That was what I knew as truth. There was no way for me to change their minds or divert them. All it would do was get me my bullet that much faster.
Deals with devils.
The whole situation I was in was fucked up from day one, and now I was bartering lives.
“Who is he?” I asked once we were in the car.
“Seven.”
One. Three. Five. Six. Seven. Nine.
The Sesame Street Count would not be happy with my counting skills. Only single digits had been mentioned and though I hadn’t seen him, I did know Eight was killed in Indianapolis and we were searching for Four.
“So Seven is better than you,” I said, remembering our conversation in Tennessee. His lips formed a thin line. “Is that wounded pride I see?”
“Seven is marginally better than me. Like I said, with a group like ours, there is very little that separates the top from the bottom.”
“If you’re so close, how did they rank you? Is it possible to climb ranks? Like, can you become Nine? Or can Nine fall?”
The sure sign of his annoyance showed—the dreaded jaw clenching—and he took a turn a bit on the fast side. Just to jostle me, I was sure.
“Why the sudden curiosity?”
“Well, according to all your buddies, I am a cat.”
Nothing. Seemed he would still only answer some questions.
He sighed and glanced at the rearview mirror. “When we get in there, stay behind me.”
I glanced back as well. “You don’t trust him?”
“I don’t trust anyone.”
Walked right into that response.
“Changing the subject won’t stop my questions, you know.”
He glanced at me. “Yes, you’ve been annoying me with them for two months. I’ve already told you too much.”
“Who am I going to tell?”
With another right, we pulled into a parking lot, the sign lit up in the headlights—Clark County Nevada Coroner’s Office.
There were only a handful of cars in the parking lot and only a few more than that of illuminated windows in the building. Six pulled a silencer out of the glovebox and screwed it on the end of his gun.
I pulled the door handle, popping the door open, but Six grabbed on to my arm. The look in his eyes when I met them was the same deadly cool and calm from when he burst into my lab.
“Don’t try anything. Don’t say anything. You are here for one reason and one reason only. Anything out of line, and you’ll be just another body in the wreckage.”
I nodded as a shiver ran through me. The relaxed atmosphere evaporated. Business. And I was a loose end.
After nine weeks, there was no way anyone would believe my story. In fact, it was getting harder and harder to see that even if I got away from Six, I’d ever be able to return to my old life.
Bottom line—I’d never be normal again, let alone see my family and friends.
Yes, I’d come to accept my situation. In fact, I’d almost turned into someone else. Paisley Warren seemed like a distant memory, while Lacey Collins was globe trotting with a hard-core bad boy sex god.
Sex god? Really, Paisley?
Asshole did have me there. I placed all the blame on having fucked one of his alter egos when we met. It totally messed me up.
Seven got out of his car, his eyes flashing to me before he stepped up next to Six.
“I was able to hack into their system earlier today.”
“No cameras, then?”
Seven nodded. “I was going to wait until the morning, but due to the location…” he looked around to the built-up area “…this works better.”
In the back of the building was an employee entrance that required a card to enter. Just as I was about to scold myself for not thinking of it, Seven pulled a blank card out of a backpack and swiped it. The lights on the keypad changed to green and the lock clicked open.
Good thing killers came prepared, because I really didn’t want to come back when there were more people.
It hit me then, really hard.
Everyone in the building was going to die. They weren’t going to let anyone out alive, all to cover up the death of one of their Killing Corps buddies.
My hands shook as we walked down the hall. When we reached the lobby, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. There was the familiar suppressed bang of a silenced gun and the sound of a body falling to the ground.
I opened my eyes and glanced over, instantly wishing I hadn’t. Slumped against a filing cabinet was a man, probably in his thirties, with dark skin and a small hole in the center of his forehead. There was a splatter of red on the wall behind him and some bits that I recognized as brain matter.
My stomach turned.
I wasn’t made for unfeeling killing. Gruesome I could handle, but being there, standing next to the person who did it, knowing I would be sleeping in the same bed as him, his arms around me…
But it wasn’t the first time. That wasn’t the first person he’d killed in front of me and fucked me soon after.
Even with as lax as things had become, almost normal routines, I was still a captive even with my new companion status. The threat of death is what kept me beside him as much as I kept myself.