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“Great,” I say quickly. “We can send files over soon. But we should get someplace more secure first.”
I don’t look at Adrian’s body as I speak, but I don’t need to. It feels like a cloud of death is hanging over this entire house, and I’m keenly aware of every corpse in the room.
“Yeah.” Theo nods, chewing on his lower lip. He tosses a glance at Dominic. “Your car’s pretty much fucked, sorry.”
Dom shrugs. “I’m not surprised.”
“We can take mine,” Victoria says. “Adrian’s car is close by too, but probably better not to drive it.”
Ryland scrubs a hand through his dark hair. “We should torch this place before we go too. Hell of a lot easier than wiping the whole place down to clear our fingerprints.”
“Okay, good.” I hesitate, realizing there’s a huge part of our plan still unaccounted for. “Where should we go?”
“I’ve got a place.” Dominic eyes are closed, his head tilted back on the couch. “A safe house like this one on the northeast side of town.” He cracks his eyelids open, looking over at me. “Not the same place we took Ayla. No one else knows about it but me.”
Ryland’s expression hardens at the mention of my kidnapping, and my skin prickles with nerves. It may be a horrible idea to team up with Dominic and Victoria. They’re pretty much the last two people I ever expected to have on our side. But each of them have their own reasons for wanting to take down Luca, and it’s that, more than anything, that makes me trust them enough to work with them.
We don’t really have much choice. We can’t let them go, so our only other options are to keep them prisoner or kill them.
“All right.” Marcus nods, his voice clipped. He glances over at Ryland and Theo. “There’s accelerant in the basement.”
It takes less than five minutes for us to get ready to leave. The screen of Marcus’s laptop is cracked, but it miraculously survived the shootout with no more damage than that. The guys drag the bodies into a rough pile in the living room, and then Ryland and Theo pour the accelerant over everything.
The house goes up with a whoosh, flames licking over the wood with hungry ferocity. The blazing flame almost matches the color of the sky as the first rays of the sun stream over the horizon.
It would be beautiful if it weren’t so bleak.
Victoria leads us down the driveway to where she left her car, and we all climb in.
It’s a tight fit now that our little party has grown to include six people, but we cram ourselves in anyway. Marcus sits up front, his gun held lightly in his hand as an overt reminder to Victoria not to fuck with us. The rest of us crawl into the back, with Dominic sitting behind the driver’s seat and me settled across Ryland’s and Theo’s laps.
Theo’s hand wraps around my waist, pulling me a little closer to him and his friend and a little farther away from Dominic. I lean back against his chest, inhaling his cherry wood scent and letting his warmth ground me.
I feel like there’s nothing left of me but frayed edges and jagged points. It’s almost impossible to believe that this all started less than twenty-four hours ago. So much has happened in that time, it feels as though weeks have passed.
No music plays as we drive. At one point, Victoria turns the car’s stereo on, but Marcus pointedly turns it back off. Dominic calls out the directions to her, and the rest of us watch the quiet streets of Halston roll by.
“It looks so peaceful,” I murmur, gazing at the mostly empty sidewalks painted orange and pink by the rising sun.
“For now.”
Theo’s voice is light, but I can tell he’s only partly teasing. He’s not wrong that the peace can’t last. That it’s an illusion to begin with.
We cut through the city and end up on the opposite side of town, at a house that’s less remote than the one we just left but still tucked away at the end of a cul-de-sac.
Victoria pulls into the garage, and as she turns the car’s engine off, Dominic opens his door and slips out. I slide out quickly after him, watching him suspiciously. We took a risk by letting Victoria drive us here, and we’re taking another risk by stepping into an unknown house with a man who was our enemy up until last night.
Victoria, at least, didn’t betray us by trying to alter the route or deliberately crashing the car or anything, but that still doesn’t mean I trust Dom not to try anything.
The men must all have the same thought I do, because all three of them have their weapons in hand as Dominic leads us toward the door to his house. He punches in a key code on the pad next to the door, shielding it with his body, then opens the door and steps inside.
Theo and Marcus go after him, with Victoria behind them and me and Ryland bringing up the rear. Ryland rests a hand on my lower back as we step inside, and I can feel the tension in him through that connection.
The house is old-looking, the furniture and moldings looking like they’re from the seventies or something, but I don’t really care. There’s no tangy scent of blood here, no dead bodies on the floor, so I’d consider it a vast improvement from our previous location.
“Make yourselves at home,” Dominic says, a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Bathroom’s down the hall. There’s only one bedroom, so…” He cuts a glance at me, and I can’t quite read his expression. “Guess the biggest group should get it.”
Victoria huffs an annoyed sounding breath, but I ignore it, trying to pretend that wasn’t a decent thing for Dominic to do. It’s hardly enough to make up for the fact that he kidnapped me and held me at gunpoint.
