Page 3 of Love & Other Killers

Kintsugi

I roll my eyes. Fold my arms across my chest. Try to channel the sharp edge of the blade at my hip through my cutting glare. “What are you doing here?”

Rowan and I square up to face off against each other.

Lachlan stands behind his left shoulder, his hard stare shielded by his black-rimmed glasses, and Fionn to his right.

Fionn might look a little unsure of the situation, but that only makes him more dangerous.

He grew up surrounded by the darkness of his brothers, sure—but he’s new to it within himself.

It makes him unpredictable, and I shoot a sharp look in his direction to tell him as much.

He doesn’t balk at my glare, which only stokes the irritation that simmers in my belly.

But I’m not about to let the Kane brothers intimidate me on the playing field. Not when I’ve come with my Sticker Bitch Crew.

Behind me is Lark, standing so close I catch her citrus scent on the breeze.

She’s taken her indie singer-songwriter look to full heights this morning with her long blond locks tied up in a multicolored fabric wrap and patches from music festivals sewn onto her distressed overalls.

She’s adorably sunshiny, but I know her giant bag carries not only enough snacks to sustain us all for days in the woods but also the tools to make her next victim into crafts.

On my other side is Rose, who’s now dosed up on her anti-nausea medication and ready to “cut that fucker up,” as she’s said at least ten times this morning.

Even Barbara has joined us, because “she can’t be left to her own devices or she’ll figure out how to open the fridge, and we’ll end up having to pump her stomach,” and she growls when Rowan takes a single step closer.

“Same thing you are, Blackbird,” Rowan says, a self-satisfied smirk lifting the corner of his lips where his scar cuts straight through the pink flesh. His bloodshot eyes dart toward the escarpment where I already know a steep slope will reveal our hunting ground. Allan Munster’s chicken farm.

I scoff, memories of our second Annual August Showdown surfacing.

Rowan had followed me around, scavenging for clues about our target.

It was infuriating. And adorable, though I hated to admit it at the time.

I didn’t think a man like him could love a woman like me—a woman so broken.

So alone. I spent a lot of time convincing myself I didn’t deserve it, and that meant it wasn’t real.

And though I know differently now, and I love my husband with every ounce of a heart I once wasn’t sure could love anyone, I also want to beat him in this game. Mercilessly.

“You cheated,” I snap.

“ You cheated. You went into that barn dance to do recon.”

“And you’re the one who said we should get Conor to book us a decent Airbnb with a hot tub, pretty boy. It’s not my fault we all knew the general location a day early. Plus, there’s nothing in the rules to say I couldn’t go to a fucking barn dance.”

“I’m sure you could have joined her if you hadn’t been dressed like a dumpster goblin,” Rose pipes up over my shoulder.

Rowan’s smirk dissolves into a troubled frown and he rubs his cheek, his skin still stained green from the poster paint he slathered on it yesterday in a misguided attempt to bring my Sol cosplay fantasies to life a second time.

Fionn snickers. “She’s got you on that one.”

“Shut up, you birdseed-eating twat.” Rowan moves to whack Fionn in the arm, but his younger brother is too fast and dodges the hit. Fionn in turn strikes out at Lachlan and lands a blow.

“You little shit. What was that for?”

“The ‘birdseed-eating twat’ thing,” Fionn says. “You can’t tell Rowan that shit, he’ll never shut up. And I’m taller than you, in case you haven’t noticed. Asshat.”

“We were here first,” I interject as the brothers threaten one another with glares and curses. I take a step closer. “You need to leave.”

Rowan pouts, but his eyes are far too bright with amusement. “Peaches—”

“I will cut your fucking balls off, Rowan Kane—”

“ Blackbird. Love.” He closes the distance between us and carefully grasps my elbows.

Though I try to glare at him, it’s so hard to do when he smiles at me with such teasing warmth.

His scar lightens a shade as his smile tugs at the edges of the straight line.

God, he’s so fucking pretty it hurts. “We can share.”

I try to scowl. Judging by Rowan’s smile, I’m not very successful. “I want to win, not share.”

“Oh, I know.”

“Then what do we get out of this sharing deal, hmm?” I press a palm to his chest and gather the fabric in a fist, coaxing him closer, letting my gaze drag from his lips to his eyes with a long, slow pass of heat. “We should get something out of it, pretty boy.”

As much as he might try to seem unaffected by my warmth and my scent, by the closeness of my body or the undisguised want written across my face, Rowan’s throat bobs with a swallow. He looks like he wants to take a step back but can’t make himself do it. “Something ...? L-like?”

“We should at least get just a little head start.” My gaze lingers on his lips. A blush rises in his green-tinted skin.

Lachlan claps a hand on Rowan’s shoulder. “Feckin’ eejit. Don’t do it, man—”

“Leave him alone, Budget Batman,” Lark pipes up, her voice sweet and teasing despite the reproach. “It’s their game and we’re just living in it. Let the happy couple negotiate their terms.”

I smile, my eyes never straying from Rowan’s face as Lachlan grumbles a string of swears and lets his hand fall from his younger brother’s shoulder.

One of my fingers draws a slow circle on Rowan’s chest, and he shivers beneath my touch.

“I think we should get a one-hour head start, given we arrived here first.”

“No feckin’ way,” Lachlan snarls. “Zero head start.”

“Half an hour—”

“Blackbird.” Rowan folds a hand over mine and makes a half-hearted attempt to release himself from my grasp. He jerks his head in Lachlan’s direction. “That asshat will punch me in the throat. I don’t want to be punched in the throat.”

“Twenty minutes.” I press in closer, slipping my thigh against his hardening cock as he tries to cover a groan with a cough.

Lachlan heaves a dramatic sigh behind him. “Feckin’ Christ Jesus—”

“Fine, Blackbird. Twenty minutes,” Rowan says to a chorus of swears from his brothers and triumphant laughter from my friends. I release him and step back with a victorious smirk as he tries to adjust the bulge in his jeans. “But we are still going to win.”

“Sure you are.” I give him a pat and then turn toward Rose and Lark with a beaming smile before I shrug my backpack from my shoulders, retrieving my binoculars from the front pocket. “I guess we might as well take a look together.”

We head toward the edge of the escarpment, where we can kneel beneath the heavy foliage and peer down into the valley.

Kneeling at the edge of the rocky ledge, all the main structures are visible, from the well-kept farmhouse to the machine shed where tractors and utility vehicles are kept to the canvas buildings that house the chickens.

I raise the binoculars and pan my gaze across the property before passing them to Rose.

“You sure this is the guy?” she asks, slowly moving the binoculars across the farm.

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Then let’s fuck him up .”

Barbara snarls.

“Maybe we should check that he’s even home first,” Fionn says as Rose passes the binoculars to him next. Her eye roll is the perfect balance of sharp and adoring. “Do a recce of the property.”

“‘A recce?’” Rowan snorts. “Who are you, Jason Bourne? Feckin’ bellend—”

“ Shut up. ” Lachlan pulls the binoculars from Fionn’s hand and leans forward, his attention caught on something in the valley below. “It’s him.”

I follow his line of sight and catch the motion of a man in the distance, walking from the house toward the machine shed.

A moment later, an old pickup truck roars to life, its throaty diesel rumble lapping at the valley walls.

It pulls out of the shed, and then the vehicle is bounding across the uneven gravel of the driveway in a cloud of dust, headed off the property.

Rowan nudges my elbow. “Does he live alone?”

“What, you don’t know?”

“Do you?”

My eyes narrow as Rowan smirks. “What’s that look for?” I ask.

“What look?”

“That,” I say, swirling my hand in the general vicinity of his face. “That shit-eating-grin look that you’re giving me.”

Rowan shrugs, and nothing about it seems nonchalant.

“I dunno, Blackbird,” he replies as he reaches across me to pull the binoculars from Lachlan’s grasp.

“Maybe I just know a thing or two about Mr. Munster too. Like whether or not he lives alone. And he does live alone, by the way. Though maybe you should have known that already?”

I can feel the crimson blush rising in my cheeks. And Rowan sees it too. His smile widens as soon as it appears beneath my freckles. “You’re the worst.”

“And you love me anyway.” With a swift kiss to my burning cheek, Rowan raises the binoculars and sweeps his gaze across the valley, that smile still lingering on his lips.

I give him a nudge, just for the sake of feeling his warmth against my side.

And though I don’t look up to meet his eyes, I still feel the heat of his gaze on my face.

“I love you, too, Blackbird,” he whispers, and this time, when he presses another kiss to my cheekbone, my blush rises for an entirely different reason.

When we’ve all had a chance to survey the farm, we rise, brushing off our jeans. “It’s probably a good time to take a look,” Lachlan says as he checks his knife before sliding it back into the sheath at his side.

“ We will.” Lark takes a sip of her water, letting her words linger in the air before she tilts the bottle toward Lachlan. “And by ‘we,’ I mean me, Rose, and Sloane. You and your brethren will wait for twenty minutes while me and the Sticker Bitches start having a look around.”

“Aww come on, you’re not serious about this twenty-minute shite—”

“Brother,” Rowan interjects as he drops an arm over my shoulders, “my adorably murdery wife will suck the eyeball from your face with an industrial-size vacuum in your sleep if you won’t stick to the deal.

” He presses a kiss to my forehead, and I’m sure I’m beaming some lovesick teenager smile at him at the memory of our very first game, but he merely winks and returns to his conversation with his brother.

Within a few minutes, we’ve repacked our belongings, shed our heavier layers in the growing August heat, and checked our weapons.

Lark and Lachlan lead the way down the narrow hiking trail that descends into the valley.

Rose and Fionn go next. Rowan shoots me a lopsided grin before he trails after them.

I take a final glance in the direction of the farm, anticipation rising in every beat of my heart.

It’s an itch deep within the confines of my skull, one that starts beneath my skin and climbs into my brain and doesn’t let go.

Not until the moment I kill a man like Munster. Only then do I feel relief.

I pivot, panning my gaze across the small clearing.

I’m thinking about the web I intend to create for Munster, the final details of which I spent last night planning out as best I could while Rowan snored loudly by my side with half a bottle of moonshine whiskey coursing through his veins.

And then my gaze snags on motion in the bushes.

An unfamiliar woman takes a single step onto the path.

At first, I startle. My fist tightens around the knife I grip close to my thigh. I don’t know if she’s a threat, though she makes no movement to issue one. And then I really take her in. Her unthreatening but confident gaze. Maybe even hopeful. Her haunted eyes and subtle smile. Her shirt .

I recognize that shirt. The faded plaid, the tear in the arm that she must have sewn.

“What’s your name?” I’d asked the first time we met. She was naked, covered in streaks of dirt. Cowering against a brick wall in the dark. Recoiling from the light of my phone, as though she hadn’t seen light in days. Maybe weeks.

“I—I’m Autumn,” she’d stammered. She seemed so breakable then.

Blond hair, a frail frame, wild eyes. But I remember something else about her too.

That her first words to me weren’t her name or pleas to be set free.

She wasn’t begging for help. Her first words were about Adam.

“He killed Adam. I h-heard it. He k-killed him.”

I’d given her the shirt she’s wearing now, and then I left her in that cellar as Rowan pulled me to safety.

But in this brief blink of a moment, I don’t see any anger or resentment in her expression. Only gratitude.

She looks so different now. Dark hair pulled back, bangs framing her face. Standing straight, not cowering in the shadows.

I smile. I give her a single nod. She gives me one in return.

And then I turn and walk away.