AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Be careful.
I know just how dangerous these people are.
Paisley’s father was the man my dad used to work for, deal for, fly for.
Possibly the man he died for, no matter what was listed on his death certificate.
I stare into her eerie, childlike smile for a few more hell-seconds—before it vanishes, going completely dead.
Now she looks like an empty, soulless, porcelain doll. Devoid of all expression.
A chill washes through me.
This is her true medusa face.
And her truth is terrifying.
That dead, cold regard holds me like a wriggling bunny as the knife stops flipping with a smack of the hilt against her palm. Her slim, delicate finger extends along the blade, holding it almost daintily.
With her other hand, she reaches into the breast pocket of her shirt and withdraws her phone.
She doesn’t even have to look at her screen, holding it up to face me as she slides her thumb quickly across the bottom of the touchscreen, swiping photo after photo after photo in a gallery.
She doesn’t say a word.
She doesn’t need to.
Not when those photos scream loud enough to flash-freeze my blood.
My mother.
Harper Randall.
I thought she’d be safer if I moved her to Coeur d’Alene. Happier. And she definitely looks happy, caught unsuspecting while she’s out shopping, picking over flowers in a store, laughing with a group of older women, feeding ducks, sweeping her front porch.
But safer?
No.
Not when those photos make it deadly clear that Paisley could make her into hamburger—or worse—at any moment she chooses.
Which means she’s definitely here for something I probably can’t deliver.
There’s a rock lodged in my throat.
I force back the lump of horror and lift my eyes from the phone to Paisley, glaring at her. I’m too proud to cower, though if it keeps my mom safe, you’d better believe I’ll get down on my knees and beg if that’s what this maniac wants.
Right now, I’m too angry to do anything but snap, “What are you trying to tell me? What do you want from me now?”
“Oh, Felicity.” That mocking voice is back, candy-bright and pitying, and she clucks her tongue, lowering her phone—but not the knife. “Really, now, what do I always want? I’ve been playing this game with you for too long. I’ve been too lenient.”
As she says lenient, she runs the edge of her nail along the switchblade, peeling off a curl of her nail-tip as thin as a hair with absolute precision.
Like I need to see how sharp it is.
Trust me, I know.
“You’ve taken every penny I have,” I say weakly.
It’s not defiance. It’s the truth.
Did you think I was always in the red due to bad business practices and rotten luck?
Ha!
Unless you count breathing where Paisley “Paye”—as in “Pay Up”—Lockwood can see me as a bad business practice, I’m actually pretty savvy.
Too bad she’s an ongoing debt I just can’t seem to shake.
“Every penny?” she echoes. “Interesting.”
Her eyes crawl over me in an overly familiar way that makes me shudder, taking in every inch of my body.
Then that blade flicks toward me so fast it’s nearly blinding.
Just a blur of light splitting the air.
Sucking in a breath, I flinch back, bracing for howling pain.
Cold metal dances against my throat.
The edge, almost nicking.
Something tickles my skin and, holding my breath, pulse jittering and terrified while my blood turns thin as water, I do it.
I open one eye.
That’s when I realize she’s caught the thin silver chain of my pendant on the tip of her blade, lifting it away until the slim azurite crystal—no taller than a dime and bound in place by a silver band—dangles from it.
I’d picked it up at a little craft shop I’d wandered into during my last trip to Spokane to hand-deliver bags of fresh coffee for the local branch of Sweeter Things, Clarissa Regis’ candy store.
Just a whim. It was pretty. Plus something about azurite clearing negative energies sold me.
But it’s not doing anything to banish Paisley like a bad dream as it swings hypnotically from the tip of the knife.
“How many pennies did this little pretty cost, hmm?” Her eyes go slitted like a cat’s and just as cunning; her mouth turned up at the corners. There’s an unpredictable light in her gaze. “And that shirt. Those nice leather boots. Seems like you’ve been cleaning up nice and tidy and kinda fancy, Felicity. You’ve been holding out on me.”
“No! I’m...I’m not holding out!” I gasp the words. It feels like if I talk too loudly, the mere twitch of my vocal cords will bring me too close to that blade I can feel roaming the peach fuzz hairs on my skin. “I’ve given you every cent of profit from this café, Paye. Every freaking cent, whenever you asked, and...and I’m doing everything I can to make more!”
“Drips and drabs. Not even a drop in the bucket, Fe-lic-i-teeee.” She lets the necklace go then, and it falls to hit the hollow of my throat.
