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I grabbed Cora’s arm, and we sprinted away in the opposite direction as fast as we could, but Nathan was faster. He seized my other wrist, and I spun around, delivering a heavy punch to his jaw, just the way Adrian had shown me.
“Bitch!” he cried, and staggered backwards with his hand on his cheek. There was blood on his teeth, but I barely had time to register it. I ran as fast as I could down the sidewalk, only stopping when I heard shouting behind me.
Nathan was on the ground, and there was another man on top of him, pinning him to the asphalt.
Xavier.
Jackson and Adrian were on either side of him, their bodies primed to fight.
My mouth dropped open, and I walked back toward them. How had they found me? Had they tracked my phone, or my car? For Nathan, this felt normal. But for three men who had promised to protect me, it felt alotlike stalking.
Maybe they werejustas bad as Nathan.
“What the fuck are you three doing here?”
24
ADRIAN
Iwas used to working long hours — Tattoo Workz had a good reputation, and we had a steady stream of clients coming in — but today had beeninsane. As well as our usual bookings, we had people coming in almost every fifteen minutes, asking if we had any availability for last-minute walk-ins.
And on top of that, Emma had been pacing around the store with the kind of energy that made my jaw tighten. After my time in jail, I still wasn’t comfortable with people coming up to me from behind, and she did it twice: once to ask if I needed help, and once to bring me hot chocolate.
“Thanks,” I said, trying not to take my anxiety out on her. Xavier noticed my discomfort though, giving me a tight-jawed look when she walked away, and when she knocked into his trolley and spilled his drink, he asked her to leave. She did, but came back down an hour later when the doorbell rang, opening the door before any of us could get up.
I’d finished my client’s design and wiped away the last of the ink. It looked fantastic — he’d sat through three sessions and I’d outdone myself with the amount of detail I’d included.
“All done,” I said to my client, Parker, who was one of our regulars. “Would you like to see it?”
“Yeah,” Parker said, and sat up as I took a handheld mirror and angled it behind him the way a hairdresser might, so he could see the tattoo’s reflection in front of him.
“That’s wicked!” he said, pulling his shoulder with his other hand as though it would help him twist his head 180 degrees.
“I’m glad you like it,” I said, and tucked the mirror back in the trolley. “You remember the aftercare instructions from last time?” Normally, I would give a repeat customer a printout even if they already knew them, for liability reasons. But Parker had so many tattoos he probably knew more about them than I did.
“You know it,” he said. “How much do I owe you?”
“Let’s take care of it at the front,” I said. Emma and Cora had disappeared, and I vaguely wondered if they’d gone upstairs.
I took care of Parker’s payment and fell back into the routine of my work. When the last client finally left, we closed up the shop and I yawned, prompting Xavier and Jackson to yawn too.
“Dammit Adrian,” Jackson said. “You know that sets me off.”
“I can’t help it,” I said with a grin. Sure, I knew that yawns were contagious, and it was funny to set everyone off sometimes, but I was legitimately tired today. I wanted nothing more than to go upstairs, sample more of Emma’s incredible cooking, and go to bed.
But when we reached the top of the staircase and unlocked the security door, the apartment felt… empty. It felt like a house we’d abandoned for a six-week holiday, coming back to find stale air and the feeling that nobody had been here recently.
“I thought Emma was here,” Xavier said with a frown.
“Me too,” I admitted.
The other guys looked like they felt as troubled as I did, so we split up in the living room, each of us going in a different direction.
A quick inspection of the apartment, studio and gym told us that our initial impression had been right: Emma was gone. And when Jackson brought up a view of the camera that hung over the alley, her car was missing, too.
“This is bad,” I said, as Jackson pulled a bottle of scotch from our liquor cabinet and poured himself a drink. Xavier paced around, slapping his fist into his other palm like he wanted to punch something.
“It’s not like she was under any obligation to stay here,” Jackson said. “She can do whatever she likes.”
