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Someone had sent three hitters to take her out. My mind just wouldn’t let go of the idea of her facing three attackers. She had been at a serious disadvantage, yet somehow, she had taken all three out and still had the grit to crawl away for her life.
My thoughts drifted back to the morning I received that first white rose just moments before I got the “0” notification. I had recognized the taunt for what it was, a gifted hitter choosing her rival.
She had chosen me as the metric to measure herself by—the standard against which she would judge her skill level. In order to be the best, you gotta beat the best.
As my thoughts came into sharper focus, I realized that was exactly why I was furious; she was mine. My rival. Mine to defeat, mine to kill and some asshole had taken that away from me or tried to, at least.
Two Karambit knives were embedded deep in these assholes. I was certain they belonged to her, so I retrieved them.
Only one of the men had a phone on him. He wouldn’t be needing it anymore, so I relieved him of it.
One more quick sweep of the area and I found two more karambits in the dirt and pocketed them. I chuckled to myself, wondering if she was on her way to a job or if she always walked around strapped, probably the latter.
The three men were covered in blood, as were the pine needles that covered the ground in the immediate vicinity. She had done a fairly efficient job of eviscerating them.
“Good girl.” I murmured my praise to the silent grove.
While nearly all this blood belonged to these men, she did have several small lacerations, so it was conceivable some of this blood belonged to her. It had felt almost like professional courtesy to remove any evidence of her from the scene.
I remembered one of the men had a small box of matches in his pocket. Was that the plan? Kill Tierney and set the grove ablaze to hide the evidence.
Not a bad plan, actually, I thought to myself as I kneeled beside him and fished the matches from his pockets.
The tang of sulfur hit my nose as I struck the first match, dropping it in the center of the triangle of bodies, then several more in an arc around them a little farther out. Match after match fell alongside the pathway on my way back to my car.
By the time I reached the small parking area, the dry as a bone needles had caught nearly the entire grove, the heat radiating from the blaze was already enough to make me uncomfortable and it was still a decent distance from me.
One final look as I pulled out onto the darkened two-lane highway. The flames were leaping above the treetops and I could no longer make out individual trees, just a wall of fire.
“Now no one will ever know she was there.” I murmured.
Chapter 7
TIERNEY
There’s a sound. Ticking, clicking… tapping maybe. Whatever it was, it was annoying. The incessant, repetitive sound was like a fly buzzing in my ear. I would get up and silence the inconsiderate prick making the noise, but my arms felt heavy—like they weighed a thousand pounds—impossible to lift.
My heart raced as I realized my eyes wouldn’t open. I screamed out in frustration, but a pitiful whimper was the only sound that reached my ears.
Pain lashed through me like strikes from a barbed whip, stealing what remained of my breath and dragging me under again.
My mind was drifting, lost beneath an endless ocean, my memories eddying away faster than I could hold on to them.
“Where am I?” my mind whispered into the void, the darkness swallowing me whole before I could demand ananswer.
The tapping was back. Yes, this time I was certain it was tapping.
My eyelids felt heavy, but this time, I pushed through, forcing them open. I froze, my breath catching in my throat at the sight of Ahren Rossdale sitting barely three feet from me.
His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, leaving his forearms bare, his muscles flexing as he flipped a pen back and forth, each end tapping the table as it made contact.
The room smelled faintly of gun oil and something woodsy and I imagined him cleaning his gun as he passed the time waiting for me to wake.
His eyes, the color of honey laced with whiskey, were fixed on a point in the distance, lost in his own world. For a moment, I considered the rare opportunity to observe my rival unnoticed, quickly realizing my folly—my momentary lapse in judgment as his eyes slowly swung to mine, the pen dropping to the table as he repositioned himself to face me.
My heart hammered in my chest, icy panic rushing through my veins as I remembered I couldn’t move. Hell, even my eye movements felt sluggish. Just making them stare at him seemed to take every drop of effort in my body—not that I could look away either.
“Why can’t I move?” I croaked, my voice cracking on each word, despite my strong desire to come across from a position of strength.