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And Vincent couldn’t stop thinking about the tall, curly-haired brunette who hadn’t stepped back from him. That power he held over his adversaries with a look had failed him when he stood against her, and he needed to know more about the woman.
“You take the next block over. I’ll look around here,” Vincent told Marco, walking down the cracked and polluted sidewalks. An occasional car passed by, illuminating him in their headlights and leaving a morphed long shadow behind him briefly before the shadows of night once again enveloped him. The streetlights—only half of them working —did little to light the sidewalks, leaving plenty of horrible hiding holes for Krill to be lurking.
Vincent paid close attention to the shadows that were darker than the rest. The back of his mind swirled around that damned woman, leaving his senses duller than usual. Leaving him vulnerable to attack.
When Vincent finally noticed someone trailing him, it was too late.
A blunt force slammed into the back of his head, and his vision darkened as he stumbled one step. Two steps. On the third step, he caught his balance and turned into a fist.
Vincent raised a forearm to catch the next punch, and by some luck, his maneuver kept the next blow from catching his face, and he saw the man. Krill. Vincent pulled his gun from its holster, but Krill knocked it to the ground in a quick maneuver, leaving Vincent disoriented and with only his fists.
“Why are you looking for me?” Krill shouted at Vincent, throwing another hard blow toward Vincent before reaching into a pocket and lifting something else between them. The small blade gleamed beneath the dim and flickering streetlight.
He swiped the blade, and Vincent barely avoided it as he tried to regain his senses. The blow on the back of his head must have been even worse than he thought.
“Why did they put a hit out on me?” Krill shouted again, this time drawing the knife across Vincent’s upper arm.
Vincent kicked out, knocking the blade from Krill’s hand.
“We know what you’re planning,” Vincent spoke. “And we won’t allow it.”
Krill laughed and took a step back, eyeing Vincent’s dropped gun. “We’ll see.”
He lunged for the firearm at the same time that a shot rang through the night. Vincent realized it had been closer than he thought when Krill jerked back and swore, looking down the street. Despite the darkness, Vincent could see the terror on the Krill’s face as he bolted into a nearby alleyway.
Vincent would have run after him—he knew catching the man before he got away was essential. Men rarely escaped Vincent, and once they did, tracking them became much harder and more dangerous.
Marco rushed down the street, his gun upraised as he turned down the alleyway and pointed his gun. He glanced back at Vincent and then toward where Krill had run, with only a moment’s hesitation before charging down the alley. Vincent reached for the back of his head, wincing at the throbbing pain that radiated through his entire body.
He examined his fingers and found them coated in red.
“Fucking hell,” he snarled, leaning against the post of the streetlamp and covering the injury with the palm of his hand.
It didn’t take long for Marco to come striding back through the alleyway, his gun holstered. His brooding expression matched Vincent’s as they stood together, feet away from the man’s abandoned car.
“He got the drop on you,” Marco said.
Vincent nodded.
“What happened?”
That girl happened, he thought. He didn’t dare admit his weakness to Marco, even though he knew he could trust the man with his life.
“He ambushed me from behind. Hit me in the head with something.”
Marco removed his thin jacket and tossed it to Vincent, who wadded it into a ball and pressed it against his head. He didn’t bother drawing attention to the slice across his shoulder that, if landing a few inches to the left, would have slit his throat. There was a reason that distractions got people killed, and Vincent was smarter than that.
“Kiera,” Marco said knowingly.
“What about her?”
Marco crossed his arms. “She got under your skin, didn’t she?” Vincent didn’t affirm or deny the claim. “She’s young. Much younger than you.”
“How young?” Vincent found himself asking.
“Over twenty-one. All the girls at the restaurant are.” He pondered the answer for a moment. “Twenty-five, I think. Maybe twenty-four.”
Vincent nodded. As far as relationships and women went, he’d spend no more than a night with any woman. Beyond the night, they never lingered on his mind long and certainly never to the extent that Kiera had stayed on his. He wanted her. From a more practical standpoint, he needed a taste of her to escape the thrall she held over him.
