Designed for Murder (Killer Style) (3 page)

Carlos rubbed his cheek as he watched her stroll out of the conference room, her head held high like the queen she pretended to be in Magic Battledome.

Cam let out a low whistle. “’Los, you are so fucked.”

Tony shot his second-in-command a hard glare before turning his attention onto Carlos. “Just make sure that isn’t literally. This needs to remain just a cover. Last night was last night, but moving forward, keep your zipper shut. You can’t afford to lose focus.”

“Not a problem.” He wouldn’t let
that
happen ever again.

Chapter Three

“I’m very much down to earth, just not this earth.”

—Karl Lagerfeld

O
f course Mika lived in a loft. All open spaces. No walls. Random floor-to-ceiling columns. It was architectural chaos and it gave Carlos the shakes. His apartment might be smaller than hers, but
at least there was order…and walls.

“One more minute,” Mika called out from behind an opaque silver screen.

He didn’t have to look at his watch to know the reality of their schedule, but he did anyway. “You’re going to be late.”

“So you’ve said…several times.”

She emerged from behind the partition dressed in an oversize bright green shirt and reading
Players Do It In Costume
. The thin material hung off one bare shoulder, disguising yet highlighting her petite curves. Her shredded jeans, on the other hand, showed more skin than they hid. Looking at her, he wanted to cover her up and strip her down at the same time, and the longer he looked, the less clothing he wanted to see her wearing.

He cracked his knuckles. “You’re going in that?”

“Wow. Judge much?” She batted her long eyelashes and blew him a sarcastic kiss as she strutted past the soft dark leather couch, her spiked heels not making a sound on the thick Oriental rug covering the bamboo floor. “Unlike some people, I proudly fly my freak flag.”

“Is that a dig?”

“Just an observation.” She smirked. “Bro.”

He reached out as she brushed past, his fingers curling around her bared shoulder. The contact singed his skin, but he couldn’t seem to make himself let go. “If you want to come up with another cover story, now is the time to do it.”

She tugged the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth and let out a shaky breath. Looked like he wasn’t the only one still fighting an inconvenient attraction.

“The Thor lookalike was right; the truth—or at least the almost truth—is the best,” Mika said, her voice the same breathy whisper she’d used last night when her legs had been wrapped around his hips.

“You have something you want to say?” he asked, never letting his gaze flicker away from her sexy mouth.

“Nothing that would make a difference.” She shook off his hold on her shoulder, strutted to the door, and began to turn the trio of deadbolts. “I’m just the nerd queen, and you’re the newly crowned super-stud without a geeky bone in your body. The fact that our paths even crossed is a freak occurrence, but let’s go play pretend, because there’s more at stake than what you’re hiding in your closet.”

Anger and denial twisted his gut into a knot. “You don’t even know me.”

“Looks like we’re even on that score.” She grabbed her keys and shoved her phone into her back pocket. “Come on, the coffee shop is right around the corner.”

M
ika nearly had her runaway pulse back to normal by the time the barista at Grounded Coffee handed her the double espresso hazelnut mocha with a splash of soy milk. She smiled at the butchered spelling of her name on the side of the cup, shook her head, and then saw that Carlos’s
cup of plain black coffee didn’t have his name scrawled across the side of it. Instead, it had the barista’s phone number.

Figures.

“Come on, stud.” She weaved her way through the two-person tables and past the Burberry plaid loveseats by the bakery window. They went to the back room that her group rented once a month for strategy sessions. The room had a large coffee table big enough to spread out their map of Central Square Park, two couches, a few ottomans, and a fireplace for atmosphere. It looked like the gang was all here, judging by the mostly good-natured bickering about the supremacy of snow elves compared to desert trolls when it came to long-term game strategy.

Carlos mumbled something that sounded a lot like “snow elves, obviously” before wrapping his fingers around her elbow, pulling her close, and leaning down to whisper in her ear. To an outsider, they’d look like a couple who couldn’t get enough of each other. Hell, to her mutinous body, it sure felt that way as awareness kicked in and desire threaded its way through her, making her brain fuzzy and her belly light.

His breath warmed her ear before he spoke. “We can’t let anyone know what we’re really doing.”

She smiled up at him, making sure to keep her
no shit
reaction from showing on her face. “They must call you Sherlock at the office.”

“You sure weren’t so sharp-tongued last night.” He trailed his fingers down her spine before he stopped at her lower back and spread his fingers wide, the possessive touch adding to the image of early infatuation for any casual onlooker.

“We weren’t exactly doing a lot of talking,” she said, hoping like hell Carlos missed the hungry hitch in her voice.

“True.” His gaze dropped to her mouth, lingering for a few heartbeats before rising to look her in the eye without any flirtatious pretense. “But one snide remark is all it will take to let whoever is behind this know we’re on to him…” His jaw tightened. “Or her. The attacks are getting more violent; we need to catch this guy before someone gets really hurt.”

And that brought everything home like a lead weight in her stomach. Boisterous laughter filtered out of the back room. These people were more than just her court. They were her family. After what happened to her sister, Hana, they’d circled around her and kept her from falling into depression’s deep black hole. Blame, regret, and guilt burned a hole through her heart every time she thought of her little sister, but she’d learned how to cope thanks to the members of her court. She’d do whatever it took to protect them. She wouldn’t fail them like she had Hana.

Mika forced her lips to curl into a flirtatious smile, praying it was good enough to fool anyone watching with a suspicious eye. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“I worry about everything. That’s my job.”

“Come on.” She walked to the back room. “Everyone’s back here.”

Everyone
in this case consisted of three of her four-person royal guard and all of her ten-person court, not that they looked like the Silver Queen’s entourage right now, since they were dressed in their mundane clothes. She worked in a design world where Chanel, Dior, Prada, Gucci, and Armani were the labels of choice, but she played in a world where a worn T-shirt with Yoda on it beat out a designer label any day of the week. The irony wasn’t lost on her.

She sat down on the single ottoman available, scooting as far over to one side as possible so Carlos would have a place to sit. As soon as he did, her heart rate kicked back up as awareness of him sizzled against her skin. Inching away wasn’t an option on the small piece of real estate they shared, so she stiffened her spine and tried to ignore the way being this close to him magically made her lungs two sizes too small.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Ryan Hasley, the fourth member of her royal guard, as he hustled into the room wearing the silver vestment that marked him as loyal to the Silver Queen. In his rush, he accidentally nudged Carlos’s elbow. Coffee sloshed out of the opening in the lid. “Oh man, I’m really sorry— Holy shit, ’Los?”

“Ryan? Man, it is good to see you.” Carlos stood up and hugged the tardy member of Mika’s court, clapping him on the back. “It’s been what, a year?”

“There about,” Ryan said. “Good to see you back in the fold. Are you playing again?”

Carlos sat back down beside Mika and threw his arm around her waist, tugging her closer. “Let’s just say someone is working to change my mind.”

Her breath caught and she fought the urge to mold herself to his side.
Just a cover
, she repeated in her head, wishing her body would stop responding to his every touch like she’d spent the past six months in a sensory deprivation chamber.

“Mika, you have outdone yourself. There is no way we won’t get the Dyrnwyn sword now.” Ryan looked around at the others. “Don’t you guys know who this is?
This
is Zephyr.”

There was half a beat of silence before insanity ensued. Everyone started talking at once and trying to shake Carlos’s hand. Mika backed off, giving the others plenty of room to press the flesh with the man many of them considered a god. Many knew his stats by heart, others had virtually lived or died because of Zephyr’s game play. When he’d disappeared, the rumors in the community had ranged from him dying in real life to the theory that he had been a figment of the game and had never been real. From the corner, she watched Carlos’s initial surprise turn to embarrassment and then relax into the good-natured awkwardness of an introvert pushed into the spotlight.

If only her friends knew that he’d abandoned nerd heaven for a place at the jock’s table. Carlos was good, she’d give him that. He hid that little tidbit of truth so far below the surface that no one would be the wiser. The ease of his duplicity made her palms sweat. She’d never seen Keenan’s true side until his hands were soaked in Hana’s blood, and here she was foisting another liar with an ulterior motive on her family. If the stakes weren’t so high, she’d listen to the voice in her head telling her to blow his cover and order him to get the fuck out of here. Instead she smiled like an infatuated girlfriend and sipped her coffee while Carlos’s fans adored him.

It took ten minutes before things settled down and she took her seat next to her “boyfriend” on the ottoman. Her court and guard resumed their seats around the coffee table with the map of Central Square Park that had been divided into five sections. Each was shaded a different color. The purple represented the Silver Queen’s kingdom, the red was the Crimson Widow’s, the blue was the Cerulean Monk’s, and the green represented the Jade Emperor’s. All of those sections could easily fit inside the silver-shaded section in the middle. That was unclaimed territory. Somewhere within it was the Dyrnwyn sword. During the upcoming Battle Ultimate, all four kingdoms would search for the sword and battle to hold onto it. Whatever kingdom possessed the sword at sunset would reign supreme over the others for the coming LARP season. It was the Super Bowl of Harbor City’s LARPing community.

Ryan turned to Carlos. “So you’re going to fight alongside us at the Battle Ultimate?”

Mika chewed the inside of her cheek, and the sharp pain stopped her from voicing her dislike of Ryan’s idea. Why get her court’s hopes up for something that wasn’t going to happen?

Carlos shrugged.

“Oh, come on. You’d be a huge strategy help. We’ll have to get you your own vestment.” Ryan flapped the long tail of his three-inch-wide, long, flat scarf-type accessory hanging around his shoulders so it hung down both sides of the front of his chest. “You could add it to the list of replacements you need to make, Mika.”

“Replacements?” Carlos asked, as if he had no idea about the muggings.

If she didn’t know better, Mika would think he was completely sincere. An uneasy silence fell over the room, the kind that screamed with tension. Carlos laid his palm on her thigh, right above her knee, and squeezed. Unbidden, desire sizzled its way up her inner thigh like she’d touched a live wire instead of a man—the absolute last man who should be able to make her feel this way. Liars as accomplished as he was didn’t just fib about one thing.

Sick of the deception even though it had barely begun, Mika flung out as much of the truth as she could. “It’s okay, he knows about the muggings.”

“Is that what we’re calling it?” Ryan scoffed. “More like sabotage.”

“What makes you say that?” Carlos asked.

Josh Cloak, second-in-command of her royal guard, waved his hand over the map of Central Square Park. “It has to be one of the other factions trying to mess with our headspace before the Battle Ultimate.”

“But people have gotten hurt,” Mika cut in. “Do you really think a player would do that?”

“People do bad things for all sorts of reasons,” Josh said and shrugged with his typical nerve-grating cynicism before sitting down and propping his ankle, injured in one of the muggings, on a stool. “It happens.”

Mika sought out Hadley and Misha. The two members of her court sat next to each other on the couch holding hands, their still-bruised-up faces angled toward the floor. Hadley was blinking like mad, no doubt trying to keep from crying. They’d been the first to get mugged, and while they hadn’t been seriously injured, it hadn’t been a cakewalk. There was no way the attacks felt like people getting carried away to them.

Eager to change the subject before Hadley’s tears won out, Mika cleared her throat. “Okay, enough about that. Let’s focus on something we can control—kicking everyone’s ass at the Battle Ultimate.”

Mika spent the next hour and a half talking strategy while trying not to melt under the constant heat of Carlos’s hand on her thigh. His thumb stroked the bare skin peeking through the hole in her jeans, making it hard to concentrate on their plans for the Battle Ultimate next weekend. Luckily the baristas started flickering the lights before her panties caught fire. Time to end this farce for the night—but not before everyone filed by to tell Carlos how much they hoped he’d be by their side at the Battle Ultimate.

Watching him smile and issue noncommittal promises effectively doused the desire heating her up. Even worse, she was a part of this whole charade, lying to the people she loved even though it was the very thing she’d promised herself she’d never do. She couldn’t deny it was for the right reason, but doing the wrong thing for the right reason was still doing the wrong thing. It ate away at her, the resulting guilt and anger scratching against the wall she’d built to keep the memories away.

By the time the drawn-out good-byes were over and everyone had filed out of Grounded Coffee, her insides were a big ball of free-floating frustration looking for a Carlos-shaped target.

“Don’t get their hopes up that you’re actually going to participate at the Battle Ultimate.” She didn’t bother to keep the disgust out of her voice—he didn’t need to know that some of it was self-directed. “It may be stupid geekery to you now that you’re Mr. Super Stud, but it matters to them.”

“You knew what this cover would entail.” Carlos pivoted, not entering her personal space but crowding the fuck out of it. “Why are you on my ass about it now?”