“These people are…military?” she asked her friend.
Jolie twisted to look at her. “Special ops.” She stopped walking and turned to face Stina. Lowering her voice, she whispered, “Ghost ops.”
Her eyes widened. Now she kind of understood Rome making her wear a hood. But that didn’t mean she’d forgive him anytime soon. Her heart was still pounding too hard and her shirt was stuck to her back, clammy from the anxiety of not being able to see.
Jolie clasped her hand again and pulled her along, guiding her into a lounge area tucked off the corridor. Comfortable chairs in a retro sixties style sat around a fireplace. A giant television hung on the wall. Someone had left playing cards scattered on a table, as if they’d all dropped them and run.
Military. Ghost ops.
Swallowing down more uncertainty, she looked around at the first thing she’d seen all day that resembled anything remotely normal, and even it was obviously created for men.
“Want to sit?” Jolie asked.
She blinked and automatically moved to one of the leather armchairs. She rested her hands in her lap and only then realized they were shaking.
She stared at them, marveling that she was rattled now but not when she saw a dead body behind the restaurant.
Or when Rome informed her that man was assigned to protect her.
Her hands were steady when he took her to a safehouse and for all of the other things that happened after that.
But now…they shook.
Jolie followed her gaze and concern rippled over her pretty face. “I’ll be right back. Stay here.”
Stina didn’t think she could follow if she wanted, because now her legs felt like jelly too.
A moment later, Jolie returned with a bottle of water and a granola bar. She shoved both into Stina’s hands. “Rome said you needed food. I’d say he’s right.”
She focused on steadying her fingers as she opened the bottle and took a mouthful of the cold water. With each sip she took, her body began to relax. By the time she had eaten half the granola bar, some of the fog clouding her brain began to clear.
Jolie perched on the chair across from her. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Stina met her gaze, feeling the strangeness of this silence between them when usually they talked over each other.
Finally, Stina looked up. “I thought I was going to die.”
Jolie jumped up and wrapped her arms around her. “Oh, Stina. When you saw the dead body in the dumpster?”
“No.”
“When you were in the safehouse?”
“No. That was basically a slumber party with a jerk.”
Jolie’s eyebrow lifted. “Interesting.”
She pointed the granola bar at her. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“The eyebrow thing. The thing where you think you know something. Whatever you think you know, you’re wrong.”
Jolie gave her another squeeze and settled across from her again. “You think Rome is a jerk?”
That was putting it lightly. The man was infuriating, bossy, grumpy…and hot as hell.
The image of his shirtless, muscled body gleaming with a light coating of perspiration floated through her mind.
“I’ve met sewer rats with better personalities.”