In lieu of a verbal answer, Ellie reaches into her sweatshirt pocket and procures a bedazzled dagger, the hilt encrusted in glittering gemstones.
“Why is that so fucking sexy?” Zane asks, not-so-discreetly readjusting himself. “Am I the only one sporting a killer boner?” He pauses and then snorts. “Get it? Killer? Because we’re about to go murder someone.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t say that so loudly,” Ryker hisses, though the parking lot is empty. It’s the middle of the night, and Raymond has already helped Beckett disable the cameras in the vicinity.
“I shouldn’t say boner?” Zane asks innocently, blinking up at him. Then, in a mock-whisper, he repeats, louder, “Boner.”
Ryker pinches the bridge of his nose but stalks away, his hood pulled up tight over his spiky black hair.
Beckett clears his throat and daintily lifts his hand in the air. “I must confess that I, too, am sporting a killer boner.”
“God, why do you have to sound like such a formal douchebag when you talk?” I ask him, smirking to let him know I’m teasing.
“Don’t be jealous of the accent.” Beckett slings his arm around Ellie’s shoulder and shoots me a smug look. “It helps me get all the ladies.”
For the first time in what feels like forever, a hint of defiance enters Ellie’s eyes, eclipsing the impassivity I’ve been seeing since everything went down.
“Allthe ladies?” She arches an eyebrow at Beckett. “Just how many ladies are you wooing with that accent of yours?”
Beckett doesn’t even flounder, the smooth fuck. He simply presses a chaste kiss to her temple and says, “Only you, my love. Only ever you.”
I roll my eyes so far that I actually see the back of my head.
Ellie smiles adoringly up at him…before the smile quickly fades. She shifts slightly so Beckett’s arm slides from her shoulders, landing limply at his side.
Beckett and I exchange an eloquent look, one that makes words almost unnecessary.
Ellie has been doing that a lot lately—pushing us away. I don’t think she even realizes she’s doing it. A part of me wonders if she feels guilty for being with us when Landon is?—
I shut that shit down.
Raymond suggested that Ellie start seeing a therapist, and I nearly busted a nut laughing so hard. What the hell could she talk to a therapist about? POP? The Divine One? Her harem of lovers? Ryker’s fake death? Landon’s stabbing?
Or maybe the fact that Ellie murdered not one person but several?
Now, I wonder if Raymond was right. She’s been bottling up her emotions for way too damn long, and any second now, they’re going to burst out of her in an explosive geyser.
What will happen when they do?
The three of us hurry to catch up with Zane and Ryker, the latter of whom already jimmied the door open.
Darkness and silence greet us on the other side.
The office closed hours ago, but according to our research, the judge has remained behind to finish paperwork. He always does on Fridays, so he won’t have to work on the weekends.
Beckett pulls his phone out, all traces of levity stripped away. He taps at something quickly, his lips firming, and then says, “Security system is now off.”
“Perfect!” Zane rubs his hands together like a psychopath and then skips toward the staircase. Literally skips. I half expect him to start throwing rose petals in a happy glee, like a flower girl walking down the aisle at a wedding.
“Stay between us,” I tell Ellie, though this has been drilled into her head one thousand times before. It was my only condition for allowing her to come.
Ellie nods seriously, for once not arguing, and the five of us move as one. One shadow. One entity. One being.
One heart.
Up the stairs, across the hall, and toward the wooden door with light spilling from the bottom. The blinds on the windows are shut, though I can see the pale pink and white flicker of what appears to be a screen on the other side.
The moans reach us first.
