Page 16 of Claimed By the Psychos

The elevator ride down feels like descending into hell. Juniper presses her face against the mirrored wall, fogging it with her breath. "I don't like him," she whispers. "He smells like broken glass."

"That's not what he smells like." I keep my voice steady, clinical. She's mixing sensory input again. "He smells like alpha pheromones and expensive cologne."

"Same thing." She draws a smiley face in the condensation. Gives it fangs.

The elevator dings. Lobby level. I guide her through the marble and glass cavern, past the security desk, out into the afternoon sun. The city noise helps. Juniper does better with chaos than silence.

"Forty-eight hours," she repeats once we're a block away. "That's not very long to decide if we want to kill four alphas who save people."

"They're not saving people. They're playing hero." I flag down a cab. Any permanent mode of transport is too much risk. "And that much money could set us up for a long time. No more jobs for a while."

She slides into the cab first, scooting to the far window. I give the driver our address and settle beside her. She immediately curls into my side, seeking contact.

"You think I'm getting worse." Not a question.

I could lie. Tell her she's fine. That the episodes aren't increasing in frequency. That she didn't spend twenty minutes last week having a conversation with someone who wasn't there. But lies are for marks, not for her.

And I made her a promise years ago, before I broke us both out of that hell hole. A promise that I would never leave her or lie to her, and I'll die before I break either of those.

"Yes," I say simply.

"The shadows are getting louder." She traces patterns on my thigh. "Sometimes they tell me things. True things. Like how that man back there has killed thirteen people. I could see them standing behind him."

"That's not possible."

"That he killed them?" Her laugh sounds like breaking glass. "Or that they talk to me?"

I don't have an answer to that. Not one she'll like.

The cab winds through traffic. I run the numbers in my head. Four targets. Military trained. Well-equipped. It wouldtake weeks of surveillance, careful planning. Higher risk than anything we've done before.

But that money...

"If we do this," I say carefully, "we do it our way. Full reconnaissance. No rushing. The second something feels wrong, we abort."

She's quiet for a long moment. "He had kind eyes, Felix."

"So do you. Doesn't make you any less dangerous."

"I guess." She yawns, the stress of the meeting catching up. "But if the shadows tell me something specific, we back out. Deal?"

I sigh. "Deal."

She nods against my shoulder. I can feel her relaxing, trusting me to handle it. To keep her safe. To make the hard choices so she doesn't have to.

The card burns in my pocket. Forty-eight hours to decide if we're going to hunt the hunters. Kill the heroes. Become the monsters in someone else's story.

But we're already monsters. At least this way, we'll be rich monsters.

Juniper starts humming again. A different song this time. Something about falling down.

I hold her tighter and watch the city blur past, calculating angles and distances and how many bullets it takes to put down a hero.

Chapter

Seven

JUNIPER