ROWAN
The Orb Weaver.
I’m sitting across the table from the fucking Orb Weaver.
And she’s fucking beautiful.
Raven hair. Warm hazel eyes. A spread of freckles over her cheeks and a little nose that’s turned a bit red. She clears her throat and takes a long sip of her beer and then frowns, her eyes trained on her glass as she pushes it away.
“You’re sick,” I say.
Sloane’s eyes meet mine with a wary glance before her attention shifts to the diner. Her sharp gaze lands on one table of patrons for only a moment before it floats to the next. Sloane is a nervous one.
Probably justified, all things considered.
“Three days in that hell-hole was bound to take a toll. Thank fuck I had water in there.” She reaches for the napkin dispenser and pulls a tissue free to blow her nose. Her gaze finds mine again but doesn’t stay on me for long. “Thanks for letting me out.”
I shrug and sip my beer, and I watch in silence as her gaze flicks away to a server who exits the kitchen with another table’s order. Sloane asked for a booth midway down the window, pointing to the exact one she wanted when the hostess led us into the room. Now I get why. It’s equidistant between the front entrance, the emergency exit by the bathrooms, and the kitchen.
Is she always this flighty, or has her time in Albert’s cage got her spooked? Or is it me?
She’s wise to be wary.
My eyes stay fixed to her, and I take the opportunity to openly assess my dining companion as she surveys the restaurant. Sloane twists her damp hair over her shoulder and my gaze drifts down to her chest, like it has every two minutes since she walked out of Albert Briscoe’s bathroom with a Pink Floyd T-shirt and no bra.
No bra.
The thought echoes through my brain like church bells on a bright Sunday morning.
Her body is curvy and strong, working some kind of witchcraft on her stolen clothes that should look anything but sexy given they came from Briscoe’s closet. She even makes his jeans look good, the hems of the long legs rolled to her ankles and the baggy waist cinched with two red handkerchiefs tied together to form a makeshift belt. She knotted the bottom of the T-shirt so it nips in at her waist, showing a sliver of tempting skin and her pierced belly button when she leans back against the booth with an exhausted sigh.
No bra.
I need to get my shit together. She’s the Orb Weaver, for Christsakes. If she catches me ogling, she could pop my eyeballs out of my head and string me up in fishing line before I say the words ‘no bra’.
Sloane rolls a shoulder, doing little to help my mission to give up my no bra mantra. Her fingers find the joint as a little wince of pain creases her features. She frowns when her eyes meet mine.
“He kicked me,” she explains, her touch lingering on the top of her shoulder with her answer to my unvoiced question. “My shoulder hit the edge of the cage when I fell in.”
My hands fold into tight fists beneath the table as white-hot rage burns in my veins. “Fucker.”
“Well, I did stab him in the neck, so I guess it was justified.” Sloane’s palm slips down her arm and she sniffles, her nose crinkling. Fucking adorable. “He managed to close me in before he fell. He even laughed.”
The server approaches with two plates of ribs and one of fries, earning a ravenous glance from Sloane. When the plate is set down in front of her she smiles, a little dimple popping out next to her lip.
We thank the server who lingers for a moment in the periphery before Sloane pipes up with confirmation that we have everything we need. When the woman departs, Sloane snickers, that dimple deepening. “Don’t tell me you get that so often that it doesn’t even register in your brain. That’s just depressing.”
“Get what…?”
Sloane’s gaze darts to the server and I follow her line of sight to the woman who tosses a smile to our table over her shoulder. “Oh my God, it really doesn’t register. Like, at all.” Sloane shakes her head and tears a rib free of the steaming rack on her plate. “Well, be prepared, pretty boy. My stomach has been eating nearby organs for the last three days and I’m going to devour these fucking ribs in the most unladylike fashion possible.”
I say nothing, riveted to the sight of her perfect teeth as she tears into the steaming flesh that slides off the gray bone. A drop of barbecue sauce gathers at the corner of her lips and her tongue darts out to claim it, and I want to fucking die.
“So…” I clear my throat in the hopes my voice won’t crack. Sloane’s brow furrows as she sinks another bite into the meat. “How come not Blackbird?”
“Huh?” She slips the end of the rib into her mouth and sucks the meat right off the bone to pull it past her lips with sauce-stained fingers. My cock strains against my zipper just watching her cheeks hollow.
Imagine what she could do with that fucking mouth.
I take a sip of beer and look down at my plate. “Your name,” I reply before starting on a rib, purely to distract certain body parts that are becoming pretty insistent about what they want. “How come you didn’t pick a name with Blackbird? Raven hair, flighty nature, the song…I’m going to hazard a guess it’s from your childhood, right? I heard you singing it back in the cage.”
Sloane’s chewing stops for a moment as she regards me with a thoughtful pass of her thumb over her bottom lip. It’s the first time her gaze has really settled on me, and it burrows right into my skull. “That’s for me,” she says. “Orb Weaver is for them.”
Sloane’s eyes have darkened, and with just a blink she’s gone from a sexy, runny-nosed and ravenous beauty to a wicked, remorseless, iron-willed killer.
I nod. “I get it.”
I might be the only person who does.
Sloane keeps her unwavering stare pinned on me. “What’s your deal, pretty boy?”
“My deal?”
“You heard me. You show up to fuckwit’s house, let me out of his cage, burn his house down and take me for ribs and beer. Yet, I know basically nothing about you. So, what’s your deal? Why were you at Briscoe’s?”
I shrug. “I came to hack off his limbs and enjoy his agonizingly slow death.”
“Why him though? We’re a little far from Boston. I’m sure there are plenty of lowlife drug dealers for entertainment up there that you don’t need to come this far for one guy.”
A weighted silence thickens the air, both of us paused with ribs heading toward our mouths. A sly smile spreads across my lips as Sloane’s face falls.
“You totally know who I am.”
“Oh my God.”
“You do. You know what I like to hunt on my home turf. How long have you been a fan?”
“Dear Christ, stop.”
I chuckle as Sloane drops her forehead onto the backs of her bent wrists, a rib still clutched between her sticky fingers. “Which one was your favorite?” I ask. “The guy I flayed and strung up on the bow of that ship at Griffin’s Warf? Or what about the guy I suspended from the crane? That one seemed popular.”
“I can already tell you are the worst.” Sloane keeps her hands up in a futile effort to cover the flaming blush igniting her cheeks. Her hazel eyes dance despite the glare she tries to shoot my way. “Send me back to Briscoe’s cell.”
“Your wish is my command.”
I look toward the serving station and raise my hand at the waitress who takes all of one second to spot me before she starts heading our way with a growing smile.
“Rowan…?”
“What? You said you wanted to go back to Briscoe’s, so back we shall go.”
“I was joking, you psycho—”
“Don’t worry, Blackbird. I’ll deliver you right back to your smelly little cage. I’m sure it’s still standing despite the fire. Do you think any maggots survived? You can peck them from the ashes if so.”
“Rowan—” Sloane’s hand darts out and encircles my wrist, leaving sticky fingerprints on my skin. A jolt of electricity crackles through my flesh at her touch. I can barely contain my amusement at the rising panic in her eyes.
“Something wrong, Blackbird?”
The waitress stops beside our table with a bright grin. “Can I get you something?”
I keep my eyes on Sloane, raising my brows as her wild gaze flicks between me and the exits. “Two more beers, please,” I say. Sloane’s glare turns flat as it alights on me, her eyes narrowed to thin slits.
“Coming right up.”
“Like I said,” Sloane grumbles as she unfurls her fingers from my pulse. “The worst.”
I give her a lopsided grin. Sloane’s gaze catches on my smile, and her glare softens even though I can tell she doesn’t want it to. “You’ll love me one day,” I purr, keeping hold of her eyes when they reach mine. My tongue passes in a slow lick over the sauce she left on my skin. Sloane’s eyes glitter in the warm afternoon light filtering through the diner’s windows, that dimple next to her lip a shadow of the amusement she can’t quite contain.
“Don’t think so, Butcher.”
We’ll see, my grin says.
Sloane’s dark brows flick as though she’s issuing a challenge, then she shifts her attention to her food. “You still haven’t really answered my question about Briscoe.”
“Yes I did. Hacking limbs. Enjoying agony.”
“But why him?”
I shrug. “Same reason you picked him, I assume. He was a piece of shit.”
“How do you know that’s why I picked him?” Sloane asks.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” I reply as I lean my forearms against the aluminum trim on the Formica table. Sloane raises her chin, her expression indignant.
“Maybe he had nice eyeballs.”
A laugh bubbles from my chest as I pick up another rib. I let the silence linger, taking a bite before I reply. “That’s not why you pry their eyeballs out of their skulls.”
Sloane’s head cocks to the side, her eyes shining as she assesses me. “No?”
“No. Definitely not.”
“Then why would I do that?”
I shrug, not ready to meet her gaze despite the way it beckons me. “The eyes are the windows to the soul, I suppose?”
Sloane scoffs and I look up to catch the shake of her head. “More like ‘foster a raven and it will peck out your eyes.’”
My head tilts as I try to decipher her meaning. Very little is known about Sloane, or at least very little makes its way to the press. She specializes in other serial killers and she leaves an intricate crime scene. That’s pretty much it. Any other theories the FBI might have about the Orb Weaver are half-baked. From what I’ve read, the idea of the elusive vigilante being a woman hasn’t even broached their little formulaic, predictable brains. Whatever her past and her motivations, whatever she means by her comment, it’s all still locked away.
From the second we met, she sparked my curiosity, fanning banked embers into glowing coals, and now she’s ignited the first thread of flame.
I want to know. I want the truth.
And maybe I want her to feel the same curiosity about me.
“Did you know I was the one who killed Tony Watson, the Harbor Slasher?” I ask.
She lowers the beer glass from her lips, her movement slow, her eyes locked to mine. “That was you?”
I nod.
“I thought he got into a scrap with someone he was trying to kill.”
“That part of the story isn’t wrong, I guess. He did get into a scrap and he definitely tried his hardest to kill me, he just didn’t succeed.” That piece of shit Watson. I beat him until his skull cracked and his body seized, then watched as a final, bloody, gurgling breath spasmed past his broken teeth and split lips. When his body stilled, I left him in the alley for the rats to gnaw.
It wasn’t a pretty kill. It wasn’t elegant. There was nothing staged or clever about it. It was visceral and raw.
And I enjoyed every fucking second.
“Watson wasn’t as stupid as I thought. He caught me following him. Tried to ambush me.”
A thoughtful hmm passes from Sloane’s pursed lips. “I’m bummed.”
“Bummed why, because he didn’t kill me first? Harsh, Blackbird. I’m wounded.”
“No,” she says on the heels of a barked laugh. “It’s just that I had such a cool plan for him. The bodies of his last five kills were already mapped out on my web,” she says. Her sticky fingers dance in my direction as though tracing a pattern in the air. She doesn’t even look up. It’s as though this isn’t some giant revelation she just dropped on the table between us.
A map. In the web.
“Not that it would have mattered, I guess. It’s not like the dumbass fuckwits at the FBI have figured that out yet. But even so… you went and fucked it up,” Sloane continues, not looking up from the next bone she tears free of the carcass before her. A heavy sigh spills over the meat that she raises to her lips. “I guess I should be grateful. Maybe I underestimated Watson too. Given Briscoe kicked me into his cage so easily and he was a lazy prick, I’m not sure I would have fought Watson off as well as you did.” Her bright, unusual eyes find mine through strands of raven hair that have fallen over her brow as a charming glare flays my blackened soul. “It physically pains me to admit that, by the way. But don’t let it get to your head, pretty boy.”
A smirk creeps across my lips. “You think I’m pretty.”
“I literally just said not to let the Watson thing go to your head. It applies to your prettiness too,” Sloane says with an epic eye roll, one of her eyelids twitching. “Besides, you already know it.”
My smile grows a little wider before I hide it behind the edge of my glass. Our gazes stay locked until Sloane finally breaks the trance and looks away, a hint of color infusing her freckled cheeks. “Well, you got to Bill Fairbanks before I could,” I say, “so I think we’re even.”
Sloane’s eyes widen, her thick, dark lashes fanning toward her brows. “You were after him?” she asks as I give her a single nod and lift one shoulder. It used to irk me that I lost Fairbanks, even if it was to the Orb Weaver, who I’ve considered something of an idol. But now? Meeting the woman behind the web? I would lose to her again to see the way it lights her eyes with pride. Maybe even more than once.
The edge of Sloane’s bottom lip folds between her teeth as she tries to anchor her wicked grin against their sharp edges. “I had no idea you were hunting Fairbanks.”
“I was tracking him for two years.”
“Really?”
“I planned to take him the year before you got him, but he up and moved before I had the chance. Took me a few months to find him again. Then, low and behold, bits of his body were strung up in fishing line with his eyeballs gouged out.”
Sloane huffs, but I can see the spark that flashes in her tired eyes. She sits a little straighter, wiggling in her seat. “I didn’t gouge them out, Butcher. I plucked them. Delicately. Like a lady.” Sloane sticks her finger in her mouth, pressing it against her cheek as she wraps her lips around it only to snap it out with a pop. “Just like that.”
I snort a laugh and Sloane gifts me with a beaming smile. “My bad.”
Sloane turns her grin to the table before the nerves seem to creep in, and her gaze flits across the room. She takes a few fries, her eyes still shifting over the patrons and exits, before she pushes her plate of ribs toward the table edge.
She’s going to take off.
And if she does, I’ll never see her again. She’ll make damn sure of that.
I clear my throat. “You ever heard of a series of murders in the national parks in Oregon and Washington?”
Sloane’s attention snaps back to me with narrowed eyes. A faint crease appears between her dark brows. A little shake of her head is the only response she gives.
“The killer is a phantom. A prolific one. Exacting and very, very careful,” I continue. “He prefers hikers. Campers. Nomads with few connections in his hunting area. He tortures them before he positions each body facing East in heavily forested areas, anointed on the forehead with a cross.”
Sloane’s thin mask falters. She’s all predator beneath, scenting a trail. I can almost see her thoughts spiraling in the confines of her skull.
These details are tracks any talented hunter can follow.
“How many kills so far?”
“Twelve, though there could more. But it’s been kept pretty quiet.”
Sloane’s brow furrows. There’s a spark in the green and golden depths of her hazel eyes. “Why? For fear of spooking the killer?”
“Probably.”
“And how do you know about it?”
“Same way you knew who the Beast of the Bayou was. I make it my business to know.” I wink. Sloane’s gaze snags on my lips to rest on my scar before dragging back up to my eyes. I rest my forearms on the table and lean closer. “What would you say to a friendly competition? First one to win gets to kill him.”
Her back rests against the vinyl booth cushion as Sloane drums her chipped, blood-red manicure on the table. She gnaws on her chapped lower lip for a long, silent moment as she lets her attention flow over my features. I feel it in my skin. It touches my flesh. It ignites a sensation I’m always chasing but am never quite able to grasp.
There’s never enough risk to scare me. There’s never enough reward to satiate me.
Until now.
The drumming of her fingers stops.
“What kind of competition?” Sloane asks.
I flag down the waitress and motion for the bill when she catches my eye. “Just a little game. Let’s go for ice cream and we can talk it through.”
When I face Sloane once more, my smile is conspiratorial.
Wicked and wanting.
…Devious.
“You know what they say, Blackbird. ‘It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye,’” I whisper. “And that’s when the real fun begins.”
