Versions (The Blacklist Series Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

barked.
    The clack of heels ceased. “Actually, you did.”
    “The CIA, yeah, but not to play gigolo-in-state. We’re not even supposed to operate within our borders.”
    “Listen here, school boy, you signed up to do whatever the hell I want you to do. Screwing a pretty young woman is hardly a hardship. I’ll make sure you know what adversity is on your next assignment.”
    “Ma’am, I didn’t mean to—”
    “Take a close look,” the woman spat.
    Nate’s in-draw of breath penetrated the dense wooden door and the swath of winter wear.
    “Suffering is seven years in a North Korean prison. It’s snuggling up to a drain brimming with human feces because it gives off a hint of warmth in the otherwise miserable concrete box. It’s getting so familiar with pigeon torture by day that the muscles in your arms rip and knot, leaving you permanently deformed. It’s denying the only scrap of food offered you in days in hopes that starvation will finally shut down your organs and take you away.”
    Clothing rustled, and then the front door opened. “If I hear you complain ever again, I’ll fly you to hell and kick you out of the plane. Trust me, you’ll curse ever opening your parachute.”
    The door slammed and Rin wanted nothing more than to collapse into a pile of sweat, tears, and utter confusion. But Nate seethed just outside, his ragged pants threatening to blow the house down. Her hand stung from her desperate grip on the shoes.
    A deafening blow ricocheted off the wood through the tiny confines. “Fucking bitch,” Nate hollered.
    Rin jerked, bumping her elbow on the wall. Breath stalled in her chest and she stared, eyes swollen, in the dark, awaiting his attack. Any noise she made Nate’s continued tantrum covered. She’d never seen him rival a two-year-old for hysterics. She didn’t now. But she pictured every stomp and agonized shout. And she couldn’t muster one dust-mite’s worth of sympathy for him.
    The affection that once warmed her for the overstuffed bear of a man siphoned from her chest. A chill she shouldn’t have experienced in the suffocating confines froze her marrow. The steam of lust he frenzied in her only hours ago transformed to a searing fury that rivaled the sun.
    And at the same time she didn’t exactly understand the cause for her anger. Was it the fact that she’d been screwing an exceptional liar for the past several months and not had an inkling about his duplicity? Was it the fact that, according to the faceless woman, her mother was alive? Was it that fact that if her mother was alive she’d never contacted her in all these years? Or was it the fact that her mother was a woman so crooked the CIA broke its own rules to try and capture her? Or did they want to kill her?
    Warm tears ran down Rin’s face, surprising her almost as much as the conversation she’d just overheard. Tears didn’t solve anything. They were reserved for the sheltered and innocent. Not her. She billowed a slow breath through her lips in a daring attempt to harness her wild, rearing emotions.
    The front door opened and slammed shut again. She should have waited a minute or ten before escaping the closet, but she couldn’t breathe. Disbelief strangled her with a friendly embrace. With a quick turn of the knob, she careened from the coat coffin. The oversized boots caught on her clogs and she landed with a resounding thud on the cool floor, a spike wedged against the side of her boob.
    Whether he was caught up in his own frustration or the timing of him exiting the building just worked in choreographed perfection with her tumble, through the large open window the top of Nate’s head bobbed past without a backward glance. Rin slumped to the ground, letting her cheek smash onto the wood. Well, his surveillance had certainly recorded that.
    “Go fuck yourself, Nate, or whoever the hell you are, because you won’t touch me.” Her chest huffed on confounded outrage as her holler echoed off the glass and