Chapter 3
Asher
“Could you have been more obvious?” Gable asks.
I’m still staring at the closed door, a shit-eating grin on my face. How long was Ella here? Five minutes? Ten? I look at my bandaged arm, my hand still warm from her touch, my heart still beating ridiculously fast over a woman I’ve just met. But I can’t help it.
I hadn’t caught sight of her when she’d burst into the apartment.
I was too preoccupied making sure Barnaby’s legs were out of the doorway before I slammed the bedroom door closed, plunging myself into relative darkness, listening to the two of them argue.
I’d spotted the bloody pawprints on Barnaby’s bedroom floor just as I heard Ella mention Motor might be bleeding, had whipped out my knife and drawn it across my own arm without thinking twice, because I knew Gable’s first reaction would be the worst one—dispose of the witness.
Aka murder number two. So, I’d emerged from the bedroom, blood dripping across my forearm, but the pain was forgotten when I glimpsed Ella.
My first thought?
I didn’t have any.
I know I spoke, because I’d recognized my own voice coming out of my mouth. But I must have been on autopilot, too busy taking in everything about her to have any kind of rational thought at all.
I remember my first real crush. I was eight.
Candy Stevens, a neighbor to one of the many foster homes I’d lived in.
She’d given me a spare pack of Pokémon cards and I’d vowed to marry her that day.
But I’d been moved to another foster home a few weeks later.
I still remember the feeling of her handing over the cards, the blush on her cheeks, and how much I’d completely fumbled over every word I said and how I’d thought of the best things to say three days later.
The butterflies, the sweating, the racing heart, the need to escape the situation but also replay it all at the same time.
That childhood crush hit me hard, but I’d never felt anything close to that reaction later in life.
Until the tiny brunette in the living room.
She was maybe a smidge over five foot four, with long dark hair, and the biggest, most astonishing blue eyes. Perfect lips. Flawless skin. And when she saw my arm, she seemed genuinely concerned.
I don’t truly believe in love—not that kind of love, anyway. I know I love Gable; we’re brothers in the ways that count, and I’d die for him in a second. But romantic love? It seems too fluffy.
But with a dead body in the other room, and blood dripping down my arm, I’m fairly sure I fell in love with Ella.
What a shame I have to kill her.
Gable snaps his fingers in front of me. “Hey, douchebag. Stop dipping into the wank bank while I’m standing right here.”
I blink at Gable, acutely aware that I’m still smiling. “What was the question?”
“I said”—he claps for every word—“could. You. Have. Been. More. Obvious?”
“About what?”
Gable wets a kitchen towel and calls Motor over, kneeling to wash the blood off the dog's paws. “About how much you want to bone the brunette!”
“Ella.”
Gable frowns, trying to tackle cleaning Motor’s paws while the dog licks his face. “What?”
“Her name is Ella,” I say. “She’s fucking cute though, right?”
More than cute. Beautiful. Ravishing.
I need a fucking thesaurus.
“Bad i-fucking-dea to bone a target,” Gable says. “And why did you say we’re staying here? Did your blood rush to your dick that fast?”
That was a momentary lapse on my part. It made sense to go along with the story about Barnaby’s mom being sick—although we don’t know if Mrs. Fisher is even alive, but it seemed better than “actually, Barnaby’s throat is slit in the other room, so he’s busy.”
“We have to look for the hard drive, anyway,” I say. “It buys us time. We can stay here, get rid of Barnaby, find the hard drive, and …” I shrug, as casually as possible. “Explore the city.”
“Explore the crevices of the neighbor, more like.”
I pull a face. “Crevices? Really?” I stand and look at my arm, flexing my hand. It’s starting to throb. The things I do to save beautiful women. “Besides, she knows Barnaby; maybe she knows about the hard drive. We find out what she knows, we kill her, job done.”
The hard drive. The item that doubles our pay if we deliver it, along with confirming Barnaby’s death.
We have no idea what’s on it, and that’s the way it’ll stay.
Whatever information ended up in the hands of Barnaby Fisher is important enough for him to be assigned a bounty of fifty grand, one that popped up on my radar a little over two days ago, and I’d snatched at the chance to get it.
A hundred grand would be the perfect final job.
Barnaby had been easy to find, easier to kill, but had claimed to know nothing about a hard drive and had sobbed, begging for his life for three hours before Gable lost his temper and his patience and killed him.
I can’t blame him. The apartment was disgusting; Gable hates mess and had been antsy the moment we walked into the place.
The second Barnaby was dead, Gable had started organizing boxes to recycle.
“What makes you so sure she’d know where it is?” Gable asks, balling up the bloodied kitchen towel and tossing it into the trash.
“Because there’s a reason they want her dead, too.”
Ella’s bounty had popped up hours ago, and we’d taken the job simply for the ease of it, given she lives upstairs.
Gable leans against the kitchen counter, folding his arms. “What about her cop boyfriend?”
I grin. “Please, he’s already halfway out the picture. I’ll swoop in. I enjoy swooping.”
My foster brother narrows his eyes at me, likely seeing through my facade. Sure, it makes sense to stay, but I also think I’ll enjoy a little one-on-one time with Ella.
“Fine, we’ll stay a few days,” Gable says. “But only because I spent so long cleaning this place. I don’t know what pisses me off more: the fact he didn’t tell us where the drive is or how fucking messy he was.”
Knowing Gable, it’s the latter.