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She aims those mean greenies at me again. “When they start talking at you it’s really easy to press ‘mute’.”
“Fair enough.” I can feel the corners of my mouth twitching. “How long have you lived with Danny?”
“Don’t know a ‘Danny’.” She sniffs, her gaze dropping to her laptop screen again.
Dismissed. Fuck you.
“Viper, then,” I correct, gritting my teeth.
“Long enough to know I don’t want to go to some shitty children’s home anytime soon.”
“Language,” I murmur.
“Lack of morality,” she quips back, looking pointedly at the bloodstains on my hands. “Are you done killing that man?”
“For now. Does it bother you?”
“Nope.” She pops the ‘p’ like it’s another piece of bubble gum. “He deserved it.”
Her dyed pink hair is almost fluorescent in this light, making her look older. She can’t hide the sweet freckles on the bridge of her nose though, or the fresh-faced-no-make-up thing she has going on.I hope that never changes, but I doubt it. Her innocence is a suit of armour that’s slowly being eroded by this fucked-up world of ours. I don’t care what Viper says. We need to get her out of London before all hell breaks loose.
“What did they do to you?”
“Bad things,” I say, looking away.
“To you, Viper, and the dance school lady?”
I go to ask her how she knows who Ada is, then remember she was the one who hacked the video feeds in suburbia.
“And to your stepdad’s family. And to mine.”
“He’s not my stepdad.”
“Okay, then, your guardian,” I say, craving another cigarette. This kid is giving me a toothache.
She suddenly grins at me—a pure, unfiltered reaction that’s dangerously infectious. “You know the word ‘guardian’ makes him sound like an angel, right?”
Glancing over her shoulder, I see Viper instructing his men to dump the bodies on the way back to my townhouse in Bethnal Green.
Angel of Death maybe.
“Perhaps it’s best if we leave the angel stuff to you.” Pulling out my cigarettes from my inside pocket, I toss them onto the gaming table between us. “Viper and I will be heading somewhere else for our extended epilogue.”
“You mean Africa?” Her squeak of excitement makes me pause. “I hear that’s where loads of criminals go when they’re hiding out from the law.”
No, sweetheart, not Africa. It’s someplace even hotter than that.
“You like Africa?” I ask, spying a middle ground on the horizon and running for it.Why?I have no idea. There are a million other things I need to be doing right now to wipe the letters and numerals off the Red Compass. Instead, I’m sitting here talking to Bambi because her company is mildly entertaining, and it’s a welcome reprieve from all the sinning.
“Never been,” she says with a frown.
“You like animals?”
“Did you know a giraffe has a blue tongue?”
“That’ll compliment your hair. Who dyes it?”
“I do.”
