Which meant he should take her back to face Imperial justice.
He crossed the street.
The apartment block's front door wasn’t locked. He stepped into the entryway, still dripping water. It didn’t matter; from the looks of it, the floor had definitely seen worse. His nostrils flared at the smell of vomit covered with some kind of chemical cleaner, and that was definitely a bloodstain on the wall.
What on Lathar was a valuable female doing with such lax security?
He shook his head and headed for the stairs. The elevator was out, with large signs that screamed ‘out of order’.
The stairs groaned under his weight, the walls covered in peeling paint and water stains. He wrinkled his nose. No wonder it was scheduled for demolition.
He emerged onto the fifth floor and paused for a moment to get his bearings. Okay, it was the door at the end of this corridor.
He stopped in front of it. The lock was slightly better than the one on Emily’s apartment. He pulled a small tool from his belt, the kind every warrior carried for… reasons, and set to work.
The lock gave up in under ten seconds.
Straightening up, he pocketed the tool. Okay, nearly there. All he had to do was get in there, grab the female and the cat.
What could go wrong?
2
She didn't know what woke her.
Between one breath and the next, Amelia went from a deep sleep to wide awake, staring up at her newly painted ceiling. She knew without thinking about it that something in the darkness around her had changed. Something was wrong.
She didn’t move at first, just lay there where she was, keeping her breathing slow and level as though she were still asleep. After a second, she sighed. The change wasn’t in the room with her. She was alone.
Well, apart from Barnaby, who lay at full stretch down the length of her leg, a warm weight snoring softly. She shook her head in amusement. The little traitor hadn't so much as moved a muscle.
She didn't reach for the light. Instead, she slid her hand over the side of the mattress until her fingers brushed the smooth grain of the baseball bat leaning against the wall.
She didn't play baseball. Never had. But she'd lived in places like this all her life—places where people broke in to steal half a roll of toilet paper and thought nothing of cracking a skull to do it—and she sure as hell knew how to swing.
There. Her gaze sharpened on the door to her bedroom, and she sat up, bat in hand.
The softest scrape of metal on metal reached her ears. Okay, not close… further away. Her eyes narrowed. Someone was trying her front door.
Great. Just fucking great.
She'd been here barely two days, and already some asshole was trying to break in. Two days of listening to the pipes rattle and the neighbors argue through walls made of cardboard and hope, two days of telling herself this was fine… that it was just temporary and better than a coffin apartment on Northside where she wouldn't be able to keep Barnaby at all.
And now this.
She ground her teeth as she slid from the bed, sucking in a hard breath as the cold flooring bit against her bare feet. Barnaby rolled over with a stretch and a yawn so wide she could see every needle-sharp tooth in his head.
"Some guard cat you are," she murmured.
His ears twitched. Then he slid from the bed and followed her, purring loud enough to wake the whole building. By the time they’d reached the door, so she could peek through and into the living area beyond, he was winding himself through her ankles.
She shooed him away with a gentle foot. Bigger than the average house cat, he was built like a furry little tank. And he was an expert at getting in the damn way.
He didn’t give up, just purred louder and leaned against her calf as he tried to herd her toward the kitchenette.
She knew this routine. It was the same every morning… Barnaby weaving between her feet as he steered her toward the hotplate and the kettle, as if she might forget where she kept his food. Fat chance of that. His food took up most of the storage space she had. But that wasn’t his fault. The kitchenette was… optimistic as a description. It was little more than a kettle, a hotplate and the smallest sink in existence. If she ever hosted a dinner party, it would be quicker to wash the dishes in the shower. She passed it, and the shelf that doubled as a breakfast bar, her gaze fixed on the door.
There were soft clicking sounds coming from the lock. She sighed. Anzalone down on 4th Street had sworn the damn thing was unpickable. Sworn it on his mother's grave, or whatever equivalent bullshit he'd made up to get her to hand over the credits. She'd have to go down there after shift tomorrow and give him a piece of her mind.
