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He was looking forward to teaching her how to kiss. How to touch the man who loved her more than anything. There would be plenty of time for that. Once he was finished with this last little task, for Gregory.
Vaughn saw the girl Gregory wanted. She was a pretty, curly haired woman barely older than the angel. She looked familiar, he thought. Probably saw her around campus when he’d been watching those girls, or something. Mostly Vaughn just remembered watching Crispin Maria.
It took him a moment to place her, as the van followed at a distance. She was walking with a tall, gorgeous, strawberry-blonde nerd-looking woman. Who also looked familiar.
“There she is. Let’s do this,” Ross said, pulling his ski mask over his face, and his gun out. “Don’t anyone screw this up.”
The van pulled closer. They’d be on the girls in seconds.
Vaughn swore. This was the stupidest damn thing they’d done yet. Movement around the corner ahead caught his eye.
He sawherthen. The blue-haired one. Half a block away.
His angel’ssister.
He heard his angel’s words in his head. Again.
Hell, that one wasn’t supposed to be here.
Heard her pleading with him not to hurt her sisters. Hell, he couldn’t do it. “Get the blue haired one, too! The old man will pay for her if he knows what’s good for him!”
87
Sydney watchedthe two women half a block up the sidewalk for a moment. Grace and Jo-Jo had almost caught up to her and Pen now.
A look at Pen told Sydney one thing—Pen was angsting again. No surprise, Pen was a seriously smart brainiac. Sometimes those with higher IQs had what were known as overexcitabilities. And anxiety could be a serious part of that. Sydney had done the research into gifted excitabilities, when she and Pen and Jo-Jo had been asked to participate in a sociology department study on female intelligence a little less than a year ago.
She had known Brynna and Carrie were considered geniuses, but Sydney had thought she was just ordinary in that regard.
Jo-Jo’s was into genius territory, too, although if you ever asked her that, Jo-Jo would vehemently deny it. For some reason, Jo-Jo wantednormalmore than anything. She pretended to be normal, too. But there really wasn’t anything normal about that girl at all. They had to peel her off the ceilings almost every day. Sydney had practically banned Jo-Jo from ever touching sugar again, the way that woman got wound up.
In high school, Jo-Jo had gotten on Sydney’s nerves so badly, she couldn’t stand her. But Sydney adored her now. And always would.
Jo-Jo made them all smile nine times out of ten. She’d go ninety miles an hour, then just crash. Sometimes hilariously. With drool and talking about brownies in her sleep and everything.
Pen had speculated once it was because as a foster child, Jo-Jo had never really had a fullnormalbefore. Pen admitted she definitely hadn’t—until Zoey had rescued her from foster care, too. Zoey had taken care of Pen the way Jo-Jo’s foster sister Annie had taken care of Jo-Jo. The way Melody had taken care of Sydney after they’d lost their own mother. The way Grace’s sisters Kelly and Emma had taken care of her, too.
They all had that in common.
Sisters took care of sisters. No matter what.
She tuned back into Pen as Jo-Jo and Grace got closer, Jo-Jo laughing and bubbling like she almost always was. Jo-Jo had one of the most positive, happy, loving, giving, humorous personalities of anyone Sydney had ever met. She bounced practically everywhere she went—even the hair on her head, far curlier than Sydney’s, bounced sometimes.
Something about the younger woman had made Sydney feel a bit more balanced again at a time she’d seriously needed it.
Like maybe the rest of the world was still good sometimes. She’d lost sight of that for a while there, she thought. Her world had definitely gotten dark and dangerous, fast.
“Guess what? There’s going to be a guest lecturer in veterinary forensics, Pen.” Jo-Jo started, slinging her backpack over her shoulder. “We should check it out. The guy is supposed to be super-hot, too. So I thought you might—"
Whatever she was going to say was cut off when a large dark van screeched to a halt next to them. They all froze. Sydney instinctively put herself in front of her friends as Gerard and the other three bodyguards rushed closer.
She recognized that van. The bug eyes were distinctive. “Run!”
She saw the guns a second too late. She screamed.
The quick succession of sounds didn’t sound like bullets.
Pops.
