Page 3 of From Hell

The barman finally clocks him and promptly ignores him. He looks at me as I raise my hand, peering over the edge of my book. He saunters over to serve me instead. “What can I get you, love?”

“Are you fucking kidding me? I’m waiting here,” my target huffs.

The barman, a big fellow with tattoos for days and a steel bar slicing straight through his tongue, raises a brow. “And you can wait until I’ve finished serving the lady here.”

I shake my head, playing my part. “It’s okay, Lance.” I’ve been here since mid-afternoon, so by now I know that Lance is twenty-eight, divorced, and has two adorable girls. We bonded over women’s soccer and broken hearts.

Gagging internally at the cloud of cologne in the air, I turn to the man I’ve never met but hate more than life itself—my prey—and offer him a tight smile. “Or I could just get you a drink. What are you having?”

Henry Barnaby Wickham III eyes me with his dark, wandering eyes, revulsion shuddering through my frame as he does. I’m not his date, or at least I’m not the blonde Scandinavian with the perky tits from the pictures I used to lure him here. He looks around, scanning the bar for anyone who resembles her. When he fails, he sneers in disgust at my choice of light reading: a crime thriller with daggers and chess pieces on the cover. “I’m waiting for someone,” he says bluntly.

I shrug, letting nonchalance exude with a thin-lipped smile. I close my book and slip it into my bag. “So am I. Keep each other company while we do?”

His eyes lose their hostile look, and he mimics my body language. “Fine. A beer would be fucking perfect right now.”

“Lance? Can you get—”

“Henry,” he interrupts.

I flash him a smile, then look back at Lance. “Can you get Henry a beer, please?”

“Make that two; I’m parched. Just come off from a twenty-four-hour shift at the hospital.” He glances down his nose at me. “I’m a surgeon,” he adds, attempting to impress me.

Lance gives me a look like he wants to take Henry outside and beat the crap out of him. I suppress a similar look and hold up two fingers. “Then a couple of beers for the good doctor, please, Lance.”

Lance arches a brow, but fetches the beer. “Hope you know what you’re doing, love,” he mutters as he pours three pints and places the beer glasses—plastic by the looks of it; it’s that kind of place—on the bar top.

I hope so too. This is my second attempt because I didn’t manage to take him out the first time. I got the location all wrong—too many people around.

Nola thinks the guilt is eating away at me, that my nerves got in the way. Sage doesn’t have an opinion because she’s too wrapped up in her own problems for me to lay mine on her. But she has my back if I need her. Both of them do.

With the girls behind me, I’ll never be a victim again.

My heart seizes in my chest. As if sensing my doubt, my phone vibrates in my lap, andManeaterby Nelly Furtadoblares above the din. It seemed an appropriate ringtone for Nola when I chose it, but now I’m not so sure.

Henry grimaces at the sound ofYou wish you never ever met her at all,on repeat, so I silence the call without looking at the screen. I’ll ring her later.

I keep my eyes firmly on him, like you would a tiger that escaped the zoo. No, not a tiger. Something uglier. Tigers are stunning creatures. Henry Barnaby Wickham is a disease-ridden fungus. He doesn’t deserve to slime his way over this earth.

“Fucking bitch,” Henry mutters as he swipes through his phone messages. He’s sent Taylor, my fake online dating persona, quite a few. Scowling, he slams his phone onto the bar and snatches up his beer, downing half the liquid in one swig.

I swallow too, gathering every ounce of courage for what I’m about to do.

“Stood up?” I ask smoothly, even though my insides twist with anticipation.

He snorts, rolling his eyes at me. “Of course not. She’s just annoyingly late.”

“Women will do that.”

“She could have picked someplace less trashy if she was going to make me wait,” he spits out, earning a dark look from Lance.

Henry finishes his beer and starts on the second, gulping it down like a fish. I nod sympathetically and ask him a few more questions about his job, since he casually dropped it in the conversation. He doesn’t ask me about myself—like a typical, arrogant cockhead—and I offer nothing up because it would be lies, and I suck at lying. I can make them up; I’m just not great at keeping them straight.

He doesn’t remember me, and that’s enough.They never do.

Maybe it’s the wig and the contacts.

“Rita? Do you want anything else?” Lance asks while wiping the bar down with a cloth, the muscle in his jaw ticcing when he glances at Henry.