In His Keeping (Slow Burn #2)

She was thinking this was going to be a lot of fun.

Resolve and determination settled over her, cloaking her with confidence she hadn’t imagined ever possessing. And she set about unleashing the hounds of hell on the three men who posed the most immediate threat to her.

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” she said in a soft, menacing voice that didn’t so much as tremble with fear.

Gone was the meek, shrinking violet weak Arial Rochester. Yeah, that’s right. Rochester. Her name. Her heritage. Blood meant nothing. After all, look where it had gotten Caleb and Beau and their siblings.

Really shitty parents who didn’t one damn about them. Yet her adoptive parents had given her more love in twenty-four years than most people were blessed with in a lifetime.

“That’s my line,” Goon A said coolly. “I have a score to settle with you, little bitch. And don’t think I’m not going to enjoy every second. The people who pay me may want you alive, and now that we’ve confirmed your powers, your price just skyrocketed, but there’s nothing to say I can’t make you wish you were dead.”

Before she could react, taunt him back or make a wickedly sarcastic remark, he pulled out a pistol and put a bullet in the back of lab rat’s head. Before Goon B could respond to that shocker, he also received a bullet. In the forehead. Right between the eyes.

Holy shit!

Oh God, oh God. Okay the little fucker had completely stolen her thunder and had temporarily scrambled her brains, and now she was at a loss as to what the hell to do next.

Play it cool, Ari. Never mind you’ve never been a cool kind of girl. You freak at the slightest fright. You’ve always been frightened by your own shadow. Get over it. You’re not that girl anymore.

“Well, thanks,” she said cheerfully, her mind racing as she ran through the possibilities. For once, her photographic memory came through in spades. Yes, it was helpful in her profession as a teacher, not that she’d likely ever have that job again. But now it was going to save her ass because her mind was processing each scenario at the speed of a computer, discarding ones with the least likelihood of succeeding, latching on to the ones with more merit.

His eyes narrowed at her quirky response.

“What?” she asked. “You not used to being thanked? My mama did teach me manners. You just took out two of the guys on my hit list. Now if you’d be so kind as to shoot yourself then I could move on down the list and call it a day.”

She was doing a miserable job of covering her panic and hysteria and the bastard realized it. He actually smiled at her. It was a perfectly evil smile, worthy of any movie villain. But then they could be the lead roles in a sci-fi movie. Hell, they were living a damn movie because who would ever believe this shit?

Her mom was so going to wash her mouth out with soap. Apparently being around Beau and his co-workers had lowered her verbal acuity by more than a few points. She’d never cursed so much in her life, despite her father’s own propensity for F-bombs.

“What I think is that you’re scared shitless, Arial,” he said in a mocking tone. “Not so brave now that you have blood on your hands. Were you playing pretend? Or were you really going to kill us all in cold blood?”

“Damn straight,” she said, anger injecting a bite to her words. “And I’ll suffer not one iota of remorse when I send you straight back to hell, where you crawled from. This time I hope you stay there and rot for eternity.”

He clapped, the sound jarring, startling her, his eyes laughing, mocking her at every turn.

“Watch and learn a lesson,” she hissed. “Never piss off a woman who has the power to take your balls and feed them to you on a plate.”

She caught his look of surprise just as he lifted straight up into the air and hurtled backward, slamming into the wall several feet away. The force with which she sent him flying through the room made the sound of his impact loud and forceful. Satisfaction gripped her and it was her turn to openly mock him.

“Amazing how much of a * men become when you threaten their wee little manhood,” she drawled. “Bet you don’t have that much to work with anyway, so I don’t imagine it’ll take much effort on my part to separate you from your smaller head.”

She donned a thoughtful expression and cocked her head to the side just before she sent him straight upward, crashing into the ceiling. She held him suspended, pinned against the ceiling as though he were caught in a spider’s web.

“Although there are limits to my powers,” she said in amusement. “I have to be able to imagine it in order to manipulate it and if there’s not much to work with . . . Well, you understand my problem.”