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My fingers tighten around the grip of the stolen Glock 17 tucked into my waistband, readying myself to draw it if another surprise presents itself.

Harmony glances sideways at me, her heartless gaze flashing with lethal intent. “Put the gun away. That’s cheating. Knives only.”

Her demand comes sharp and uncompromising, and it makes my dick hard.

A low laugh rumbles in my chest.

Reaching into the pocket of my jeans, I pull out a pair of heavy leather gloves and pull them over my hands. I slide the Glock out, wipe down the smooth metal and grip with the damp fabric of my hoodie to clear my prints, and toss the weapon deep into the dark pines, where it lands with a soft splash in the mud.

Harmony looks at the dark, crusted blood staining the leather of my gloves—blood from before she picked me up and the murder at the carnival—and quirks a sharp eyebrow.

Suddenly, she stops dead in her tracks, spinning around to face me.

She lifts her arm, pressing the wet, crimson-smeared flat of her hunting blade directly against the warm skin of my throat.

The heavy, metallic smell of Xander’s fresh blood fills the air between us, our faces a hair’s breadth apart from one another.

“Are those bloody gloves from Blaire?” Her eyes narrow into slits. “You killed my best friend.”

She doesn’t give me a moment to answer because it’s a rhetorical question. She knows just as well as I do what game we are playing.

I don’t pull back from the steel pressed against my jugular. I simply smile down at her, my expression calm, relaxed, and unaffected.

I shrug. “And you killed mine. I guess that makes us even.”

Harmony’s jaw tightens, her breath hitching as she opens her mouth to protest. “I didn’t⁠—”

I glare down at her, my gaze locking onto hers with a heavy, piercing intensity that says everything without a single word: I know the truth, pretty girl. Don’t fucking lie to me.

Harmony holds my gaze for three agonizing seconds, searching my face. Recognizing that the game is over, she huffs out a heavy, frustrated breath, lowering the blade from my throat.

“Fuck it.” She turns back toward the trail of blood left by Xander, walking as she begins her confession.

“After I dropped Blaire, Tre, and Bryan off at home that night fifteen years ago, I circled back. Noah was walking along the highway. I planned on giving him back his phone after we erased the pictures from it. But when I pulled over and asked him to get in the car, he refused⁠—”

I tilt my head, trailing right beside her. “Do you blame him?”

Harmony completely ignores my interruption, continuing her story with chilling composure.

“Noah told me he had already emailed the pictures to himself, and that he still planned on going through with telling everyone at school on Monday…” She pauses, glancing back at me with a detached, lifeless smirk. “So, I ran him over with my car.”

I watch her closely, a dark rush of awe settling into my ribs.

The way she says it is so completely nonchalant—like my best friend’s life was nothing more than a minor inconvenience she needed to run over to keep her pristine reputation intact.

She didn’t give a damn about Noah. She killed him in cold blood and went on with her life.

“So, why do you bother visiting the scene of his death every year?”

“I told you. I owe Noah for showing me who I truly am. Noah was my first kill, but I’ve always fantasized about it. He opened my eyes to what was possible. I owe him my gratitude, Ryder.”

I don’t know what to say to her brutal honesty.

Noah was my best friend, and he helped me out of some pretty shitty situations with my dad before I was old enough to handle him myself. But, I can’t seem to find the right emotions.

I should be angry at her admission, but goddamn, looking at this beautiful, homicidal creature before me, in her element, all I want to do is strip her naked, lay her down in Xander’s blood, and fuck her until she forgets her name.

Instead, I say, “We should keep going. Or your prey is going to get away.”