Page 33 of Rio (Redcars #3)

TWENTY-THREE

Lyric

We ended up in a no-tell motel outside Thousand Oaks—one of those rundown, sun-bleached strips that hadn’t changed since the eighties.

Faded pink paint peeled off the stucco walls.

The neon VACANCY sign buzzed as if it had a nervous tic, and the office was protected by a thick glass window that made it clear this wasn’t the kind of place you stayed at because you wanted to.

But it was cash-only. No questions, no paper trail. That was what we needed.

Rio picked a room at the very end of the block, the one with a busted porch light and a rust-streaked ice machine around the corner. The truck was parked outside our door, close enough that Rio could get to it in two steps flat if shit went sideways .

Inside, it was small, dusty, and dim. The bedspread was a faded floral pattern that might once have been cheerful. Now it was tired. The air conditioner wheezed in the wall, blowing more noise than actual cold.

I didn’t care.

I dropped my pack by the table, booted the laptop, and set to work. Because while Rio was out locking down the perimeter, checking sight lines, and planning every exit, I had a different kind of fight to prepare for.

And it started with getting past the silence in my head and punching a hole through the fortress that was Kessler’s mind.

The contract on the dark web had updated to even more money now. LyricNight was getting worried about me. Whether that was Kessler losing his shit after seeing all his colleagues go down, or the AI calculating probabilities on its own to protect him, I couldn’t say.

That was the part that scared me the most. Not knowing where the decisions were coming from.

Not knowing if Kessler was still the hand pulling the strings…

or if the machine was doing it all. Kessler hadn’t been seen in public for seven weeks—no new appearances, no digital footprint that wasn’t already ol d and scrubbed.

It was as if he’d vanished behind the firewall of his fortress and let the AI run wild.

That silence? It was louder than any declaration.

Either he was hiding, or something worse—he might be sending me encrypted messages, or the AI was doing it and he wasn’t the one calling the shots anymore.

Either way, the clock was ticking. And the price on my head said I wasn’t just a loose thread anymore—I was a fucking threat.

Rio came back in, arms full of shitty snacks. I didn’t ask where he’d gotten them. Didn’t care. I took the first thing he handed me—a crushed pack of mini donuts tasting of chemicals and sugar and comfort. They were, somehow, still within the use-by date.

He passed me a bottle of water next. I held it for a second, blinking. Did it matter how old water was? Could it expire? I cracked the seal anyway and drank half of it without stopping.

Rio flopped into the room’s single chair as if he’d been shot, one leg stretched out, scanning every window and corner as if by instinct.

He didn’t ask what I’d found.

He kept me supplied with sugar and silence and the kind of presence that let me know I wasn’t doing this alone .

The silence lasted an hour, Rio was restless, and I sat back in my chair—there was nothing else I could do now but go over the plan I had in my head, which to be fair was get inside, fix shit, and get out alive.

The Cave were working on their end, they’d tell me when it was okay to go in, but I hated that Rio was going in with me.

“You okay?” I asked him.

He started, sitting up in the chair, assessing for threats, and only relaxed when he saw it was me.

“Yeah.”

I unwrapped a sticky chocolate bar that looked as if it had been melted and re-solidified three separate times. It tasted like shit, and I shoved it to one side.

“Can I ask you something?” Rio said.

I nodded, leaning back in my chair and stretching my legs out, spine popping as I arched. “Shoot.”

“Tell me about the times you got away.”

“All of them?” I asked, raising a brow. “Or do you just want to know about the ones where I killed someone?”

Rio didn’t seem surprised at that. Maybe it eased his thoughts about the man he’d killed today to protect his family. Who knows. “Anything you feel okay telling me,” he said.

“The first couple of times I got away were clean. Evasive maneuvers, dumped files, scorched trails. I’d disappear before they even realized I’d been there.

It felt like a game back then. Dangerous, but not deadly.

Just me outsmarting whoever was trying to keep me out.

Then it got serious. I worked out that every time I got anywhere near LyricNight, a contract would go up.

Not warnings. Not threats. Bounties. The AI—or Kessler, or both—had decided I wasn’t just a nuisance.

I was a liability to all that money and power he had.

All it would take is for me to want a cut, and his reputation would be fucked.

” I leaned forward in my chair. “And then the first real hit happened.”

Rio tensed, and I fought the need to clamber onto his lap and kiss away his worries. He needed to hear the bad bits that made me so understanding of what he’d done today.

“Some big guy—I never caught his name—decided to chance his luck. Tracked me to the back of a server café in Denver. He was twice my size and three times as mean, but he underestimated me. They all did in the end, I guess. He cornered me over a kill contract, said he wanted to make it quick. I told him that was considerate. I took out his knee with a wrench, drove a screwdriver into his throat, and ran.”

“Did he hurt you?” Rio asked and crossed to sit on the bed next to me .

“Yeah.” I wasn’t going to lie, even if it did make Rio flinch.

“I made it away, okay. It was the first time I’d killed someone, and I backed off from LyricNight and the contract disappeared.

I guess it reasoned that I was scared enough to back off.

That was attempt seven…” I counted back. “… I think.”

“Jesus, Lyric.”

“Yeah, but I handled it. Then attempts eight and nine occurred close together—back to back, practically—right around the time the names associated with Kessler started getting burned. Public exposures. Quiet murders. A leak here, a dead body there. The more people on my watch list ended up dead or disgraced, the more the AI ramped up the contracts on me, and I guess it assumed it was me behind it. Not just get me alive orders anymore, but dead or alive—anything to get me off the board.”

Now, though? There was nothing else I could do. I’d hit a wall, run every angle, double-checked every tool and patch I’d loaded on the encrypted drive. Anything else would just be me going in circles.

And no matter how much I wanted to lean into Rio, kiss him until I forgot who I used to be, we had to stay sharp. Vigilant. Focused.

But it was after midnight now, and the motel room had taken on a quieter weight—the kind that came after an adrenaline rush, when exhaustion started to edge out fear.

Rio reached over to the nightstand and picked up a spare zip tie, holding it between two fingers. “You need to practice how you get out of these.”

I was confused. “I need to stay in them to make sure anyone knows I’m restrained.”

“Yeah, but if they take you from me…” He paused. “Fuck, Lyric, the thought of someone taking you away from me, where I can’t protect you…”

“I get it,” I reassured, then kissed him. “It’ll be okay.”

“You don’t know that,” he said, desperately.

“We’ll make it okay. Together.”

“But if they take you, if they try to hurt you, I want your hands free to protect yourself. Okay?”

“Okay.” I held out my hands, and he hesitated.

“I fucking hate this,” he muttered. “You know that, right?”

“I know,” I said. “Show me how to get out then.”

His expression twisted as if he were about to argue, or refuse, or maybe throw the whole idea out of the window. But instead, he let out a breath through his nose and reached for the zip tie.

He looped it around my wrists, tightening it just enough to mimic restraint without biting into my skin.

As soon as it clicked, I moved—hooking my arms over his shoulders, drawing him close.

I kissed him—not to distract, not to seduce, but to ground him.

To say without words that I trusted him, even with this.

“Lyric…” he began.

“It’s okay. Show me.” I lifted my hands over his head, and he cradled my face and gave me a final kiss.

“Tense your arms,” he said, his voice low and steady. He moved behind me, his hands guiding my elbows outward. “Not too wide. Just enough. Now when you pull up—do it fast and sharp. As if you’re cracking something off your chest.”

I followed his movements, lifting my bound hands in a sharp motion the way he’d shown me. The plastic tie strained but held.

“Almost,” Rio murmured. “You’re weakening it. That’s the trick. It’s not about brute force—it’s pressure and angle.”

I mimicked the move again, and this time, the plastic split with a sharp pop .

He gave a small nod of approval. “Good.”

“Again,” I said. The adrenaline was still fizzing in my blood, and I wasn’t satisfied with almost. I didn’t want to weaken it—I wanted to dominate it. Snap it in one brutal go .

“Lyric, I?—”

“One more,” I said, firmer this time.

He met my gaze, something uncertain in his expression. Maybe worry. Maybe pride. But he didn’t argue as he grabbed another tie, looped it around my wrists, and pulled it snug.

“Fast. Sharp,” he reminded me, stepping back.

I braced myself, teeth gritted, and slammed my arms up the way he taught me. The plastic gave with a satisfying crack , and for a second, I stood there, breathing hard at the pain in my wrists.

Rio exhaled. “Now that was clean.” His pride made me smile, and despite my wrists throbbing, something in my chest loosened. I had power and control.

Rio stepped to the bed, his voice low. “Come here.”

Two words that stirred something I’d never known before—calm, peace, the sense I’d finally found where I belonged.

I folded down onto the mattress next to him. He kissed my wrists, trailed his fingers over the reddening skin, muttering something I couldn’t make out, then his arm slid around my shoulder, and for a moment I let myself think we were back in the room at Redcars, and this was just any other night.