I was hoping we’d finally meet,” he murmured, his warm baritone tinged with the softest of accents. “Though I don’t recall inviting you in.”
    “I’m not the kind of girl to wait for an invitation,” Rox replied lightly even as they faced off, aiming their guns at each other’s heads.
    He surprised her by smiling slowly before kicking the door closed. He slowly lowered his gun, and she did too because she wasn’t there to hurt him. No—Rox needed his help.
    In that split second of distraction, Avi surprised her by snapping his weapon up and to the side, knocking Rox’s hand wide. He body slammed her into the wall, pinning her wrist with brutal strength. She went to knee him in the balls, but Avi countered by wedging his thigh against her, hitching her up so she was high on her toes, balanced precariously.
    “What the—” Rox gasped, struggling, but the next thing she knew, Avi’s free hand was roaming over her in a rough and