Chapter 14 – Rook #2
Why did she think she had to endure this kind of shit alone when she had us? I wanted to throttle her and wrap her up in my arms at the same time. I could do neither.
Someone was threatening her, and she acted as though she wasn’t bothered in the slightest when her reaction with Corvus proved that was anything but the truth.
I pressed my palm to the door and sighed, the anger ebbing away almost as fast as it’d come.
I winced at the loss of it, confused at how easily she could draw it out of me, like blood drawn from a wound.
What was this girl doing to me?
“Rook?” she hedged a second time, and I swallowed, pocketing my phone and the flask again before opening the door.
“What’s up, Ghost?”
She studied my face, her cold gray-blue eyes darting back and forth between my dark ones. She’d find nothing there, though. I was a master at what Grey affectionately called going dead eyed.
Her brows pinched. “Who was that on the phone?”
“Corv and Grey,” I replied. “Why?”
The knot between her brows smoothed out and she shrugged aloofly, like she didn’t care. “No reason.”
I cocked my head at her, my gaze snagging on the shape of her phone in her front pocket. Heat seared over my flesh, making it prickle as I wondered what other messages could be lingering there that she hadn’t told us about. How much worse they could be than the ones we’d already read.
Tomorrow.
We’re all going to sit and have a nice little chat about this fuckery tomorrow.
“I’m going to bed,” she announced, grabbing a threadbare white t-shirt from the shelf of the closet outside the bathroom and tossing it on her bed before snatching up a throw blanket that was haphazardly draped over the top of her purple covers.
“Here,” she said, pushing it into my hands.
“You going to make me sleep on the floor?”
“You can if you want to,” she replied sweetly. “But I’m not going anywhere. Take the couch. You’ll be more comfortable.”
Her words didn’t match the lack of sincerity in her tone. I saw this for what it really was. Her walls were finally starting to come down, and she didn’t know how to handle it. So, like the Ava Jade we knew, she was going to fight it with everything she had.
It was a fight she’d lose.
“Did I do something?” I asked. “Because as far as I could tell, you thoroughly enjoyed yourself the other night.”
“I don’t sleep with other people.”
“Good. Apparently, I don’t, either.”
Her nose wrinkled at that, confused at the dual meaning.
“No. I meant that I don’t sleep with other people as in; I can’t sleep when there’s someone in bed next to me.”
“You did just fine in my bed.”
She opened her mouth to reply, shut it, and seethed. “That was different.”
“Was it?” I challenged, brushing past as I left her bedroom. “Sleep well, Ghost. Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll be the one haunting your dreams tonight.”
A cute growl preceded the slam of her door behind me, and I laughed to myself, not bothering to try to hide the sound.
Becca stared at me from the kitchen, pausing after she finished filling herself a glass of water.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she muttered, shaking her head as she walked to her own bedroom, but I caught her gaze fall to my cock beneath my jeans, and I knew why she was staring. Looking for the outline of my stainless-steel accessories.
Ava Jade told her. I wondered what she said. I glanced back at Ava Jade’s door and smirked, mindlessly grabbing the pack of cigarettes from my back pocket.
“Could you, um, not smoke that in here?”
I blinked, coming back to myself before I could tug a smoke from the packet to find Becca hesitating in her doorway.
“I hate the smell.”
“You smoke pot in here.”
“That’s different.”
I raised my brows, and she dropped her gaze, clearing her throat as she closed herself into her bedroom. She wouldn’t push the matter, but I would never hear the end of it from Ava Jade.
She said she wasn’t going anywhere. Guess now was as good a time as any to test that. Corvus had left her to her own devices for hours yesterday, and she hadn’t run, what was another hour? I could use the fresh air. It was late, but after hearing those messages, I wasn’t fucking tired.
For once, I might get a taste of what it was like for Corvus. Exhausted but unable to shut my eyes.
I ditched the blanket on the couch and slipped a finger under the collar of my leather jacket hung on the back of a stool in the kitchen and shrugged it on. My teeth clenched as I wrapped my fist around the door handle, hesitating to leave.
Whoever was texting her had sent threats. Maybe Corvus was right and it was all talk, but what if it wasn’t?
On a whim, I dipped my fingers into the pocket of Ava Jade’s jacket on the hook by the door, digging for keys. I pushed past a thick piece of paper and heard them jingle. Drawing them out, I tossed them in the air and caught them, stepping out of the shared apartment and locking the door behind me.
I pocketed the keys and thumbed a quick message to Ava Jade.
ROOK
Going outside for a smoke. If you hear the door, it’s just me coming back in. I locked it behind me.
She didn’t reply, but the message showed as read after a second and that was good enough for me.
I hustled down the stairs and out the back door, stalking towards the basketball court protruding from the back of the academy.
Automatic lights flicked on and I grimaced at their ridiculous brightness, lighting my smoke for a long drag as I leaned against the rough brick beneath the basketball net.
The academy grounds were quiet at night and everywhere outside of the ring of white security lights appeared so dark I couldn’t see more than a few feet into it. Frowning, I moved away from the lights and settled myself just out of range from where they would detect me.
The dark swallowed me up again, and I waited for my eyes to adjust, the orange glow of the cherry on my cigarette now the only light as far as I could see toward the north lawn and gardens.
I scanned the trees, my fingers twitching toward the knife in my right boot. Corvus wouldn’t let me bring a gun, and maybe that was for the best. Especially if Diesel chose tonight for her next trial.
Normally they were more spaced out, just long enough between them to make you start to get comfortable. Start to get complacent. But he was known for running a few back to back, just to mix things up.
My Ghost would pass the surprise attack with flying colors. Fuck, she almost had me that night out behind the apartment buildings. If she hadn’t panicked, I had no doubt she’d have gotten free of my hold, too.
I rubbed out my smoke on the brick and walked back to the door, satisfied to have seen no threats lingering in the trees outside.
The keys jingled in my pocket and I plucked them back out as I neared the back door to the academy, but my arm jerked when I tried to open it.
I tried again, but it wouldn’t budge. Locked.
Someone locked it.
ROOK
Did you fucking lock me out? Really?
No reply. No read receipt.
My stomach twisted.
Diesel.
It was fucking Diesel.
Or rather, whoever he sent after her. They knew I was a loose cannon at the best of times. They wouldn’t want me interrupting her trial, and I gave them the perfect opportunity to lock my ass out.
I chuckled darkly to myself, heat making my leather jacket unbearable. I slung it off, discarding it onto the concrete as I rounded the building, picking up speed.
She can handle herself.
I believed it. Really, I did. But I didn’t like being locked out. Chained up. Held back.
I wanted to see my Ghost go full poltergeist on their asses. I wanted to watch. I needed to be there just in case .
If she somehow failed the trial and was taken out, Corvus and Grey would blame me. Rightly fucking so.
It took me only a minute to find what I was looking for; the slim half-window at the base of the building on the west side, leading down into an old file storage room in the basement of the academy.
A regular meeting place for Mrs. June and me before they cleared it out and added a space for the teachers’ quiet reflection .
I bent and threw my elbow into the glass, sucking in a breath at the sting of air on a fresh cut. Licking my lips, I twisted, booting out the rest of the glass with the sole of my boot before pulling myself through.
I shouldered through the locked door to the filing room and stalked down the hall, taking the stairs up to the main floor three at a time.
“Hey!” Mick, the round-bellied security guard who was absolute shit at his job shouted as I rounded the corner into the main atrium, making for the stairs.
I was surprised he’d even left his office, but by the disheveled look of him I’d woken his ass up from his one a.m. nap with the window breaking.
His flashlight beam caught on me, and I gave him a half a second of time. A single look that had him dropping the beam.
“Oh, fuck. Sorry, Mr. Clayton. I thought it was?—”
I was gone before he could finish, up the curving staircase and down the hall, keys out, metal slipping into the lock, It was already open. Fuck.
I walked in and Becca appeared in her doorway, her eyes wide and wild and face pale in the moonlight as she took me in, confused. Her nightgown all twisted.
A loud bang echoed through the apartment and Becca cried out, her attention jerking to Ava Jade’s closed door. Not a gunshot. Something hard knocking into an even harder surface.
I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists, the desire to go straight for that door and mow down whoever was behind it stronger than any urge that’d possessed me in a long ass time.
“ AJ ,” Becca breathed as the sounds of a struggle came louder through her friend’s door. She made a break across the apartment and I headed her off, catching her around the waist. A bit surprised at her willingness to run into danger for her friend. I’d misjudged her.
“You can’t help her,” I muttered in Becca’s ear, the smell of her essential oil perfume filling my nose.