12. Fuck Around and Find Out
SOUNDTRACK: Russian Roulette by Ryan Mitchell
~ CAIN ~
I’d had a lot of different reactions from marks, but this was a first.
As Bridget sniggered and spluttered against my palm I was rocked with conflicting emotions—half of me fascinated and amused, the other half pissed off and determined to make sure she understood the danger she was in.
Dropping my voice as low as it would go and keeping it harsh, I growled in her ear. “You think this is a joke?”
I leaned my full weight against her, pressing her hard enough against the car that it would be difficult for her to breathe.
She tensed and shook her head frantically under my palm, but her breath was still coming in snorts.
I had to know.
“I’m going to remove my hand from your mouth. But you make one sound to alert your neighbors, and it will be the last you’ll make. Do you understand? Blink twice.”
She quickly squeezed her eyes closed, opened them, then squeezed them tight again.
Slowly, poised to clap my hand back over her mouth if she was deceiving me, I loosened my grip on her face and gave her room to breathe, then to speak.
She was panting heavily, but even those tearing breaths were broken by waves of giggles. She struggled one more time, but she was already losing strength, I just shook my head.
“F-fuck you’re strong,” she gasped, then she snorted. I huffed and I gripped the back of her neck, pressing her head against the car as a warning. She tensed. “Don’t-don’t-don’t! Imma n-nervous laugher.” Then she was overcome. She had her hands up on the car and covered her face with one, spluttering and snickering. “You saw the p-post, I guess?”
“You did well,” I admitted gruffly, keeping my voice in that rough rumble.
“D-did you like the p-present?”
I’d seen it immediately, of course, laid out on the floor in front of the first aid kit and the disinfectant. It was a floor-plan of her house, printed and annotated, with notes on entries and exits, and ways the house varied in reality from the plan logged in the city’s system.
That jangle of pleasure screamed through my veins. I wanted to high five her, but kept my face straight and my tone disapproving. “You think you’re funny,” I growled.
She shook her head, her eyes still covered by her hand. “Have you had a chance to check it out yet?” she whispered, still sniggering.
“I’ve seen enough.”
“Are you s-sure?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because,” she gasped, giggling. “You’re going to need it.”
I frowned. “What the fuck are you talking about?” I snarled.
Then she took her hand away to look at me. I was literally breathing down the back of her neck, far too close for clear sight, and I was wearing a silk mesh over my face that obscured my features, but let me see. With my hand on the back of her neck and her temple pressed against the car, she could only look at me from the corner of her eye—those startling, sparkling eyes that were light blue with a jade rim around the outside of the iris. I knew she couldn’t see my face distinctly, but our eyes locked.
“I g-gotchu,” she breathed.
I raised an eyebrow and smirked. “I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” I rumbled.
But she smiled. “I called the cops when I was driving up the block. Told them I suspected I had an intruder in my house.”
She bit her lip as adrenaline flooded my system.
She was lying.
She had to be.
I leaned into her ear, letting my voice drop into the abyss. “You trying to piss me off, Bridget?”
“No,” she whispered. “You said I could fight. In fact… you encouraged it.”
Then she lifted her right hand, the one that had been clenched into a fist when she was on the path outside, and something metallic flashed in it.
Instinctively, I shot my free hand out to clamp her wrist and slammed her hand into the car.
She gasped with pain, but even though the little remote tumbled out of her grip, it was too late.
A warm light flickered on overhead and I ducked my face against her shoulder as the garage door creaked, then began to rattle slowly down.
I was still cursing about being in the light when she started squeezing words out of a clenched jaw because I still had her head pinned against the car.
“If you studied my notes on the plans you know all the external doors in this house are combination locks. You w-wont get in or out without the code. You’ve got about twenty seconds before the gap under the big door gets too small for you to fit,” she said through her teeth, because I had her head pressed against the car. “You could break a window, I suppose. But there’s only about a minute before the cops show up. I dialed the number, but didn’t talk after I told them someone was here, and didn’t disconnect the call. Their procedure is to send a unit no more than five minutes after the start of an open call.”
“You’re just trying to—”
“Look at my phone in my pocket.” Then she arched her back a hair, bumping me with her ass. “It’s right there.”
Vixen. I growled a warning to her, but slid a hand between us slowly, I reached into her back pocket to find the phone locked, but there was an active-call notification at the top with the scrolling words…
EMERGENCY CALL
My blood ran cold as I hurriedly hit the end-call button, then pressed her harder against the car.
“Tell me you’re joking, Bridget,” I hissed.
She shook her head, then snorted again and there was an edge of hysteria in it. “Not joking. Just fighting. The best way I know how.”
I stood there, frozen in shock—and admiration—for about three seconds. The garage door was about halfway down, and she wasn’t joking that pretty soon the gap under it would be too small for my frame.
Then the soft glow of car lights appeared, growing closer from somewhere down the street.
Shit. Shit.
I didn’t entirely believe that she’d done it—but the risk of being trapped in her house when the Police arrived was too great. Bridget wanted this—wanted the services I offered. But she was quick and reckless, and completely unintimidated by authority.
She wouldn’t give a fuck about possibly getting charged with wasting Police resources. But I gave a great many fucks about being caught by law enforcement in a strange woman’s house.
I hissed a curse, then shoved away from her as she gave an unhinged laugh. I dove for the gap under that garage door and rolled underneath it just in time, then straight to my feet, sprinting into the front yard because there was a hedge for cover from those lights that had almost reached the driveway, and were slowing.
Vaulting the neighbor’s fence, then turning immediately to follow it to the back of their house, where no lights were shining, I turned at a right angle with the fence, then up and over the six-footer on the other side of the house and through that neighbor’s property, too.
Five minutes later, finally certain I hadn’t been seen and wasn’t being pursued, I crept out of the bushes around a house two blocks away, yanked the mask from my face and ran a hand through my hair to straighten it as I stuffed the wad of thin material into my pocket.
I took a long time to circle back to my car, keeping eyes and ears alert for law enforcement, though I avoided the streets that took the most direct route to her house from the highway.
By the time I reached my vehicle and got inside, my heart rate had almost returned to normal.
I sat there for a long time, parked under a huge maple that had to be twenty years old, and whose branches extended halfway over the street, blocking out the streetlights and casting the car into deep shadows that would keep me safely out of sight.
And then I breathed.
And stared at the street ahead, and in the rearview mirror, always checking just in case. But there was nothing. Just a quiet, suburban street, hiding a monster.
Sliding my hand into my pocket, I pulled out her phone, turned it to airplane mode, then completely off, before I sat there, staring at it, stroking the face of it with my thumb, imagining her looking for it.
Bridget was going to be my best hunt yet. She was fearless and wicked. And a clever bitch.
But not as clever as me.
Then I started laughing.