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Seriously, Brynne?
It was stupid… maybe. No, forget maybe — it was definitely stupid, especially this late, especially alone. And most especially considering who this man was and what he could do to me.
If he caught me following him, that is.
Instead I’d come here with mixed intentions. I definitely wanted to follow him from afar. I wanted to see what he did, where he went, who he talked to. And yet another part of me knew that wouldn’t be good enough. That the best way to get to the bottom of what happened to Evan would be to dress up, carefully approach, and maybe even seduce this tall stranger that I despised so much.
Or maybe I’d just been watching too many stupid movies.
This is crazy.
Through the crowd I went, moving parallel to the long, very packed bar. I kept my distance as the tall, dark stranger touched his ear — maybe adjusting an ear-piece — then ran straight into a stunningly identical version of himself.
His brother!
I knew they were twins. I even knew they were identical. But I hadn’t expected them to dress the same. I hadn’t expected each of them to be completely indistinguishable from the other, except perhaps for the expensive gold watch on my quarry’s thick, hairy wrist.
The two brothers talked, leaning briefly into each other to hear over the noise of the crowd. Then they moved away, in opposite directions. They walked with their arms down, their sleeves covering their wrists…
Shit, which one?
I had little more than a few seconds to decide. In the end I picked the one going right, moving in my target’s original direction. He slipped past a group of laughing women, moving so fast I could barely keep up.
Luckily one of them spilled a drink on him.
I watched as my target’s face twisted in anger. He barked something cold and cruel, while wiping his sleeve with the opposite hand. I saw the flash of gold. The watch was still there.
Then he ducked through a black metal doorway, beneath a glowing sign marked EXIT.
My rapidly-beating heart kicked into double-time. Tailing this man through the club, trying to figure out how to confront him — that part had seemed at least semi-safe. But following him outside…
No, Brynne.
That seemed like something entirely different.
No fucking way.
Closing my eyes for a moment, I focused on Evan. Just thinking about my brother made my stomach drop into my feet. I thought about his meager belongings, still sitting untouched in his room. I thought about my shitty apartment, all cold and empty without him…
The women were still talking about the asshole who’d snapped at them by the time I reached the doorway. Looking left, then right, I made sure no one was watching me.
Then I pushed the door’s metal crossbar, and slipped silently through.
A swirl of wind hit me almost instantly, cooling the sweat on my skin. It was a cold spring night, even for Oakland. The alley was narrow and deathly quiet. The shadows cast from a distant streetlamp were long, stretching all the way to—
CRACK!
Something hit me hard in the side of the face, my head exploding in a terrifyingly beautiful bloom of silvery-white pain. I fell sideways, into the dirty puddles on the broken asphalt.
Then a blurry gray fog crept into my vision, closing in from all sides…
Two
SILAS
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen someone getting the shit kicked out of them in an alleyway — not by a longshot. In this part of Oakland, such a beating wasn’t unusual. Hell, most times the people involved even deserved it.
This was my first three-on-one, though. And it wasdefinitelythe first time the person getting kicked around was a woman.
