Chapter 13
KIERA
The first thing I saw when I got inside was my beautiful dove-gray chenille couch. The poor prima donna had been flipped upside down and slashed open.
The pillow I’d used two nights ago, when I’d been too worked up to sleep in my bed, lay limp on the floor—also slashed—with its feather guts everywhere.
The desk where I edited my videos was ransacked. The contents of every drawer, dumped. My computer monitor lay prone on the floor, its screen likely smashed.
The only bright spot in any of this: None of the girls seemed to notice that my apartment was completely dry.
“I guess it’s good they didn’t steal your TV or computer,” Parvati said, obviously looking for her own bright spot. “But why break into a stranger’s apartment just to toss it?”
I had some pretty good ideas. Like one hundred thousand of them. I stepped outside to collect the contents of my packages, picking a sweater, scarf, and two handbags out of the bushes.
Maybe this was weird, but holding them gave me some modicum of comfort. I breathed slowly, trying to steady my heart.
Elli pulled her phone out of her pocket. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess who she was calling, and it only took a second for Lukas to answer.
“Lukas?” She put the call on speaker. “I’m at Kiera’s, and there’s a big problem.”
Silence, except for the sounds of a noisy bar behind him. Then Lukas’s voice filled my living room. “Babe. Don’t be mad at her.”
I clutched my pretty new things even tighter to my chest and gave up on trying to steady my heart. I held my breath.
Elli’s face scrunched up in irritation. “Why would I be mad at Kiera? Didn’t you hear me? There’s a big problem. Someone has trashed her apartment.”
“What?” Lukas asked, and I could practically hear his brain recalibrating.
“The door was open when we got here,” Elli explained. “Furniture’s turned over and stabbed like someone was trying to kill it.”
Or like someone was trying to find where I’d hidden the spoils of their criminal acts.
“Drawers emptied onto the floor,” Elli said, sounding madder the more she talked. “The kitchen… Shit.”
I glanced toward my kitchen. I hadn’t even gone in there yet. Boxes of pasta and cereal, a bag of flour, everything had been thrown out of the pantry and onto the floor.
But worst of all, my petal-pink, vintage inspired, perfect toast-and-happiness-making toaster was smashed to smithereens.
Now, why did those animals have to go and do that?
“Babe, you need to get out of there,” Lukas ordered.
“We’re calling the police,” Elli replied.
“Great,” he said. “Good. But get out of there first.”
“This is outrageous!” Elli cried.
“Babe,” Lukas repeated, and I heard the growl rumbling up his throat.
“Kiera?” Parvati called from the living room where she and Amy were flipping my couch back onto its feet.
“What?” I had to drag my focus away from my poor little toaster.
Parvati’s dark eyes were wide, and she was staring just past me toward my front door. “Were you expecting someone?”
I whirled, assuming it would be Sean. He was with Lukas. It wasn’t a stretch to think he’d heard Lukas on the phone, so of course Sean would tilt right into the middle of the scene.
But it wasn’t Sean.
It was a man I’d never seen before. He wasn’t dark and slick like Bleu de Chanel Bodega Man. This guy was tall, buff, with thick blond hair and several scary looking scars around his throat and collar bone, like he’d been stabbed and slashed.
Much like my couch.
I suddenly remembered Braden’s phone call. The one I’d declined just a couple of hours ago. Had he been trying to warn me?
“You guys,” I said slowly to the girls, trying to keep everyone calm. “Go.”
Honestly, I didn’t understand why they weren’t already hightailing it out of there. This was my problem. They didn’t need to face it with me.
“You,” Elli whispered.
I slid my eyes toward her, not understanding her response.
“Me,” the man confirmed.
My eyes sliced back to him
“From the warehouse,” Elli said.
“Shit!” Lukas barked through the phone line. Elli had left him on speaker.
I didn’t know what warehouse Elli was talking about, but the man sure seemed to. He smiled a very white, straight-toothed smile.
“Kiera, sorry to say…” Jen emerged from the hall that led to my bedroom. “But your bed’s a disas—” She stopped dead.
The man pulled the gun that I just knew he’d have on him and said, “I think you know why I’m here.”
“Because you’re an idiot who didn’t learn his lesson?” Elli asked, which I thought was equal parts confusing, bad ass, and stupid. Did we really need to provoke this guy?
And what the hell was she talking about?
“I don’t know why you’re here,” Jen said, putting one hand on her hip.
The hand-on-the-hip thing seemed like a particularly risky move, and since when did everyone turn into attitude girls with death wishes?
“I want the money,” he said.
“Here.” Amy grabbed her purse off the floor. “I don’t have much, but—”
“Not that money,” the man snapped, and his eyes came to me. “Where’s the bag?”
“I don’t have it.” A chill rushed through me, and goosebumps skittered down my arms.
There was a high-pitched pop, and Amy screamed. But it wasn’t a gun going off.
Most of the Spriggans’ original starting lineup—Sean, Lukas, Will, Rafe, and Bjorn—were standing in the center of my living room, the tilters (Rafe and Sean) having transported the non-tilters (Lukas, Will, and Bjorn) right into the conflict.
If the numbers hadn’t been on our side before, they certainly were now. My fear faded, replaced by righteous indignation. I was ready to rip this guy to shreds, just like he’d done to my couch and petal-pink toaster.
But I didn’t get the chance.
Lukas threw Elli over his shoulder and ran outside.
Will, Bjorn, and Rafe rushed past me, a dark blur of muscle, heading straight for the intruder.
This time the gun did go off, but the trio was on him so fast, the man’s arm had angled up, and the bullet lodged in my ceiling.
Sheetrock dust sifted over me as Sean grabbed me around the middle, said, “Sorry about this,” and everything went as black as Audrey Hepburn’s LBD.