Chapter 10
Chapter
Ten
My heart leaps into my throat at Larkin’s visible menace. His long fingers curl around the box cutter, and I let out a sound of protest when he wrestles the box cutter from my grip and shoves it into his back pocket. “Shush,” he tells me absently, fixing his jacket before turning back to me fully.
When the ignition of Flanagan’s car starts, I jerk to look around, but he doesn’t let me. Larkin’s fingers curl more tightly around my throat, then he shoves me back against the pillar once more, my shoulders hitting so hard that I wince with an unhappy yelp.
“You even sound like a feral little animal,” the man taunts, his voice dripping honey-sweet with false praise. “Just growling and snarling. What’s wrong, Tova? Are you too fixated on your prey to look at me? You know, that won’t get you very far—”
“Do you ever stop talking?” I snap, looking back at him.
We both freeze as Flanagan drives by, though he doesn’t notice anything, and his lights never illuminate us.
“God, you really like the sound of your own voice. Now let me go.” I kick one foot back to try to propel myself off the column, but it’s useless.
His muscles flex under the jacket, and all I manage is to come off the column enough that he can slam me against it once more, causing me to yelp with pain.
“Ouch! Can you stop it?”
“I don’t know,” Larkin retorts. “Can you?”
That brings me up short. I stop struggling, realizing the futility of my situation, and my hands loosen slightly on his wrist, though I search his face in the dark while keeping a grip on him.
Just in case. “What do you want?” I ask at last, quietly enough that my voice doesn’t echo annoyingly in the cavernous space of the parking garage.
“You didn’t even know him. Why do you care what I do? ”
“Because if you slash a man to pieces in a parking garage, someone will notice. You’ll go to jail.
” He tilts his head to the side, and Larkin’s eyes glitter in the near-dark.
“I’m not nearly done with you. Really, I haven’t even gotten started.
But here you are, acting like an impulse killer making her first and only kill?
” he tuts, tongue clicking against the top of his mouth.
“How irresponsible. Sort of pathetic, don’t you think? ”
He reminds me of a serpent.
His hands are cold and smooth against my skin, and he strokes along the sides of my throat with his fingers while studying me like a stray cat. His dark eyes gleam, and his smile is snake-like, full of sly intent and feeling like he’s working three steps ahead of me already.
I don’t like him.
I don’t know how to read him the way I can usually read people. So I can’t find my footing with this man who I apparently stole a kill from, and my hands ache for the box cutter to slice the grin off his face.
“Why are you still holding onto me?” I snap when I realize with a jolt he hasn’t let go or made a motion to do so. Flanagan is long gone, and I squirm once more in his grip, uncomfortable and uncertain. “He’s gone.”
“Hmm?” Larkin glances up towards where Flanagan made his unwitting escape. “I didn’t come here to protect him.”
“Well, that’s what you did.”
“No.” He looks down, meeting my eyes again.
“I stopped you from being boring, predictable, and getting arrested by the end of tomorrow. Really? You were going to kill him in a parking garage?” he snorts and rolls his eyes.
“Pathetic.” His grip loosens and I try to extricate myself from it, fully intending to go home to get away from him.
Not that he lets me. When my back hits the pillar again, I gasp and glare up at him. “Let me go!” I snarl, my patience waning. I can’t reach my phone, and apart from that, I don’t have anything I can use to defend myself now that he’s taken my box cutter.
“Sure.” He suddenly grips my hand tightly in his, clasping our fingers together as he jerks us away from the pillar. “We’ll walk together like this.”
Before I can react, he drags me back toward the ramp, causing me to stumble after him in surprise. I gasp and nearly trip, but that doesn’t seem to bother Larkin at all. He just keeps walking, trusting me to catch my balance and come with him.
That, or maybe he’s fully prepared to drag me along.
“Where are we going?” I snap finally, trying to jerk away from him when we’re on the street level of the parking garage. I dig in my heels, but that only proves to be to my detriment as I nearly face-plant onto the concrete under us.
“Text your roommate,” Larkin calls breezily over his shoulder without stopping. “Tell her you’re busy. Fuck, I don’t really care what you tell her. I just don’t want to end up with her coming to track you down and ruin our fun.”
“Our what?”
“Oh, sorry.” He turns and catches me around the waist, dragging me across the concrete until we’re pressed together. Larkin’s smile widens and he inclines his head until we’re nearly nose to nose. “I’ll be more specific for you. I don’t need her crashing our date.”
Date. He says it so confidently, as if this is something we planned. All I can do is stare at him as my mind cycles through all the reasonable reactions or explanations for what the hell is going on.
Finally, I settle on the idea that he’s probably insane. There’s nothing else I can really think of as he grins down at me with dark excitement on his face, though my hand inches toward his back pocket in an attempt to get my box cutter back.
Larkin snickers and straightens, fingers still twined with mine. “What’s wrong, babe? You weren’t expecting that? I’m pretty enough.” He bats his eyes at me, and I roll mine. “So you shouldn’t feel bad about being with me tonight.”
“I didn’t agree to a date with you. I don’t want to go on a date with you.
How can I be any clearer for—” He yanks me off the curb and into the street, pulling me into a jog so I stay with him as we travel to the other side.
The break in traffic is lucky, though I wouldn’t mind if Larkin were to get hit by one of the pissed off, speeding old men that Seattle seems to be full of.
Instinct makes me jolt forward to catch up with him, and I try to ignore Larkin’s grin as I walk with him side by side, the tension in our arms slackening like I’m holding hands with him by choice.
“Let me go,” I snarl, once we’re on the other side of the street and back on the sidewalk. “Let me go, or—”
“Or you’ll cut me with your little box cutter? Open my stomach like a package from UPS?” Larkin turns his winning grin on me; it makes me seethe and feel like my nerves are burning under my skin.
“Something like that.”
“No.”
That’s all I get. No explanation. No villainous monologue. Normally I’m the quiet one, so having him dragging me down the street without a word and without giving me something to work with causes me to feel awkward at best. Absently, I shiver in the cold, garnering a glance from Larkin.
“Cold?”
“It’s March. In Seattle.”
He ignores my disdainful glare and, somehow without letting go of my hand for more than a second, slips his jacket off, leaving him in the thick hoodie he’s wearing underneath.
Deftly, Larkin pushes the jacket over my shoulders, leaving me to decide if I want to actually put my arms in the sleeves, though he does button it over my collarbone like a cape with just the top button of the heavy sweater fabric.
It’s warm.
But then again, so is his hand. He seems to always be warm, even though it’s still winter in Seattle and the temperatures get down low enough to freeze at night.
Even in his hoodie, he doesn’t seem to notice the weather, and he easily weaves through the people on the street, barely ever touching anyone, and making it look like he’s swimming smoothly with the current.
This isn’t what killers look like.
At least, it’s not what the killers I’ve known look like. Cass may be graceful and attractive, but he isn’t like this. Larkin is different, though I can’t quite figure out why.
God, I want to end his fucking life. My fingers itch to lunge for the box cutter I know he has in his pocket, but even I’m not dumb enough to start shit in public.
A small sound of surprise escapes my lips when Larkin suddenly turns, dragging us through the parking lot of a restaurant set back a little from the street. I continue to stumble after him, and I catch a look of delight in his gaze when he glances back my way.
Fucking jerk.
“Keep up,” Larkin tsks, slowing down for the first time. It’s only for a moment, and probably just for show as he throws his arm over my shoulders to steer me through the double doors of the mystery establishment.
It isn’t a chain restaurant, but I’d put the vibe of Cider House Grill on par with something like Longhorn.
The smell hits me when we walk in, and I inhale the scent of steak and spices that even I could handle.
My stomach twists greedily, making me realize I haven’t eaten since before the sun was up this morning.
And even that was just a pathetic protein bar that I ate in bed while checking my phone and doomscrolling on social media.
“Why are we here?” I hiss under my breath, with Larkin’s arm like a weight keeping me from really going anywhere.
“We’re on a date, silly girl,” he coos, making me roll my eyes up at the ceiling. God, I hate this man, though sometimes I almost forget that when the fascination and interest gets going in my veins. There are so many things I want to ask him. So many questions and comments and just…observations.
If he really is the PNW serial killer, then I want to pick his brain until he’s just a pile of bones. I want to know how he does it.
I want to know how I could do it too.
The thought jerks me back to reality, but thankfully the hostess appears with a big smile on her face. She studies Larkin before noting his arm draped over me possessively, and her smile becomes just a little less dazzling.