Page 19 of Butcher & Blackbird

Sloane is fuckingfuming.

“There was a man in the wall,” I blurt out.

“I know,” she snarls as she shoves me with both hands. “His name isRowan Kaneand he hasno fucking boundariesbecause he’s a fucking pervy weirdo—”

“No, I swear—”

“Were you spying on me getting myself off?”

“No,” I protest, but she glares at me as though utterly unconvinced that I’m telling the truth. It doesn’t help my case that she’s wearing a tiny pair of sleep shorts and a spaghetti strap tank top, and she’s probably able to hear theno braalarm blaring on repeat in my head. “Okay, Iheardyou but I steppedawayfrom the wall—”

“Rowan—”

“And then I heard something else,” I say, grabbing her wrist with my free hand. I tow her behind me. She squirms and protests, but I refuse to let her go. “You’re right, there was someone watching you in the wall. And he took off before I had a chance to see his face, let alone bludgeon it with a lamp.”

We stop at the gaping hole where the ruined painting hangs askew and I drop Sloane’s wrist so she can peer into the narrow room. She leans in, twisting to assess the exit point to a hidden corridor in the back wall.

“Motherfucker,” she whispers.

“Right? That’s what I said.”

Sloane turns to me, her arms crossed over her chest. I expect to see lingering anger or suspicion, not her eyes dancing in the dim light and the murderous grin that sneaks across her lips. “I fucking knew it.”

A heartbeat later, Sloane is marching past me.

“Wait…what’s going on?” I follow in her wake to stop at her door as she tosses on a plaid shirt, not bothering with the buttons. She slips on her sneakers and whips her sheathed hunting blade from the floor, and then she’s pushing past me again to stalk down the corridor toward the staircase. I toss the lamp into her room with a crash of broken glass and jog after her, catching up as she hurries down the stairs.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m boobing boobily, Rowan. What does it look like?”

“You’re…what?”

“Chasing that motherfucker down, that’s what.”

“Who?”

“Francis,” she says as she storms through the lobby. “Francis Ross.”

All the pieces click into place, the picture coming into view. The car in the river. The plates from New York. When the right victims made the wrong decisions and wound up at the Cunningham Inn, he watched them. And sometimes he killed them.

He watched Sloane. Maybe he would have tried to kill her too.

Rage stains my vision red as we burst out of the lobby and into the night.

The thought that he could have hurt her collides with another realization, stopping me dead in the parking lot as Sloane storms forward on a paved path that winds around the side of the hotel, leading toward the caretaker’s house. “That emo wannabe fuckboy with the pink tie is the killer? And you went on adatewith that wanker?”

Sloane snorts a laugh but doesn’t stop. “Gross.”

“Sloane—”

“It’s a competition, Butcher,” she says as she reaches the corner of the hotel. She doesn’t even look over her shoulder as she gives me the finger and leaves me with two parting words: “Get fucked.”

Sloane turns the corner with a devilish cackle, her running footsteps consumed by shadow.

“Like hell,” I hiss.

And then I take off after her into the night.