Chapter 6 #2
“I could say the same about you and Ash.” I look up to find Ash sitting with his back to the wall, his left hand resting on the cat’s shiny black head. He offers me a slow, lazy wink that I don’t despise. He doesn’t care about the BJ. Only I do.
“Building’s clear,” Bohnes interjects, reappearing from the back rooms with his hands tucked into the pockets of his white hoodie. His boots are loud on the old tile floors, purposeful. A warning. His eyes are on the blade in Jack’s hand.
“I haven’t petted a cat in years. Aspen would’ve killed it if he’d seen. Isn’t that right, neko-chan?” Ash invites the kitten into his hood, laughing as it disappears into the shadows of the fabric.
Once he starts laughing, he seems to have trouble stopping.
Jack sprays my hair down with some water before making the first cut with the razor.
I bite my lip. Yep. I’m in it.
I don’t recognize myself in the mirror.
A smirk destroys my mouth. Aw, fuck. Much better. Scarlett’s going to flip when she sees this haircut.
“My take on the modern wolf cut.” Jack lights up another cigarette, crosses his arms, and peers past me at my reflection. “You wear it well, man.” He looks over at Ash, still preoccupied with the kitten for reasons even hard-knock Jack probably can’t fully comprehend. “You next then?”
“Oh.” Ash stands up, holding the cat in his arms. “Do you know what a Korean leaf cut is?”
“Some stupid-ass posh version of the middle part.” Jack shakes his head, shrugs. “But if that’s what you want…”
“It’s what I want,” Ash agrees, swapping places with me. I scoot to the side, using another mirror to study my hair. A little bit of bang. Some feathering at the back. Short. Messy. With a nice, sharp shave and fresh hair, I’m a new man.
“First time picking your own haircut?” I guess, ignoring Bohnes as he peers over my shoulder to stare into the mirror.
There’s a flash there, a strike of steel.
He might not find me handsome, but he knows that Scarlett will.
Alexei is smug about it, like he’s responsible for the cut itself and not just the suggestion. Hah.
Ash thinks on my question for a moment.
“I’m not sure I’d have survived to adulthood if I’d had a different haircut than Aspen.” Ash studies himself in the mirror and—
Scuuuuuff. Like a shoe against cement.
I go very, very still. I definitely heard something just now. Ash, too. He’s stopped moving, cocking his head to the side to listen. He places the kitten gently on the counter.
“Aw, fuck,” Jack groans, ducking behind the chair and lighting up another cigarette. He’s been here, seen this before. Knows best to stay out of it. The old man near the front holds up a newspaper as a flimsy alibi.
“Visitors.” Alexei frowns as he unscrews the cap on his metal thimble, the one with the frog poison in it.
Warning.
My hackles go up as Bohnes grabs my left hand, slipping me one of the long, sharp shaving razors they use here. All manual, nothing electric. It flips open like a switchblade.
“I’ll take the back door,” he tells me as Ash flows from that chair like water, snatching up the samurai sword and ramming it forward—right into the man stepping through the front door.
The blade runs through the intruder’s stomach and then Ash turns, dragging the guy’s body along with the blade.
He whips the steel out of the wound he created, spattering blood across the front of the old man’s newspaper and making the kitten hiss, its hair standing up along the curve of its arched back.
The goon staggers forward, collapsing to his knees.
Scarlett. I’m on my way to her when several men burst through both the front and back doors at the same time.
Alexei grabs one by the back of the neck with long fingers, like he’s snagging a puppy by the scruff.
The sharp metal nail of his thimble grazes the guy’s skin before he’s tossed into a shelf of shampoo.
Bottles scatter across the floor, crushed under scrambling feet as the men rush us. Smells crisp, like sage and pine.
Ash expertly severs a man’s arm, showering himself with blood that Alexei manages to avoid by stealing an umbrella from the stand near the door.
He opens it with a snap and blocks the fluids with the spinning black canopy.
Closes it again just as quickly and then uses the pointed metal tip to nail the dude who’s crawling through the window in the forehead, knocking him back outside and onto the hood of the junker.
Hold on, princess, I’m comin’. I swing the blade I was given across another man’s neck, soaking myself in a spray of red.
I’ve got my gun tucked in the back of my jeans, but it’s close quarters in here.
I don’t want to accidentally shoot the other guys.
The employees. Send a stray bullet through the wall while Scar’s getting her nails done.
The silver flashes in my hand as I spin, finding a man with a gun of his own.
He collapses before he can pull the trigger, foaming at the mouth from Alexei’s poison.
A hulking beast of a dude rushes me, so I meet his momentum, snagging his arm and throwing him forward into a mirror.
It shatters against his face as I grab him by the hair and shove his head down, right into the warm water basin Jack used to shave me.
“Ash,” I say, and then I step aside. His blade comes down, cutting the man across the back and leaving him to slump lifelessly into the reddening water.
I duck down as the next assailant lunges with a knife that ends up in his dead buddy’s back instead of mine.
Throwing myself at the knifer’s leg, I drag him to the floor.