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“Oh.” She frowns. “That’s smart.”
“You can be smart on the physics. I’ll be smart on the tactics, Gorgeous,” I tease, using the nickname I know she hates.
She rolls her eyes at me and flips me off over her shoulder as she strides over to the soldier, hauling his huge body up off the floor with one hand to the collar of his vest like a pissed-off mama cat. She shakes him viciously, the entire two-hundred-plus pounds of him flopping with the movement.
“Want to tell me why you’re shooting up my friend’s gallery? Or shall I kill you now, hmm?”
His mouth tightens into a grimace, his heavy brow pulling into a frown.
“I don’t think he’s going to talk to you,” I quip, a hard-won expression of earnestness on my face.
Aurelia’s gaze moves from the poor bastard dangling from her grip to me, and I wish I hadn’t said anything at all.
“Oh, he’ll talk to me. Or I’ll take out the Morganite knife stuck in your right boot and carve him like a fucking pumpkin.”
Skippy pales at the glow of Aurelia’s eyes and the slightly sadistic quality to the curve of her lips. He should be worried. Very worried. She drops him to the concrete with a mighty thud.
“How’d you know I had a knife in my right boot?”
She points to her chest and says, “Seer. Duh.”
“So you knew I was here?”
“Of course I did. I know every time you’re here, what weapons you carry, and even what color your socks are. Navy and black do not match, BTW. It’s the important stuff I can’t see. Like who sent this dipshit, but I bet I can guess. Let me see,” she says as she reaches for his left shoulder to twist the spike, inciting a pained howl. “Wanna tell me your name?”
“Thad,” he gasps. “My name is Thad.”
“And who sent you, Thad?” she asks sweetly, which is all the more frightening, given the malevolent expression on her face.
To tell you the truth, I’m feeling a little excluded from this interrogation, so when Thad refuses to answer her, I rip out the spike still protruding from his thigh with a vicious jerk. The agonized scream turns my stomach a little, but it does the job because now Thad can’t stop talking.
“Iva. Iva sent me,” he gasps. “She sent me to stall you because she has more soldiers coming. She’s going to capture you this time, and it doesn’t matter what he”—He nods at me—“does to save you. He has a price on his head, too.” Thad’s breathing hard, panting as if his lungs have decided this very minute is the time to work double-time.
Iva. That slippery little bitch. I’ve been dodging our Primary—our leader—for over a hundred and fifty years. Just her name sends a shudder down my spine.
Aurelia reaches into my shoulder holster and pulls out the Ruger. She chambers a round and pumps it into his head with enough quickness I don’t have the chance to stop her.
I’d yell at her, given that we still needed more info, but the expression of pure, unadulterated terror on Aurelia’s face is enough to make me shut up and move.
“We have to go. Now,” I say as I take the Ruger from her and re-holster it.
Grabbing her ice-cold hand in mine, I head for the back of the gallery toward the rear parking lot while asking, “Where’s Evan?”
“She was losing it, so I made her go ahead of me to ready the cabin. She’s safe.”
A sigh of relief has my shoulders drooping just a little. “Thank you for keeping her safe.”
She swallows thickly. “She’s a better sister than I ever got. I’d do anything to make sure that little shit stays breathing.”
Aurelia’s family shit is the stuff of legend. I’ve never seen a mother as uptight or unrelenting as hers. Nothing was ever good enough. Aurelia wasn’t polite enough, proper enough. It didn’t help that she didn’t want the role she was born into. It didn’t matter to her family what kind of daughter they had—they’d rather have her twin. A sister—as time went on—who shunned her just as harshly as her parents did.
We reach the door, and she pulls me toward a slate-gray, new model Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat. She drops my hand suddenly as if she’d forgotten she hates me for those few minutes and has just remembered. To ease the newly forming ache in my chest, I take a split second to admire the awesomeness of the vehicle before me, holding my hand out for the keys.
She gives me a look of indignation before reaching under the front driver’s side wheel well for her spare key. She shakes her head, presses the key fob, and opens the door to slide in behind the wheel.
“Nobody drives my baby but me.”
Throwing my hands up in surrender, I slip into the passenger seat. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
