Chapter 7
Chloe: Here is this week’s safety briefing. Do not add to the population. Do not subtract from the population. Do not end up in the emergency room, the tabloids, or jail. If you do end up in jail, establish dominance immediately.
Chase: Keep arms and legs inside the cart at all times.
Chase: Wait, that’s something different.
Zeke: Roger that.
Mia: Heard.
Chase: You’re probably the most likely to do all of those things, Chloe.
Chloe: Who said I wasn’t talking to myself?
CHASE
“Are you sure this is the right building?” Glancing up at the cracked bricks beneath a network of fire escape ladders doesn’t fill me with confidence.
Ratty vines creep across the brickwork, curling over metal bars and splintered wooden window ledges.
Not the decorative kind, more an untamed weed run rampant.
“Yes,” Pepper snaps, marching away from me across the street, ignoring the honk of a cab driver who has to slam on his brakes.
The Hole is an aptly named, low-lying area in Queens.
The faint serenade of a police siren somewhere around the block mashes with bassy music leaking from a cracked window on the second floor of the apartment building.
Half the windows are boarded, and the building next door looks abandoned, wearing a patchwork quilt of graffiti tags.
I glance back down at the woman storming away from me with a dramatic hip sway just in time to see her flip the cab driver a middle finger. Sighing, I follow across the road, holding a hand up in silent apology at the driver now making an obscene gesture back at her.
“I don’t think this is it,” I reiterate as I catch her up, watching her impatiently hold a finger onto the trade access buzzer.
“You’re particularly familiar with this neighborhood, are you?
” She looks around pointedly at the unsavory arrangement and then back at me.
The challenge in dark eyes beneath slashes of dark eyebrows is the kind that I expect to see on a professional boxer at weigh-in.
Which seems to be her default setting when I’m around.
I roll my eyes, conceding her point, but that wasn’t what I meant. “No, but they have these things called satellites nowadays and they produce images of—”
“Yes, I'm well aware what a satellite is.” She huffs in dismissal, jamming her finger again onto the trade access button and muttering. “No need to mansplain.”
I give up, but what I had been trying to explain, albeit sarcastically, is that the Google Earth image of this building looked totally different.
Shaking back my sleeve, I check my watch.
Eight p.m. is maybe too late for the button that allows couriers or tradespeople into the building without being granted access by a tenant.
“It’s called sarcasm. Try buzzing an apartment at random. ”
“Won’t work, tried that the first time,” she grumbles, pivoting around so fast her silvery pink hair whorls with her like the opalescent silk of a ball gown.
My brows raise as I watch her stride a few steps away and then turn to frown up at the dilapidated three-story building.
She’s equally as perplexing to me now as the two other times I’ve met her, in a tan leather bomber jacket and what looks like a long wool dress beneath it, slit up one side to show a flash of rich ochre calf and chunky black boots covered in a pattern of delicate leaves.
And not only because she wears quirky clothes or does unexpected things—like how she now lifts her hand to her mouth and blows a piercing whistle—but because she’s…
Well, she’s just so different to any woman I’ve ever met.
The closest I can get to capturing it is that she seems to march to the beat of her own drum.
The bassy music pauses and the corner of her plush lips curl smugly. “What!” a male voice hollers from somewhere above.
“Can you let me in? I forgot my keys!” she shouts back, holding both her empty hands up in a sheepish shrug that’s purely for show.
There is no response, but within a second or two, the music is blaring again and the door at my back buzzes noisily.
Pepper grins, turning her attention back to me.
And I don’t move. I can’t fucking move. The flash of a smile which is pure satisfaction roots my feet to the floor, something utterly foreign sitting on my chest like an anvil.
Her glittering chocolate eyes scrunch at the corners, and a small laugh tumbles from her lips as she jogs the short distance back to me.
Beautiful. Captivating. And…so not my type. What the hell am I playing at?
“What are you waiting for, Bozo?!” She snatches me swiftly out of whatever bizarre spiral I’ve fallen into with the insult, breezing right past me in a cloud of sweetly scented air and pulling open the door before the entry buzzer dies.
“Bozo?” I repeat incredulously as she disappears through the door, catching it before it can slam in my face and then going in after her.
Dank, moldy stench fills my nose, causing it to wrinkle.
One cracked strip light splashes a harsh glare onto bare concrete walls, illuminating a wall of metal mailboxes to the left and a singular staircase hugging the right-hand side of the small room.
Old, damp fliers litter the floor, mulched into barely recognizable shapes by careless shoes.
She completely ignores me and starts taking the stairs two at a time, the thick rubber soles on her boots clomping off the walls.
This chick is unbelievable. She seems intent on disregarding even the most basic level of courtesy when it comes to me.
And I’ll be honest, it pisses me off. I’ve never met a woman I’m so intrigued by, yet so annoyed by at the same time.
I follow, keeping a measured few steps down from her as we scale two flights of concrete stairs.
The sound of a TV blaring from inside one apartment tangles with a baby’s cries in another.
Dogs bark and a spiced cooking aroma mixes with an unpleasant bouquet that I can’t quite put my finger on—until I see the stain on the concrete in one corner.
Purposefully turning away from the stale urine, I watch Pepper pause outside a door and dig into her jacket pocket. When her hand re-emerges, she hunches over the door handle so I can’t see what she’s doing. The lock clicks and the heavy door swings open to reveal a gloomy hallway.
“You have a key?” I lift one brow, taking in the Chinese calendar hanging crooked on the wall just inside the apartment door.
“Nope, bobby pins.” She flounces in like she owns the place, flicking on the light to reveal a bare hallway of laminate flooring.
I don’t move, my brow creasing into a frown. She realizes I’m not following and spins to look at me. The amber fluorescents of the strip light cast her hair into vivid sunset colors. Confusion knits her brow and exasperation places a neat little bow on top.
“We can’t just break and enter.” It stumps me that she just picked a lock and let herself in so easily. Fuck, I’m actually quite impressed—not that I’ll tell her that. “We should get the super or something.”
She throws back her head and laughs, loud and free, the maniacal sound bouncing off the cramped walls.
“Not only is he privileged, he’s also scared of breaking the law.
” She pairs the last three words with a baby voice, lifting one closed fist to her eyes and twisting it back and forth to imitate crying.
“Yeah, and how did breaking the law go for you last time?” I drawl without missing a beat, sliding my hands into my suit pants pockets.
The swift abandon of the gloating expression drawn onto her angular face gives me immense satisfaction. “There isn’t a super in a building like this, moron.”
She turns and storms away into the dark apartment. I follow without real thought, my frustration with this woman growing with every casual insult she flings my way. With every inch of hatred she throws for no reason. “What is your problem, lady?”
“My problem, asshole, is that I’m wasting my precious spare time coming here again because you are an egotistical maniac who throws stupid fashion parties for stupid fucking shoes!
” She throws her hands up in frustration, her deep chocolate eyes trained on me in a scowl.
The set of her jaw, the scrunch of her eyes in the corners, and the curled top lip—hatred. Pure and hot.
“You literally called me… Wait, what?” I take a step back as her rant sinks in. “What are you on about, fashion parties for shoes?”
“Oh, never mind!” she snaps, turning away to glare at the bare living room we have ended up in like it also did her some unfathomable disservice.
An armchair, a table with one wooden chair, and an empty TV stand is all it contains.
“I just don’t like you, okay? And I don’t have to,” she mutters, folding her arms.
I huff out an incredulous half-laugh, half-scoff. “Can’t say I’m too fond of you either, sweetheart, but that’s tough shit because we made a deal.”
“Don’t I fucking know it.” She marches over to the small kitchen diner and plonks herself down on the chair with folded arms. The force of it knocks the chair into the table slightly and an empty soda can rolls off. The hollow clatter of it hitting checkered linoleum accents the air.
I turn away, scrubbing a hand across my jaw in frustration and vacantly note that the clock on the wall isn’t working.
It’s one of those old-fashioned clocks that has the date on them too.
Judging by the numbers frozen in time, no one has been here for months.
Or if they have, they didn’t care to change the batteries.
A petulant sigh brings my trail of thought back to the incensing woman behind me.
Just get through this fucking deal, Walker, and then she’s out of your hair forever.
Would I have helped her if I had known she would grate on me this much?
Unlikely. What’s more plausible is that I would have left her to rot in that interview room.
I’m self-aware enough to know that something about her unprovoked hatred of me strikes a little too close to home. Only one other person hates me like that, also for no apparent reason—my own brother.
In that moment, I decide not to give her the satisfaction of rising to it, exactly like with Mason. I suck in a sharp breath through my nose, embrace thoughts of peace and serenity, then address her.
“Look, you don’t have to like me,” I throw over my shoulder in a carefully measured tone. “You just have to find the person we are looking for and then we go our separate ways.”
“Thank god.”
Ignoring her catty remark, I continue, “The least we can do is be civil.”
A few seconds stretch by and then I hear a small grunt-like noise followed by, “Fine.”