“Are you always so inquisitive?”

“Only when I’m doing someone a huge favor.” I bite my bottom lip to keep from tacking on an extra-acidic remark about his shitty communication skills.

He sighs. “For politicians, for celebrities, for civilians facing safety concerns. Pretty much anyone who needs a shield.”

“That’s . . . commendable.” And brave. “I guess it’s a natural career coming out of the army?”

“I guess,” he says quietly.

It’s all beginning to make sense to me now. No wonder Sebastian is so in shape, so strong. No wonder his movements seem so fluid and measured. No wonder, when he stepped into Black Rabbit for the first time, I felt his looming presence taking control of the entire room. Though I couldn’t have articulated it at the time, I sensed right away that he could protect me from anything.

“So, are you working now?” His schedule seems flexible, if he’s shown up here three days in a row, ready to spend seven hours under my needle on any one of them.

“I’m taking a break,” he says simply.

“A bodyguard on vacation?”

He smirks. “We need vacations, too.”

“I guess. But why’d you stay in town, then? I think I’d be on a beach the second I had a chance.”

He smiles. “Maybe next week. I really needed to get this tattoo before you ran off.”

“Sure you did,” I mock, but I also smile. “Where are you going to go?”

“Greece.”

“Why there? You have family there?”

“Nope.”

“So you’re just going to pick up and go to Greece?”

“Pretty much.”

I grin. Finally, something that Sebastian and I have in common.

FOURTEEN

SEBASTIAN

HOUR TWO

The ink on my shoulder was done by a small shop in San Diego nine years ago. It took four and a half hours to complete. I didn’t feel nearly as vulnerable with the artist—a scrawny middle-aged hipster named Marcus—as I do now, under Ivy’s skilled hands, with her leaning over me, her gloved fingers touching my skin, that intoxicating perfume wafting around my nostrils in seductive waves.

I have no choice but to lie to her about my work—for obvious reasons. She bought the cover instantly. I wasn’t sure that she would.

“How are you doing? Still good? Need a five-minute break?” she asks, a hint of concern in her voice.

She was trying to figure me out earlier. A guy who doesn’t even flinch when he feels the sting from that needle like a knife carving into his flesh. Odd to her, I’m sure. But she saw the shrapnel scars on my back. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that they were serious, that they would have hurt far more than any tattoo.

“Keep going.” We passed the one-hour mark quickly enough, even with my ambiguous answers and her annoyed sighs. But we still have six more hours, and I need to steer this conversation away from the places we’ve traveled—between the two of us I think we’ve covered every continent except Antarctica—and start pumping her for any information that might be useful to me in finding this tape.

“So what made you want to become a tattoo artist?”

“I love doing it,” she answers simply, wiping away excess ink.

I’m careful not to move my body when I turn my head to peer up at her face. She knows I’m watching her, but she seems intent on avoiding my eyes. “Who’s being evasive now?”

Her lips press into a tight line, like she’s trying not to smile. And suddenly I wish I wasn’t having this piece done on my side. I wish I’d picked my chest for its location, so I could lie on my back and stare up at her the entire time.

Because I meant what I said: Ivy is fierce, stunning, and captivating.

“I love to draw,” she finally says. “I’ve been drawing on every surface I could reach since I was able to grip a crayon in my hand. Paper, walls, cars, you name it, my parents will tell you I marked it.” A wistful look flickers past her eyes. “And my uncle. He’s what got me into this career of drawing on bodies.”

“The uncle who owned this shop?”

She swallows hard. “Yeah, him.”

“Tell me about him.”

She frowns. “Why?” There’s a hint of suspicion in there.

I need to tread carefully. “Because sometimes it helps to talk about loved ones you’ve lost to a complete stranger.” Even though that’s not why I’m asking, it’s still true. I watch her as she seems to think about that, still working away on the outline.

Only when she breaks to clean the ink do her dark brown eyes flicker to mine. “Have you lost any loved ones?”

She’s already figured out that I was in some sort of armed forces. The army, she assumes. I haven’t corrected her because I need to be cautious. With only a few thousand active SEALs at any given time, it wouldn’t be impossible for someone to connect dots that lead to me.

But I also can’t blow her off now. She finally seems to be relaxing around me, revealing more about herself. “One to a sniper bullet, and two to a roadside bomb. I watched all three of them die.”

She settles a gentle, knowing gaze on me. “I saw my uncle, just after they shot him and ran out the door,” she says softly. “But he was already gone.”

Yeah, I pretty much figured that. “It’s hard to get that image out of your head, isn’t it?”

She averts her gaze to my side, but I catch the small nod.

“So tell me about your uncle,” I prod. “It will help, I promise.”

She sighs. “I’m not really sure what to say. No one’s ever actually asked me that question before. I mean, you either knew him or you didn’t. You either liked him or you didn’t. But how to actually describe a guy like Ned?” She chews the inside of her mouth, until a slight smile pushes through. “He was a real fucking asshole.”

I wasn’t expecting that answer, and I can’t help it. I burst out laughing. Luckily Ivy pulls away a second before my entire body starts shaking. “You can’t move!” she yells, but she’s laughing along with me, and smiling. Trying so hard not to smile, by pulling her bottom lip into her teeth.

“Then don’t be funny.”

“I’m not. He really was an asshole.” She shakes her head. “But man, did I love him.”

“Was that a part of his eulogy?”

She snorts. Reaching over, she pushes my head back to its resting place, where I can no longer stare at her. “He always had a soft spot for me. I’d come in here with my cousin when I was as young as six and watch him work on people. Sometimes I’d just sketch in a corner quietly. He never sent me away. I thought he was the coolest, most badass adult ever.”

I’m trying to picture a six-year-old version of this woman and I’m struggling. However she looked, I can’t imagine this place would have been suitable for her. “Your parents didn’t care?”

“Oh, they cared. They hated me being here, but there wasn’t much they could do. My aunt Jun would watch me after school while my parents worked. But she also had a part-time job, and when she was working, I had to go somewhere. My parents didn’t have enough money to send me and my brothers to day care. I was the oldest and therefore easiest to unload on someone else, so I came here. I pretty much fended for myself growing up.”

No wonder she’s so independent.

“By the time I turned fourteen and they realized that I actually wanted to come here, they packed us all up and moved us to Oregon.”

This is good. She’s opening up, and it seems to be comfortable for her. Oddly, talking to her is easy for me, too. Definitely more pleasant than my typical interrogations. “So they moved your entire family away just to get away from your uncle?”

“I guess that’s what it boils down to, yeah.” I can hear the displeasure over that in her tone.

The needle runs over a particularly sensitive spot and I inhale through the pain. “Sounds like they must have had reasons.”