THE HOUSEHOLD HAD BEEN thorough in my training, which meant I’d gotten a lot of driving practice in to prepare me for the occasional missions that required I get behind the wheel of various vehicles. I hadn’t been on the road at night all that often, though. Or in the rain. The combination of the two, with the droplets slipping over the windshield with increasing frequency, made my hands tighten on the steering wheel.
Thank God the streets were pretty empty at this time of night. I could manage to navigate the periodic streetlights and the rows of parked cars along the side of the road just fine.
Which was good, because my mind kept wandering. The image of Anna’s bloody body lingered in the back of my head.
Was there something more I should have done for her? For all of the people in the household? At the time, it’d seemed like leaving quickly was the best thing I could do, but now a pinch of guilt dug into my stomach. I hadn’t felt guilt over a dead body in a long time, even all the ones I’d been responsible for.
I was totally alone now. I had nobody left. How could it be normal to leave behind the only home I’d ever known just like that?
But then, there was obviously nothing normal about the massacre I’d walked into.
I sucked my lower lip under my teeth and let my mind shift to the practicalities. I had too many questions that I needed to answer, and emotions would get me nowhere.
Who had done this? More importantly, how was I going to find them? And in what way would I end their lives? Would I make their deaths long and painful, allowing their arteries to spew blood for minute after minute before they died? That was how they’d killed everyone in the household, after all. It would be fitting.
I suspected I’d like that style of poetic justice very much.
Where would I start? I’d never been assigned a mission with so little preparation and such a vague objective. Noelle had always come with weapons, supplies, and a dossier of everything I needed to know to locate and take down my target. I’d never had to think about anything other than how to get into a specific building, evade bodyguards, or make a swift escape.
Right now, I had nothing but a stolen car, a bag of clothes and jewelry, and the knife and chunk of glass I’d tossed on the seat with the bag, which barely counted as weapons. I had no idea where I was going or who I needed to find. The possibilities spiraled away from me, so endless my mind froze up trying to process them.
It was probably shock. I couldn’t be blamed for that, right? Discovering that everyone around you had been brutally murdered was pretty fucking shocking. I just needed time to think.
Headlights gleamed in my rearview mirror. I glanced at the mirror and realized the black car I’d noticed behind me earlier was still heading in the same direction. It’d pulled closer, only about a block away.
There wasn’t anything so strange about that. I was on a fairly major street. I’d walked several blocks from the household before I’d found a car I could steal, and I hadn’t seen anyone tracking me from there. I’d stuck to the speed limit and followed the traffic laws to a tee, so I shouldn’t have raised any red flags for anyone who’d seen me drive by after.
But it was arrogance to assume I’d done everything perfectly. The car could be following me for one reason or another, and that meant I should act as if it was.
I slowed, monitoring the car behind me, and took an abrupt turn. They hadn’t put on their signal, but they appeared behind me around the bend several seconds later. They left enough space for another car to pass, but… was this a coincidence?
The rain pelted my windshield. I frowned, squinting at the road ahead. There was a little side-street right there.
I swerved quickly but not violently, my heart jumping when the tires skidded on the wet pavement more than I’d expected. With a jerk of the steering wheel, I managed to straighten out the car. There. They’d drive on by, and I’d see I was just being paranoid and—
Headlights flashed behind me. The damn car had made the same turn again.
Apprehension gnawed at my stomach. This definitely didn’t feel like a coincidence now. What were the chances that someone just happened to take this exact same route, when there was hardly anyone on the roads at all?
I had to lose them. That was all there was to it.
Spotting a gas station on a corner up ahead where the side-street met another larger road, I pressed slowly on the gas to increase my speed. The moment I came up on the station, I whipped to the side, careered past the pumps with my pulse beating in my throat, and flew onto the road on the other side.
That might not be enough. I had to take the next turn that—
A parked car I hadn’t been paying attention to pulled out into the road right in front of me. I was going too fast. I hit the brake, but the tires screeched and slid in the rain. Shit.
I hauled on the wheel before I slammed right into the asshole who’d cut me off. The car kept skidding, spinning to the side and then forward—and crashed into a telephone pole on the other side of the road.
The impact jolted me in my seat, the hood crumpling in toward me. In the same moment, the airbag burst out with a bang, smacking into my face, chest, and the arm I’d flung across the wheel to turn it. Pain radiated through my hand and the side of my torso, and my eyes stung. A chalky powder prickled down my throat.
I blinked hard, and the stinging sensation only deepened into a sharper burning. Even as the airbag deflated, the world around me looked blurred. Involuntary tears flushed the chemicals from my eyes, but I still couldn’t see for shit.
Damn it. I had to get out of here—grab my things, run for it, find another car or a bus I could jump onto.
I groped for the tote bag, and another jab of pain shot through my wrist. I could hardly move it without gritting my teeth. Fucking hell. The crash had hurt that too.
I twisted at the waist to reach for my bag with my other hand and winced at the ache that spread through my side. My ribs had gotten in on the game as well. From the feel of them, they were only bruised, but I’d broken enough of them in the past that they were way too sensitive to getting bumped around.
Hazards of the job.
Clenching my jaw against the various pains, I snatched the handle of the tote bag and shoved open the driver’s side door. The world outside swam before my still-blurry eyes, but I had to keep going. I took a deep breath and pushed my way out of the car, trying to do most of the work with my left arm.
It didn’t work as well as I’d hoped, and I staggered out of the car, my legs wobbling and a fresh rush of pain penetrating my chest. The rain drenched me in an instant. It also flushed my eyes, alleviating a bit of the sting but not clearing my vision particularly well. I couldn’t tell how much of the blurring was because of the water and how much from the airbag’s chemicals now.
“Hey,” a deep voice said from behind me. “Are you all right?”
I whirled, and my legs swayed again, still shaky from the crash. I stumbled right into the chest of a large, muscle-bound man. He caught my elbows, and I jerked away instinctively.
Who the hell was he? What did he want with me?
“Hold on,” he said. My hazy vision made out a broad-shouldered form nearly a foot taller than me, the square-jawed face topped with dark hair. It was hard to make out what expression he was even making or anything else beyond that.
He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m just trying to help you. That was a hell of a crash.”
Oh. That did kind of make sense, didn’t it? Good Samaritans or whatever. Probably just looking for the ego boost of saying he’d come to someone’s rescue, but nothing necessarily nefarious.
It wasn’t just him, though. Three more figures gathered around us, all male, all with at least half a foot and fifty pounds on my well-toned but trim frame. Where had they all come from?
Where was the car I’d thought was tailing me? Had these guys come out of it? If they had, what were they planning on doing to me?
I tugged the tote bag’s strap over my shoulder instinctively so I’d have my hands free to fight, not that one of those hands felt up to engaging in combat at the moment. At the same time, a slimmer figure with a face framed by light red hair leaned toward me. “Is she okay?”
“I’m fine,” I lied automatically, taking a step back and dodging another man who’d come up beside me. “Really, thank you for your concern, but—”
I turned, and banged my hip on a newspaper box I hadn’t seen between the darkness and my blurred eyes. My right hand shot out automatically to help me catch my balance, and agony lanced through my wrist. I couldn’t stop myself from hissing at the pain.
“You don’t seem okay,” the first guy said, swiping rain from his face. “That wrist might be broken. We should call an ambulance.”
Another of the men who’d approached us jerked around as if to stare at the one who’d spoken. All I could make out of this one was a sharp chin and blond hair plastered to his skull. “Julius,” he said in a voice that had an edge to it.
Julius. The name seemed to fit the imposing masculinity that radiated off of every inch of the first man’s frame.
I didn’t want to stay here with him and whoever these other guys were, and I didn’t want to be taken to any hospital. If the people who’d slaughtered the household were looking for me, I couldn’t afford to leave any kind of paper trail.
That was one of Noelle’s first rules. Never, ever let anyone make a permanent record of your presence.
“I’m fine,” I said again, taking another step back. My legs were getting steadier, at least. I blinked, unsuccessfully willing my vision to clear more, and restrained a shiver at the chill of my soaked clothes and hair. “No need for an ambulance. I was almost home anyway. I can make it there on my own.”
No need to follow me. Just let me leave.
“I can’t let you go walking around when you could be battered up more than you realize,” the man named Julius said. “Here, if you don’t want an ambulance, I’ve got some basic medical training. Let me look you over quickly, and if I don’t see any reason to worry, then you can be on your way.”
He made the suggestion sound perfectly reasonable. His firm baritone was the kind of voice used to making commands and having them followed. But that only made me balk even more.
I didn’t take orders from him or any other random guy. I didn’t want him or his friends getting any closer to me than they already had.
He’d accepted my refusal of proper medical attention awfully easily, hadn’t he? Was that normal, or did it mean he hadn’t really wanted to bring anyone else onto the scene either?
“You really don’t need to go to that much trouble,” I said. That sounded decently normal, right? “If I start feeling worse, I have my own doctor I can call. I’d be more comfortable with that than a stranger, obviously.”
The men shifted on their feet around me. I had trouble keeping track of them all in the hazy darkness. I started to swivel to keep all of them in view, and the blond guy grabbed my elbow, more gently than I’d have expected given the tone of his voice earlier. “You’ve obviously hurt your wrist,” he said with a new air of concern. “And it looks like you’ve got blood on your shirt. Did something happen before the accident?”
My gaze jerked down and made out a blotch of red on the blue T-shirt now plastered to my body. It had to be Anna’s blood, from when I’d caught her in the doorway. My pulse stuttered. “I—I must have gotten scratched up a bit in the crash. It’s nothing serious. Really, I’d rather just go home. On my own.”
“We can’t leave you alone in the rain when you’re injured and defenseless,” Julius said.
I had to hold in a laugh at the word “defenseless.” He didn’t have a clue. Even injured, I had little doubt I’d be able to hold my own against one of them, maybe even two. I could have broken the hand the blond guy still had on me if I’d really wanted to, if I wasn’t trying to play normal in case they were ordinary bystanders after all.
Instead, I just tugged my arm away from him, and to my relief, he let me go.
“Look, I’d rather be on my own than surrounded by strangers,” I said. “I’m just a little bruised up. I’ve got to deal with the car and the rest of this mess, but I can handle that. You can all go back to whatever you were doing.”
The blond guy’s head cocked. He stepped back with a shrug. “Fine, if that’s what you really want.”
“It is,” I said, turning toward the sidewalk—and a sharp pinch bit into my lower spine.
The last thing I was aware of was the give of my knees as blackness swam up over my vision and completely blanked my mind.
