Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Rue
I’m an unsettling combination of blissed out and jittery as I cruise up Felicity’s crushed gravel driveway.
Successful break-in? Check.
Near-death experience? Check-ish. It definitely felt like it at first, but Gomez wouldn’t actually have hurt me, I’m almost entirely sure.
Oh, and then there’s the knee-shaking, brain-melting, dangerous-as-fuck orgasm.
Check, check, and—holy shit—check.
How much am I going to tell Felicity? I spent the hour-long drive arguing with myself, and as I pull into the big red barn that’s within shouting distance of her house, I still have no idea.
So I met someone tonight. We threatened each other.
Then, because I didn’t make him come fast enough, I lost the privilege of killing the guy you and I have been gearing up to kill.
Now, I’m trusting him to do a good-enough job that we don’t all end up in prison for the rest of our lives.
Also, I liked him, and no, I don’t know his name or what he looks like, but I might be able to pick his dick out of a lineup if they let me grope it behind my back in the dark.
A manic laugh spills out of me, and I clap my hands over my mouth as if that’ll call it back. That’s also when Fi slips into the garage through the side door with a stack of towels.
“Hey,” she says, taking me in from head to toe as I step out of the car.
“Hey.” I reach for the towels, but she clutches them to her chest, her horrified gaze fixed on my neck.
Shit. I hold out my hands to pause her questions, which just makes things worse when she spots the traces of blood I failed to clean off my hands.
“Who?” She asks it calmly, but the rest of her screams ready.
Her weight shifts to the balls of her feet, her chin’s tucked, and she’s even leading with her left hip, which is a surprisingly solid fight stance for someone who made it through half a self-defense lesson with me before she claimed boredom and went to raid her freezer’s ice cream drawer.
“Rue!” Her sharp voice cuts through my confused amusement. “What happened?”
I have to look away, curling my fingers around my palms and loving her so hard for being worried enough about me that she’d launch her unprepared self at my enemies.
“I’m fine,” I quickly assure her. “And I’ll tell you everything. Just let me clean up and get something to eat first, okay?”
Decision made. Looks like I’m coming clean about Gomez.
Fi’s still frowning as she hands over the towels, but that unexpected fierceness is nowhere to be found now that I’ve promised to fill her in.
“Fifteen minutes, or I’m dragging your ass to the house myself,” she warns me before she slips out the side door, leaving me to wash away all traces of where I’ve been before I set foot into her house.
I thought Fi was nuts three years ago when she bought six acres of unfarmable land fifty miles southwest of the city, but as in all things, she proved herself to be sneaky brilliant.
The farmhouse is now her work-from-home fortress, and Pell helped us convert the tumbledown barn into the murder HQ of our dreams.
This includes the Chamber of Consequences, which I walk past to reach the small room where I’ll shower and maybe catch a few hours of sleep if I’m too tired to drive back to the duplex.
“I haven’t forgotten about you,” I tell my safety-first, soundproof, easy-clean murder room, which has been sadly neglected thanks to my slow kill schedule this year. I kiss the tips of my fingers and press them to the reinforced steel door before continuing to my utilitarian home away from home.
I flip on the water in the hopes that it’ll be semi-warm by the time I step under the spray and look through my backpack to make sure Gomez didn’t swipe anything.
It’s all there: duct tape, zip ties, flashlight, lock picks, gloves, tarp, first aid supplies, change of clothes, evidence-collection kit.
So he’s a killer, not a thief. Good to know. I’d never fuck a thief.
Once I’ve confirmed my gear is in order, I strip and make the mistake of glancing in the mirror.
“What the…” I recoil, then lean forward to gape at the red patches Gomez hoovered onto both sides of my neck. No wonder Felicity looked ready to attack someone. “Vampire much, you psychopath?”
I should be pissed that I’ve been sentenced to turtlenecks for the foreseeable future, but I can’t stay mad, not with the memory of his tongue and his teeth and his controlling touch making me smile dreamily at my reflection.
I lift a hand to press on one of the bruises, wanting to savor the memory of his rough attention, but I hesitate before my fingers make contact with the hot, red skin there.
“I shouldn’t,” I tell my reflection. “I promised him.”
Alas, my reflection doesn’t stop me when I grab my evidence collection kit and prep a swab.
“Here’s the thing,” I tell mirror-me as I stroke the cotton tip over the bite marks. “This doesn’t mean I’m going to use it. It’s just… insurance.”
Mirror-me looks judgmental, but I ignore her and seal the swab in a tube that I label “GOMEZ.” I do the same for the blood on my skin, then I throw myself into the shower to wash away everything I just did.
After I’ve scrubbed every square inch of my body with the bergamot and berries body wash Fi knows I love, I dry off, bundle my wet hair on top of my head, and pull on leggings, a sweatshirt, and a battered pair of sneakers.
Before I leave the garage, I wrap my ruined bodysuit and the tubes of sexy murderer DNA in my hoodie and shove it all into the bottom of my bag, which I leave in the barn for my short walk to the back door of the farmhouse.
I press my thumb to the center of the biometric lock that’s a twin to the one in the barn and let myself into the kitchen, where I’m greeted by the ding of the microwave and a crumpled Pluck and Fry bag sticking out of the trash. Felicity must’ve been watching for me on the outdoor cams.
“You’re a goddess.” I settle on the pink plaid couch in her war room, the warm plate of chicken and dumplings on my lap. “Have I ever told you that?”
“Yes, but not often enough.” Fi’s back is to me as she rolls her office chair down the line of monitors that run the length of the wall.
We don’t talk while I shovel dumplings into my mouth and she types, clicks, swipes, and does things with data. Once I set my empty plate on the floor, she spins to face me.
“Ready to tell me what happened tonight?”
Not really. “I met someone.”
“You met someone.”
“Yes. In Howard Marshall’s closet.”
It takes Fi a full ten seconds to respond.
“You met someone in Howard Marshall’s closet who gnawed on your neck like a rabid wildebeest?” Her voice builds to a shriek as she processes it out loud, and yeah, I get it. I’m still shrieking inside a little too. “Who was it?”
“I didn’t catch his name, but he’s like me.” I flick my eyes up to her. “Like us.” Fi’s never killed anyone, but she’s our mother’s daughter too. If I’m Mom with better control, she’s Mom with better patience.
Well, except for right now.
“Do we need to… to run?” She stands and looks wildly around the room. “Or take him out?”
“Take him out? We’re not the mob.”
“This isn’t funny!” She plunges her hands in her hair and spins in a circle, her rumpled bun unfurling behind her. “This is really bad, Rue!”
“It’s fine.” I stand and gently push her back into her fancy office chair. “I swear. We… we talked. He only goes after the bad ones too.”
She looks pointedly at my vampire bites. “You talked, huh?”
“Yes.” I yank the towel from my head, allowing my wet hair to slither around my neck and cover the marks. Out of sight, out of mind. “I was scared.” I fall back against the couch cushions with a groan. “Until I wasn’t.”
I’ve never met anyone like him. Dark. Funny. Curious. Confident. Competent. Really good with his fingers.
Dammit, I should’ve gotten his name.
“Okay, but in Howard’s house?”
“I knowwwww.” I bury my face in my hands. “It was so reckless.”
“Definitely not part of the plan.”
I fight back a laugh. If she’s already worried about going off plan, she’s really gonna hate this next part.
“Funny you bring that up.” I point to the capybara dangling from the chain around her neck. “I need you to be chill like a big, friendly rodent when I tell you this next part.”
She frowns and wraps her fingers around the little gold pendant. “Why?”
“Thing is… he’s the one who’s going to kill Marshall.”
“What?”
“He’s staging a house fire.”
“What?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight?” She’s out of her chair and back in screech mode, but this time she’s looking at me like I’ve been body-swapped by aliens. “With no plan?”
“He showed up with a plan.” Kind of. “Plus, he kind of has to do it tonight because DNA.”
Her gaze darkens. “So that was your blood.”
“Nope, I stabbed him.” My cheeks heat. “I… he was… when we…”
Fi shakes her head, baffled by what I’m not saying, but the confusion eventually clears from her face, and she claps her hands over her mouth. “Seriously?”
And that’s when the adrenaline crash slams into me. I’ve been running on nerves and oxytocin, but it’s finally wearing off, leaving me shaky and exhausted. Worse, it cracks the door for the thought I’ve been trying to ignore since I jogged away from Marshall’s place.
“She’d be so proud of me.” The words I’m too tired to hold back slip right out, full of bitter self-loathing. “I’m following in her footsteps.”
Fi’s already shaking her head. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Because I made such good choices tonight.”
She shifts to sit next to me on the couch.
“Mom was reactive. Never a plan, just killing her johns because she was bored or she wanted the cash in their wallet to take us out for burgers.” She sighs and rubs my back in slow, soothing strokes.
Fi hates talking about this, but she’s willing to do it for me.
“Just because you had sex with some guy tonig—”
“We didn’t have sex!”