My skin burns around the marks, fading to a tingling numbness. A cramp tears through my abdomen.
“Kaye?”
That voice.
I want to pay attention to it, but I can’t focus.
My lungs... ache.
There’s something I need to do. One final move I can make.
“Kaye, look at me.”
Breathe for me, gorgeous.
Stay with me.
Please, Kaye. Don’t do this.
Keep fighting.
I can’t do this without you…
13
ZANE
“She stolemy car,” I curse under my breath. “I wouldn’t have just let her leave if I knew she was going tolive out her Grand Theft Auto fantasies.”
I jerk the wheel to the side, vaulting our car around the corner with reckless precision. My eyes water as a vibrant blue-white screen is thrust into my vision, stark against the shadowed city outside the windshield. A red dot pulses on the screen in its glow.
“It stopped moving about a minute ago. Think she ditched it?” my companion asks. His timbre is deep and rich and though it is scratchier now with age hearing it still fills me with the same sense calming solidity that it gave me as a child.
It’s okay. Checkmate stole my car and left it on the side of the goddamn road, but it’s okay.
I shake my head and floor the accelerator, the borrowed Camry whining in protest.
“Take it easy. My car is my baby, and we won’t get there any quicker if we get caught up in a traffic stop.”
True. Jail would definitely make murdering my lovely nemesis a bit harder. I doubt I’d listen if it were anyone other than Edgar Pancost sitting beside me, his tall frame rigid withstress his face refused to show. Decades in a courtroom and a love of poker have schooled his expression into one of continual control. His reputation as the hard-ass attorney with the smile of pure sunshine is legendary in New Malcolm.
“This doesn’t feel right,” he says, gesturing vaguely at his side before adding, “There’s something… a tickle. Unease.”
I nod. I’m doing my best to keep my eyes on the glowing dot and the road, but for just a second, I allow myself to be distracted. Because I know what he’s feeling; I’ve been feeling it too, all night. Since Kaye left the house, actually.
“Promise me you’ll take the car back to the manor and let me deal with Kaye alone.”
“I’m not some feeble old man.”
I laugh. “Anyone who mistakes you for feeble lacks a sense of self-preservation.”
No, Edgar can take care of himself. He’s the best person I know. He’d do anything to help someone, even a stranger. Especially a stranger. He hasn’t met Kaye yet and he’s out here with me, risking it all to help her.
That’s precisely why I can’t stand the idea of him doing this.
I look at his strong face, lined with years of worry—a burdenIplaced on his shoulders—where I should see the easy happiness and warmth rivaling the magnitude of the sun’s rays. I feel the phantom of his solid grip on my shoulder the day we lowered my parents into the earth.
And his assurance:We’ll get through this.
