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Thorn and Portia both watched the video clip of the news coverage, complete with a surveillance image of himself, gun in hand in Camila’s apartment building, with the words “Man Wanted in Connection with Attempted Murder of a Witness” splashed across the bottom of the screen.
Portia’s eyes widened, her jaw going slack with shock. “Thorn, what the hell? You tried to shoot her in the middle of her apartment building?”
“She knows too much,” Thorn snapped. “She saw your eyes well enough to draw them. Your brother can sugar coat that to keep you from freaking out all he wants, but he and I both know that now that the FBI is involved, they’ll open their search up to DMV databases. They won’t stop until they find you. And once they do, we’re all fucked.”
“Is…is that true?” Portia whispered, her face going pale as she swung toward Archer. “Will they look at my driver’s license photo?”
“Itmightbe,” Archer said, resisting the urge—albeit barely—to close his fingers around Thorn’s neck.
Thorn snorted his disagreement. “It is. The cops are going to put your name on a list of persons of interest. Then they’ll do a photo array, and once this bitch makes a positive ID on your eyes, they’ll dig in good and hard. They’re going to find out you left Arkansas months ago, and that you’ve been off the grid ever since then, which is suspicious as shit. They’ll know you’re involved in these robberies, and it ain’t gonna take a rocket scientist for them to connect you to me and Archer. I already told you, I’m not going back to jail. Shutting Camila up so she couldn’t make an ID was the only option.”
Archer’s patience tilted. “Do you think I don’t know she needed to be dealt with?”
Portia’s brows shot upward as Thorn’s gathered over his stare. “You said we couldn’t kill her.”
“I said we couldn’t kill heryet,” Archer corrected, ice on every word. “Of course we need to shut her up. I’m not risking a loose end like that. But we needed to do it carefully, and you went and screwed all of that up.”
“You’re not the only one who can come up with a plan, you know,” Thorn snarled. “I had the jump on her. She had no fucking clue I was coming. Neither did the cops. I would’ve gotten away with killing her if that other guy from the robbery hadn’t been with her.”
Thatgot Archer’s attention. “What guy?”
“The guy who jumped in front of her when we barged into the bank,” Thorn said.
Archer’s mind did a mental rewind back to the robbery, pulling up the memory of the Black guy who had wanted to go into the vault instead of Camila. Early thirties. Nice suit. Noticeably calm. Archer had known he’d be able to control him as soon as he’d put himself in front of Camila when they’d entered the bank, though. He’d known he’dneededto control him as soon as the guy had volunteered to go to the vault, not once, but twice, and at least his motivation made a hell of a lot more sense now.
But Archer would have to unspool all of that later, because right now, he had a new plan to execute. “You created a steaming pile of problems for us, Thorn. Every cop in the city is on full alert, looking for you.”
“Whatever. They aren’t gonna find me,” Thorn said, and Archer shook his head.
“No, they aren’t.”
Archer had the Glock out of the back waistband of his jeans before either Thorn or Portia could blink, let alone register what he was doing, and he didn’t hesitate to put four bullets directly into Thorn’s chest.
“Archer!” Portia screamed, her hands flying up to her mouth. Thorn dropped like a sack full of stones, his right hand reaching for the weapon Archer knew he kept tucked in his own waistband. Thorn’s body refused to comply, his heart likely having been shredded on impact. Archer was an excellent shot, and he’d chosen to cluster the bullets exactly where Thorn would not only have no chance of survival, but have no hope of being able to retaliate before he started to bleed out.
Archer strode forward, putting one last bullet in Thorn’s skull before turning to Portia. “Go turn off all the lights in the rest of the house,” he said calmly. “Then carefully look outside to be sure nothing seems suspicious.” He’d been sure to rent a house in a neighborhood where gunshots weren’t out of the ordinary and everyone minded their own damn business, but still. Taking chances, especially now, wasn’t on his agenda.
Portia stood glued to the floor, her expression half a step away from pure panic. “You…you…shot Thorn. Oh, my God. Oh, myGod, Archer. He’sdead.”
Archer proceeded with care. He needed her on board, and fast, so he tucked the gun back into his waistband and stepped into her line of sight, blocking her view of Thorn’s body. “I planned to kill him from the beginning, P.”
“What?” she breathed, but he just nodded calmly.
“I was always going to kill him. Granted, I had to do it earlier than planned.” He paused here to feign a look of remorse, but in reality, he didn’t have a shred of the stuff. “Thorn was a liability. We needed him for the robberies—it was never going to work with just two of us—but I couldn’t trust him to keep his mouth shut. All it would take was one night of him getting high and bragging to the wrong person about what we’d done, or, worse yet, one sloppy crime he’d get pinched for, then start singing to the cops in exchange for a deal. For Chrissake, he’d throw his own mother under the bus. I couldn’t leave a loose end like that.”
“You couldn’ttellme?” Portia asked, anger streaking through her blue-brown eyes. “We’re supposed to be in this together.”
“We are in this together,” Archer said. “I was going to tell you once we’d hit the last bank, but Thorn went and fucked everything up by going after Camila too soon. He was going to get us caught. It had to be done.”
Portia gave up a slow nod. “I guess that makes sense. But he’s dead in the middle of the kitchen, Arch, and we still don’t have all the money we need. How are we going to get out of this?”
Ah, the million-dollar question. Fortunately, Archer had come up with the answer not long after he’d seen that news report. “Well, first thing’s first. We’re going to need to clean up this mess. Can you go turn off those lights for me? I don’t think anyone’s going to come poking around,” he added quickly, because he needed to reassure her to get her to comply. “But we need to be sure.”
“O-okay. Yeah,” she said. The task gave Archer a chance to cover Thorn’s body with a plastic sheet he’d bought weeks ago—who’s the pussy now, you asshole?—and he turned off the kitchen lights before meeting Portia in the cramped living room.
“All the lights are out,” Portia said. “Should we turn off the one on the porch, too?”
“No,” Archer said. A completely dark house in a neighborhood like this was practically a welcome mat for burglars, and the last thing they needed now was for someone to try and break in. “We just need to wait a little while to be sure we’re in the clear. Then I’ll take care of Thorn and the car we used today. I’ll need you to clean the kitchen, though, and pack up everything we brought with us. Thorn’s stuff, too. Can you do that?”
