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I stalked down the streets, the dampslapof my bare feet on the rough pavement the only sound aside from my breaths and the thudding of my black heart.
I could feel eyes on me, watching, and pursed my lips to contain a grin.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I called into the dark, licking the blood from my lip. “You forgot something.”
Waving the envelope, I followed my gut, letting thatothersense lead me toward the side of one of the more rundown apartments. I glanced down the narrow gap and caught a jerk of movement near the end.
Got you.
I sprinted down the side of the building, cut glass biting into my heel, making me snarl as I rounded the corner and stopped dead, my shoulders expanding and heaving with each slow pant.
Ava Jade waited there, a large black lump of fabric at her feet, her blade raised. Fire in her eyes. The delivery area was devoid of trucks tonight, leaving it wide open save for a bank of trash bins. Only one streetlamp illuminated the lot, and she stood just outside of it. Her blade glinted in the light. A threat that I’d take as a promise.
I licked my lips.
“Where are the others?” she demanded, her gaze jerking to the alley I’d just come from before checking her six.
“Not here,” I shrugged, tapping the cash filled envelope on my palm. “Thought you might want this.”
Her cheekbones flared, giving her away.
“How kind,” she replied, her voice dripping sarcasm.
I stepped forward, and she stepped back.
I cocked my head, stepping in and to the left. She stepped back and to the right.
Smart.
She’d seen what I could do, and clearly she knew she wouldn’t be a match. Judging by the way she was holding that blade, though, she knew how to throw it. I was willing to bet she was a crack shot, too.
“You don’t seem very grateful.”
“You don’t seem like the considerate type,” she lobbied back, still eyeing the alley and glancing down at her blade. Checking the reflection? I shivered.
“You don’t know me.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Liar.”
Her face heated, jaw tightening with anger. If it were possible, she looked even more beautiful when she was angry. Almost as good as she looked when she was covered in blood.
I dangled the envelope from my two fingers. “Come on,” I challenged her. “Just come get it.”
She scoffed, giving her head a slight shake, but I could see it, the instant she made the decision. Her eyes snapping to the envelope. Shedidwant it. I could imagine what she might’ve done to get the money in the first place, and now she’d doubled it, betting onme.
It was a lot of cash to kiss goodbye.
“I won’t bite,” I told her, taking another step forward. She didn’t retreat, her gaze jerking from my face to the cash and back again.
“Liar,” she hissed, turning my own word against me.
I smiled, all teeth, giving her a glimpse of my monster.
Conor Jones balked when I let him see, but Ava Jade...her darkness smiled back.
I saw in her what I’d only seen in three other people in my entire life. It made me stop. Take stock. The intense need to know every dark corner of her mind took root in my mind, festering.
