“What else did you so conveniently find, besides all of our names and locations?” Fate pressed, and Lars could hear the lethal edge in his voice. Did he really have to say it like that? Fate really could be a bastard.
“That was all,” she answered, stammering halfway. It was too much. Fate was going to break her and it killed Lars. If her story was true, it was too much for anyone to take in all at once. The fact that she was holding up this well was a miracle.
“You came here because Malokin sent you. Admit it,” Fate pushed.
“No. That’s not it. I didn’t want to stay with him, and I didn’t know where else to go.”
“You decided to come with no prodding from him?” Fate’s voice was harsh, leaving no question he was suspicious of her story. “Tell us the truth now and it’ll go a lot easier on you than if we have to drag it out of you.”
Lars’ hand reached for the backdoor and then he cracked. He turned back around, took a couple of steps towards the group and saw her. Her eyes were glossy, as she wrung her hands in her lap, and it utterly undid him. “Fate. Back off,” Lars said from where he stood, farther away.
All heads swiveled to look at him. Lars had been with these guys long enough to not need words to read Fate’s expression. Fate threw him a, you wanted me to handle it, don’t criticize how I decide to do it look.
Lars shot back a silent, I don’t care what I said. I don’t like how you’re going about things. Then, with a tilt of his head, he motioned everyone back to the opposite side of the room again.
Fate got to him first. “What the fuck? We aren’t going to know if she’s playing stupid if I can’t press her a bit. Do you want to have to escalate things?”
Angus, Bic and Cutty were surprisingly silent.
Lars positioned himself with his back to Faith, placing him in between her and the guys. “Do any of you want to escalate things?” Lars asked, daring them to say yes and making it clear they’d have to get through him to do it.
“I know what she looks like,” Fate said, shifting modes from aggravation to acting like Lars was losing his grip on things. “But she might be working for Malokin.”
Lars suddenly realized how far he’d just taken the situation in order to protect some chick who might be evil to the core. He’d placed himself in a manner where he would bodily protect her if necessary. Fate was right but still, he couldn’t allow normal procedure in this circumstance. He wasn’t ready to do what that entailed to a tiny female who looked scared out of her wits.
“This isn’t going down like normal,” Lars said to them.
Fate huffed. “Hell, I’m not allowed to even talk harshly to her, so yeah, I kinda ruled out the other measures.”
Angus was the first to address the problem that left them with. “If none of us have the stomach to beat her up for the truth,” Angus looked at Lars as he added, “Or even speak in harsh tones, what do we do with her?”
They all looked at each other, and Cutty added his two cents. “We can’t let her loose if she’s with him, and if she’s not, she’ll end up dead. Look at her. She’s a wreck. I mean, she’s trying to hold it together but she really does look like she spent the last week in the woods.”
When Lars had first seen her, he’d thought what a poor choice Malokin had made for an assassin. Looking at how he was reacting, and the cracks he could see starting in Angus and Cutty, he was rethinking his position. Maybe she was the perfect choice, especially to exploit him. And it was the exact reason for what he said next. “I can’t keep her here.”
“Why?” Bic asked.
“My place is one large room. It’s not conducive to company.” And he needed to get her the hell away from him, preferably to Cutty’s. Cutty had kneeled down when he’d spoken to her to make her feel more comfortable. Cutty’s place would be safe.
“You have plenty of company,” Bic said.
“Company that I fuck. Not a good idea for her. Fate has a wannabe serial killer living with him, so he’s out.” He turned to Cutty. “What about your place?” he asked, as though it hadn’t always been his first choice.
Cutty looked at her and Lars saw the softening. Yes, it had to be Cutty’s place.
Cutty shrugged. “I can take her home.”
“You can put her in the guest room I crash in sometimes,” Lars added.
“I’m glad you’ve got this worked out,” Cutty said and shot him a look that told him he realized he’d just walked into what Lars had wanted from the start. “What about during the day? I can’t be with her all the time. Do we leave her alone?”
“Bring her here during the day,” Lars said before he could stop himself. It was a good call, though. No one should be with her all the time. Breaking it up was the best idea.
“Now that you’ve figured out sleepovers and daycare, what about the fact that Malokin might be tapped into her? Like he was with Karma?” Fated asked. “We don’t know what kind of tracking he’s got going on with Faith. He had Karma’s every move—every word—mapped out, and let me tell you, not only is that a head trip but we can’t risk having a walking, talking bug around us, knowing every step we take.”
“She either agrees to be completely cut off or she’s got to go,” Bic said.
Lars took a step toward him. “Nobody’s killing her.”
“Back off.” Bic took a step away, regaining his personal space. “I didn’t mean kill her. I meant go, as in a-galaxy-far-far-away kind of go.”
“I agree,” Cutty said. “She needs to get the tattoo or she gets a one way ticket to Antarctica.”
Chapter Four
Faith watched the guys discussing her across the room and forced herself to stay calm, or at least look like she was. There was Lars, who kept looking back over toward her, making her wonder for the hundredth time if she’d made the right choice coming here. The guy they’d called Fate was almost as dark in coloring as Lars was. Two of them had nearly shaved heads but the one who had kneeled beside her looked like his sandy-colored hair was growing back in. The other one—she’d heard them call him Angus—had a mop of curls. But that didn’t distract any from the impression of violence he threw off. No, he blended quite well with the group.
There they stood, talking about her and deciding her fate. What if they were deciding whether to kill her?
Even though Lars had intervened, she wasn’t expecting any additional help. The way she had instinctively kept looking at him while the others had questioned her was embarrassing. She hadn’t meant to, but she’d just kept seeking him out with her eyes. Then he’d turned his back on her, which made it all the more surprising when he’d called them off. It was obvious he wanted nothing to do with her situation, and she couldn’t count on a second save.
As if they’d come to some sort of agreement, they all turned to look at her in unison. They broke apart and, one by one, walked back toward her, Lars leading the way. At least he was meeting her gaze now. If he was going to kill her, would he be able to look her in the eyes? She didn’t think she’d be able to look at someone who she was going to kill but she’d never murdered anyone either. She didn’t really have a good frame of reference. In court cases though, didn’t they say jurors didn’t look at the people they were going to convict? Either way, it gave her something to cling to, unless they were all mentally unbalanced and that would shoot that theory to hell.
Lars crouched down on his haunches in front of her instead of towering. She took that as another good sign, and it was a lot better than what that other guy, Fate, had done, getting all in her space.
“You can stay here with us.”
Of all the things that could’ve made her composure slip, she didn’t think good news would be the thing that did it. She pulled in a ragged breath, trying to hold it together. She didn’t realize how scared she’d been, of getting kicked out with nowhere else to turn, until she heard that. Or maybe part of what she was feeling was relief because it meant they weren’t going to kill her.