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CHAPTER ONE
Sara
For once, nothing on my computer could distract me.
Not when right now, my best friend in the entire world, Lia Goldin, was breaking into a cop’s house across the city, fueled by the desperate that her crime could pay for her father’s debt to theSons of Celt.TheSonswere a criminal enterprise that were surprisingly wide-ranging in their pursuits—dabbling in everything from petty theft to white collar crime to enacting medieval-ass blood debts on innocent girls. How Lou Goldin had gotten into bed with them was beyond me, but the man excelled at outdoing his own stupidity. Somehow, he’d managed to convince them to give him an enormous amount of money, and then bailed. TheSonsdidn’t appreciate that.
Either way, now Lia had to pay—either in cash with interest, or with her life.
I swallowed hard as I pictured her, golden hair tied back, the hood of her heavy sweatshirt up, and the hazel of her eyes stern with focus. Her lithe form, too thin from not eating enough, stealing across a dimly lit street, darting around a small white house, and sneaking into a backyard.
Following her best friend’s instructions to cut the power and break in.
All while, me, her best friend, waited for her call to help her with phase two—breaking into the cop’s laptop in hopes of finding some incriminating evidence that would pay her enough to get her out of trouble with theSons, who’d demanded a motherless art student pay back Lou Goldin’s stupidly large debt to them.
A mix of adrenaline and tedium kept me pinned to my seat, raging against the circumstances, my heart roaring at how unfair it all was. It shouldn’t be this way, the person I loved best being forced to walk the edge of a shadowed world because of circumstance and suicide.
I knew how unfair the world was. I knew that no matter how smart you were, no matter how well you prepared, the world would break you into pieces the first chance it got.
No, all I could do was sit and stare out my window, watching night fall too fast now that it was almost winter. The cold glitter of Boston filled the skyline, bright, sharp, and distant. My computer monitor, reflected in the thick glass, glowed blank and slightly blue. I could just make out my features, the slight pinchbetween my eyebrows, the tight press of my lips and the nervous drum of my fingers on the arm of my chair.
My other arm was clamped around knees as I burrowed back further into the chair, layered in sweatshirts and a winter hat, not so much out of cold, but to try and keep the worry from gnawing straight through my skin to my terrified, frantic, and furious heart.
Lia is out there. Alone.
Always alone.
It shouldn’t be this way.
For as long as I could remember, her father had barely been in the picture, which made Lou’s current dumbassery even more infuriating. Usually, when I thought of Lia, it was always her and her mother against the world. Until, last year, when out of nowhere, Marina “Fierce” Fioreno, badass Boston Lady Detective extraordinaire had committed suicide, and Lia’s entire world fell apart. School, money, and now this shit.
God, I hate Lou Goldin.
My fingers seized on the chair, and I was tempted to get on my keyboard, track him down, and somehow get him extradited back to the States. But he’d probably end up in jail, and with Lia’s luck, she’d still be on the hook of those awful, idiotic Boston thugs and their goofy-ass criminal name.
Why can’t she catch a break?
At that moment, my phone rang, and I fumbled for it, nearly falling out of my chair. Heart pounding, I saw the number I told Lia to call me from flashing. My hand was shaking so badly, I almost couldn’t answer, and relief made me almost woozy.
“Holy shit,” I blurted into her ear, too much air wheezing out of my lungs, as though someone were squeezing my ribs.
And Lia, lovely, irrepressible, fearless Lia—laughed her ass off at me.
Shaking my head, a rush of affection and annoyance going through me, I drawled, “Okay, yeah, sure, it’s hilarious. That’s what I get for being normal and worried.”
“Believe me, Sara,” she said, her voice warm and familiar in my ear, though with that haunting echo of strain and sadness always ringing through it, “I almost peed myself a few times.”
“But you’re in?”
“I’m in.”
The next few minutes were a blur as I walked her through next steps, the phone tucked against my shoulder as my fingers flew over the keyboard. Forward momentum kept me calm and focused, and I scoffed when I saw the cop’s cluttered desktop.
“Boomers,” I tried to joke. “Look at that mess.”
“Oh my God, you’re the best,” Lia breathed in my ear, and I suddenly wanted to tell her to stop, to just come home. To just let me pay for her life with my ridiculous tech salary. It would be even more once I graduated from school. But I could do that now, I didn’t have to keep thousands in the bank—I’d stopped looking over my shoulder.
Hell, we could have even more money if I gave up this swanky, super-protected Beacon Hill apartment. I could scale down to a regular luxury apartment instead of this uber-secure one.
