Chapter 10 Ever
CHAPTER TEN
EVER
Reva asks for a killer like he’s part of a secret Starbucks menu.
People for hire.
Her voice doesn’t shake, but her fingers tremble as she wipes the bar and refuses to look at either of us.
Shiloh’s expression stays easy while his eyes go sharp. The words fall from my lips without thought.
Training’s over.
I’m not even really sure what I mean by them. Am I firing her, right after I hired her? I don’t know. No…I can’t do that—we’re supposed to keep an eye on her, so that won’t work.
I just know she needs to leave, now, so I can process.
We need to wrap our heads around this. I know we were asked to watch over her, but asking for Midnight… I’m not sure Nash knows that’s why she’s down here.
Reva’s face changes. It’s nothing dramatic, just a small, controlled break like something inside her slips but she doesn’t want to let it show.
She licks her lips, then nods once and picks up that knapsack she carries around with her from where she stashed it behind the bar.
Then she leaves.
The bell over the door jingles, and the sound makes me want to break something.
I step out from behind the bar before I’ve decided to. Shiloh’s already moving too, wiping his hands on a towel, eyes tracking the door.
“Well, this changes things,” he mutters.
“Never should’ve opened the door without the whole story.”
“Eh…Nash tells us to keep an eye out, we keep an eye out,” he says. “We just—all of us—needed to know from the start that she wanted to hire Midnight. That’s…”
He reaches behind his head, scratches the base of his neck.
“It’s not a small detail,” I finish for him. “We need to know for who. Why.”
“Right.”
Because we both felt the room move the second she said it. She wasn’t fishing. Not really. She was looking to open a door, a very specific one.
And if she’s looking for that door, it means one of two things—she’s desperate enough to get herself killed.
Or she’s dangerous enough to get us killed with her.
I glance around. Sonny and a few other staff are still in the building—laughing, cleaning, counting tips. Too many curious ears.
“Tell Sonny to lock up behind us,” I tell Shiloh.
His brow lifts. “Now?”
“Now. We still have a job to do.”
He doesn’t argue. He grabs his keys, murmurs a few quiet words to Sonny, then falls into step beside me.
We push outside together.
Reva is already halfway down the sidewalk, headed toward the city parking lot most of us use to avoid cluttering up the small one close by the restaurant/bar.
There’s zero urgency in her pace. She’s not hurrying away, running like she’s upset or rattled by what just took place. She’s just…leaving.
Shiloh leans close as we fall in behind her, a good distance away, voice low. “You know what she was asking for.”
“Well, there is only one fucking Midnight.”
His jaw tightens.
There are rules to this work. Hard ones. Rules that keep you breathing.
First rule: you don’t work for anyone you don’t know, or at least without knowing who sent them. You don’t take a job without the story. Without the target. Without the why.
Not knowing everything is how you end up in the ground.
Reva doesn’t know that. Or she does, and she doesn’t care. Either way, it’s a problem.
“She’s lying,” Shiloh says, eyes on her back.
“Obviously.”
“She’s not running from a boyfriend.”
“Well, duh.”
Shiloh exhales through his nose. “So why come here with some bullshit story that we’re bound to see right through? Even if we didn’t have the information we had from Cal, we’d see through that.”
I don’t answer. Because the truth is: I don’t know. And I don’t like not knowing.
Reva turns a corner and disappears for a second. Shiloh quickens his pace.
“Ever,” he warns.
“I see her.”
She’s heading toward a parking lot, cutting between two buildings. Her shoulders are hunched. Her backpack rides high on her spine like a child’s, making her look even smaller and more vulnerable. Unarmored.
“She shouldn’t be out here walking alone. The Quarter…after midnight. Fucking reckless.”
Shiloh grunts something that might be agreement.
She reaches her Explorer. It’s old. Battered. Out of place here among the iron-filigreed balconies, painted buildings, and cobblestoned streets. Shiloh’s truck sits at the other end of the lot, its dark paint swallowed by the night.
We pause, waiting as she digs in her pocket for keys, fumbles once, then jerks the door open and climbs inside. For a minute she sits there without moving, then she jerks in the front seat, arms flailing, almost like she’s pitching a fit.
“Oh, she’s mad,” Shiloh murmurs, a current of humor underlining the statement.
Her horn gives a squawk, as if to echo the sentiment, and is abruptly silenced. Behind the windshield, her body goes still. She reaches up and smooths her hair with both palms, then starts the engine.
We give her a second, then continue on. We reach his truck and slide in just as her brake lights flare. He starts the engine with a quick glance in my direction.
“We’re following, right?”
“Duh.”
He pulls out smooth and easy, keeping his distance. Not close enough to spook her, but not far enough to lose her.
Reva drives like a woman who’s tired. Not careless, just…human. She stops too long at lights. Misses a turn signal once. Her posture stays tight, but she doesn’t look around like she’s expecting danger.
That’s a problem. Here she is wanting someone to kill a person for her, but she’s not anticipating danger?
Reva turns off Toulouse, then off Bourbon, then off anything that looks like a postcard. The streets thin. The light changes. The Quarter turns meaner at the edges, like the city is shrugging off its costume.
She drives until the buildings get low and tired, then turns into a lot that reeks of weed and week-old garbage.
A neon VACANCY sign flickers. Your classic no-name motel, its doors opening out to the parking lot. Curtains that don’t fully close.
The kind of place you don’t bring a date.
The kind of place you don’t bring yourself unless you don’t know better…or you’re running.
I curse under my breath. “This is where she’s staying? Jesus, Reva.”
Shiloh kills the headlights and rolls to a stop across the lot, angled so we can see her door.
Reva parks near the stairwell. Gets out with her backpack slung over one shoulder. She doesn’t carry a suitcase. Doesn’t look like she’s staying long.
Or like she has much.
She walks up the stairs with a tired kind of determination—eyes down, hair falling forward, one hand gripping the strap of her bag like it’s an anchor.
Shiloh’s voice drops. “You still think she can handle herself?”
I don’t answer. I point, instead, and open the door. Two men step out of the shadow near the vending machine.
They don’t strike me as staff or guests. Not anyone here to sleep. And I don’t like the way they’re watching Reva—purposefully.
Reva reaches her door and starts fumbling with the keycard. Even from here, I can tell it isn’t working properly. She scans, works the doorknob, pushes into the door with her shoulder, and cusses. Her shoulders lift and fall in a sigh and she repeats the sequence.
She glances over her shoulder and sees the men. One of them says something, too far away for me to make out.
Her breath catches—I can see it from here, the slight hitch, the stall. She turns back to the door and her hand shakes.
The keycard slips and falls to the concrete floor.
One of the men laughs—I can hear that. They start up the stairs.
Shiloh is out of the truck before I finish inhaling. I move, too. We take the stairs hard and fast, boots pounding, the sound of it swallowing everything else.
Reva bends to grab the keycard. One of the men reaches for her shoulder. She flinches instinctively and shoves backward, swinging her backpack like a shield. It barely does anything.
Shiloh hits the first guy from the side with his shoulder, slamming him into the railing. The man grunts, stumbles, tries to swing.
Shiloh’s fist lands. Once. Twice.
The second man turns toward me, smiling now, like this is fun. I grab him by the collar and drive him into the wall. Hard. He spits something filthy.
I hit him. Not to kill, although for the first time in a while, I actually want to kill. My nerves are singing with a kind of twisted fury, and I have to restrain myself, temper my justice. To simply end it, instead of ending him.
He folds.
Shiloh is already on the first guy, putting him down with efficient violence that doesn’t look like rage. It looks like the habit we’ve honed together for years.
Reva stands frozen by her door, backpack clutched to her chest, eyes wide and shining. Her mouth is open but no sound comes out.
She doesn’t scream. Doesn’t call for help. She just…stares. She looks young in that moment. Not childish. Just unprotected. Like the world is too close.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Shiloh asks the guy under his fist.
The man laughs through blood. “Same thing you are.”
Shiloh’s smile goes sharp. “Wrong.”
He hits him again, then lets him drop like dead weight.
I keep my grip on the second guy long enough to make sure he’s done fighting, then shove him down the stairs. He tumbles and lands hard at the bottom, groaning.
The lot goes quiet around the noise. Somebody’s curtain twitches. A TV blares faintly through thin walls. Nobody comes out. Nobody intervenes.
That’s what places like this teach you: mind your business and you’ll be okay.
Reva finally finds her voice. “Why…what are you doing here?”
Shiloh wipes blood off his knuckles on his jeans like it’s nothing. “You’re welcome.”
“I didn’t—” she starts, then stops, eyes darting down the stairs like she expects more men to appear. “I didn’t ask you to follow me.”
“We didn’t follow you because we’re bored,” I say.
Her gaze snaps to me. Sharp. Accusing. Then it softens—just a fraction—like she’s trying to make sense of why two men from a bar would be on her motel stairs at midnight.
Shiloh steps closer. “You asked the wrong question tonight.”
Reva swallows. Her fingers dig into the strap of her backpack until her knuckles bleach.
I reach down, pick up her dropped keycard, and swipe it at the door.
Green. Click.
Reva flinches. “What are you doing?”
“Opening your door,” I say.
“You can’t—”
“I just did,” I interrupt, and then I push the door open.
The motel room is exactly what I expected. Cheap. Small. Barely clean. A thin bedspread. A flickering lamp. The smell of bleach trying to hide other things.
Reva stands in the doorway, half a second from bolting.
Shiloh nudges her gently—only it isn’t gentle. It’s decisive. “Get your things.”
“My things?” Her voice cracks on the word.
“You’re not staying here,” I say.
“I already paid—”
“And you’ll pay again if you stay here,” Shiloh cuts in. “In blood, if you’re lucky. In something worse, if you’re not.”
Reva’s face goes pale under her golden skin. She blinks hard, then steps into the room and drops her keys on the nightstand.
She grabs her backpack off her shoulder, checks it, then snatches a charger from the nightstand and shoves it inside. A slightly larger duffel. A hoodie from the chair.
That’s it. It’s not much.
Shiloh watches her, half with impatience, half with something like restraint. “That all?”
Reva’s chin lifts. “It’s enough.”
She moves past us toward the door like she’s going to walk right back down the stairs and into her Explorer out of spite. I stop her by taking her keys off the nightstand before she can and tossing them to Shiloh over her head.
Her head whips toward me. “Give those back.”
“No.”
Her eyes flash. “Excuse me?”
“You can bitch at me later,” I say. “Right now, you’re coming with us. We’ll get your piece of shit Ford later.”
“I’m not going anywhere—”
“You are,” Shiloh says, voice gone cold. “Because you don’t have the first idea what you’ve stepped into.”
“I understand plenty—”
“No,” I cut in, and my tone is flat because flat is safer than everything I’m feeling right now. I motion toward the parking lot and Shiloh’s truck. “You don’t. Now get in the fucking truck before I make you. And trust me, Reva, I really want to make you.”
Reva’s breathing goes shallow. Her gaze flicks toward the stairs. Toward the parking lot. Toward the spot where those men came from.
Reality catches up in small bites.
She swallows again. “Where are you taking me?”
Shiloh opens the door. “Home.”
“But I barely know you.”
“That’s true,” Shiloh says. “And yet here we are. You’re coming with us.”
After another moment of indecision, Reva steps out onto the walkway, still clutching her bag. Shiloh goes behind her. I go in front.
“I’m only doing this because I want to,” she snips. “You’re not making me do anything I don’t want to do.”
Shiloh twists his head to look first at her, then at me over her head. The spark in his eyes could be construed as amusement if you didn’t know him.
I know him.
“That’s real good, sweetheart.” I lean forward, so I’m whispering directly in her ear. “Keep telling yourself that, because the world is a dangerous damn place, where men are gonna take what men want to take, and if you’re alone, you lose.”
Two bright spots of color flush her cheeks. “You might want to sleep with your door locked…” she returns. “…sweetheart. Because fuck that noise.”
We work our way down the stairs, across the lot, and into Shiloh’s truck.
Reva climbs into the back seat clutching her backpack like it can protect her from us. Shiloh slides behind the wheel and starts the engine while I climb into the passenger-side seat.
Reva’s voice comes from behind me, tight and furious. “If you think you can just—”
“We do,” Shiloh says, and pulls out of the lot before she can finish.
Silence snaps tight.
A block later, her voice drops lower. “Why do you even care? You fired me tonight.”
Shiloh laughs once, humorless. “One, we didn’t fire you. That was just…a warning. Calling a timeout. And two…that’s what you think this is? Caring?”
Reva doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know what to call it either.
Neither do I. And neither does Shiloh.
All I know is that she walked into Noir looking for something she shouldn’t know exists.
Then she walked into a motel like a lamb to the fucking slaughter, and for some reason we felt compelled to fucking rescue her like she was…ours—which makes no sense. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
And now she’s in our truck, headed to our house, with her anger filling the back seat like a summer storm cloud.
I don’t glance in the mirror. I don’t need to. I can feel her back there—small, rigid, furious. Uncertain.
And when we turn down the street toward home, the tension shifts, worsens. Because now the question isn’t whether she’s safe.
It’s what happens when she realizes we’ve decided we’re keeping her, and there’s no escape.