Dying Commitment (Lucky Thirteen) by S.M. Butler

what the right price is,” he replied.
    Oh, Afonso. It was bad enough that he’d betrayed me, knocked me unconscious and made my neck hurt. But he was also on Jack’s payroll? I shrugged. “There’s nothing on that machine he would interested in.”
    “He seems to think he would be.”
    “And that’s his mistake.”
    Afonso turned thoughtful and faced the computer again. Slowly, I glanced around the room again. My gun and my jacket were over by the computer. Afonso was not a small man. If I wanted those back—and I did—I would have to knock him senseless too. This was one of the problems with my size. I wasn’t nearly big enough to stop a man like Afonso. I could do it, but it wouldn’t be as instant as I wanted it to be. Reality was that not every female agent in the world was Melinda Mae or the Black Widow. We had physical limits.
    Slowly, I cased the room for something to use. The block of wood he’d used on me was over on the floor, only a couple feet away. The question was… could I get to it before he knew what I was doing?
    The bell in the outer store rang, signaling the entrance of someone. Afonso cursed and walked toward the door. He frowned at me, but said nothing else as he went to go see his newest customer. As soon as he left the room, I let the loosened ropes fall and instead grabbed my gun. I checked it quickly to make sure he hadn’t taken out the bullets. I glanced at my computer’s screen, thankful to only see my primary passkey input. Afonso hadn’t even gotten past the first screen. What was he expecting to do?
    I pushed the lid down and went to stand by the door. I didn’t want to have to shoot Afonso. He was making the best of a crap situation. But I wasn’t about to let him kill me either. My head still throbbed, but I could rest later, when I wasn’t about to be killed.
    I stayed out of sight, but I did peek around to see who he was talking to. I didn’t recognize the man, but I couldn’t really see him either. He was tall, fit, wearing a black hoodie over his head, so I couldn’t even see his profile. I plastered myself back against the door when the man started to leave. Afonso would return soon.
    I waited, not hearing the bell announcing anyone leaving. What was going on out there?
    ~*~*~
    Dylan
    I should have just gone home. Cadence drugged me. Me! And I’d fallen for it. I’d trusted her, and she reminded me why that was the biggest mistake I’d ever made. Maybe she was right. Trust only got you killed. Yet, I couldn’t manage to let it go
    Instead of going home, I hunted her down, yet again. At least she hadn’t lost the shoulder holster. It still had my little tracker on it. I’d never seen a woman so damn stubborn about these things.
    She had several hours on me when I woke up. We’d been docked at Funchal for at least a good two hours. I wasn’t sure if she’d snuck off the boat somehow before it docked or if she’d managed to wait until it stopped and disappear into the crowd. It was another hour before the cleaning crew came in. Thank goodness I’d taken that damn privacy tag off the door before, though the looks on that poor maid’s face when she saw I was cuffed to the bed was priceless. Nevertheless, she did hand me the key on the table.
    And there I was, chasing a woman who didn’t want to be chased, tracking her down so I could keep her safe. I should have left her to her own devices. But I couldn’t. Damn it.
    I tracked her to a small building across from the museum, but the man inside the store on the corner hadn’t seen anyone like her. The problem was that the tracker was still showing inside that store. So I left and sat next door at the small cafe. I called Brody in San Diego to do the check-in and studied my locator.
    Cady had been stationary too long. I knew her. If she was trying to stay off the grid, she wouldn’t stay still that long. It was possible that she’d found and ditched the tracker, but I didn’t get that vibe from it. Why