My gaze narrows on Sadie and her boy toy. We’re never truly alone. “Bourbon,” I tell her. Before she takes off, I grab her tiny skirt that barely covers her ass. “Make that three. Do you see those two guys there, the idiots getting lap dances?”
Brandee—according to her nametag—looks over and nods. “You’d like to send them drinks?”
I curl my finger in a beckoning motion, and she bends down, putting her tits right in my face. “Slip this to them with those bourbons—” I place a card in her cleavage “—tell them it’s a farewell present.”
I can hear her breath catch over the music, see the way my lingering touch flushes her skin. I lick my lips, and just because I can, run my hand up her thigh. Her eyes close half-mast as I reach the seam of her panties.
“Anything I can get you in particular?” Brandee asks, plucking my card from her breasts.
She’s willing and ready; already dripping. She’d make a fine addition to my girls…but I don’t shop locally. We saw the strife Maddox caused with his blunder. I give her pussy a hard stroke. Her thighs squeeze tight against my hand, then I pull back.
“Hurry up.”
Her pretty face twists in rebuff. She stalks away, attitude swinging her hips.
A faint laugh slips free. In moments like this, I have to quote one of the greats. Victor Hugo said:
There is a sacred horror about everything grand. It is easy to admire mediocrity and hills; but whatever is too lofty, a genius as well as a mountain, an assembly as well as a masterpiece, seen too near, is appalling.
Make of that what you will.
I push away from the table, keeping Sadie in my line of sight, and slip along the back wall toward the exit. I pass Donovan and nod once, before I dip out into the cool night air.
Two shots fired in rapid succession break the nightlife tranquility.
A burst of screams, an alarm sounds, then a blast of people rush past me on the sidewalk. I’m hidden in a sea of fear as life swells on the street, a tide cresting and receding after the crash of a thunderous wave.
I spend some time wandering the city, saying my goodbye. Even monsters can be sentimental. Maybe more so. I built a large part of this city, after all. As I turn down an alley, my phone beeps with a notification. I pull it from my pocket to see my favorite medical examiner playing on the darknet.
I love it when things fall into place. When it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.
Avery has given me her answer.
Time is an omen, and death its symphony.
11
Epiphany
Avery
An epiphany happens all at once, in an instant.
An understanding so sudden and intense, any surrounding fear isn’t given the time to grasp. You just have to want to see it through bad enough. You have to trust that you’re right, and all other avenues are wrong, against all logic. Against all consequences.
One moment Quinn and I are lying in bed, his arm holding me close as we sleep. The nightmares for once held back by his strong embrace, and then the next he’s pacing his bedroom, expletives roaring into his phone.
I wrap my arms around my stomach as I loiter near the bathroom door, flinching every time he curses at Carson. The next call comes right after he ends the first, from his captain.
“Yes, sir,” Quinn says, his ire abated. “I’m on my way.”
He hangs up like he’s about to launch the phone at the wall, fisted hand punching the air, but the phone doesn’t leave his clenched grasp.
I wait until the tension coiling his shoulders eases some before I tread closer. He’s shirtless. Even in the dark, I can discern the tatted script along his bare chest. The one that speaks of his honor. “Are Sadie and Colton all right?”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yes.”
Relief is a warm stream rushing through me. “So there was a hit on the two men who kidnapped me.” The words sound awkward on my tongue, like I’m in some bad cop movie. Regular people don’t talk about hits.