Page 43 of Run, Little Rabbit (Blood & Bonds #1)

“It’s flattering that you think I have any chance against the skills waiting for us down there, but no. I’m not that good.”

He hits me with another stare, and there’s something a little warm in their depths, something honest and trustworthy. “You’ve got me, too. I’d protect you.”

Something clenches in my chest at his words, and I believe him. There’s so much sincerity oozing from him that I get stuck in it.

A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Of course, I’d then kill you myself because you made me protect your ass in the first place.”

My jaw drops. “You’re an asshole. I can’t believe—”

My phone pings with a notification saving Veon from the tirade of shit that was about to pour from my mouth. There’s another ping behind me, but I don’t pay attention to whose phone it is. My eyes are fixed firmly on St Olga’s ads page, and what I see makes ice settle in my veins.

There’s a live location being broadcast, and the pin shows the spot exactly where Echo is standing along with the caption: Bennie Walker’s Collection of Secrets.

I turn around and see Angel glaring at his phone, presumably looking at the same thing as me and a fleeting curiosity flutters through me as to why Angel would have access to St Olga’s ad page. Did he like to assassinate people too?

But that would be a tomorrow question; right now I had work to do.

“I need a computer. Now,” I bark, hoping I can track the fucker who managed to hack into the phone.

Max stands from the sofa and rushes towards his desk. “Will my laptop do? It’s fully encrypted and—”

“Yes,” I interrupt. Fuck, anything would do right now. Safety protocols be damned. I could deal with the fallout later. Right now, I needed to understand how someone was broadcasting the location of Bennie’s phone to the entire collection of assassins that used St Olga’s.

Dread fills my stomach as the name of someone from my past filters into my soul like a ghost.

I log in to my VPN and try and trace the signal back, but it’s being rerouted through so many other VPNs that there’s clearly an algorithm at work manipulating my ability to trace it.

“What do you see?” Echo asks as she steps behind my shoulder.

“Just give me a minute,” I say, my tone short. I don’t mean to snap at her, but this code that’s broadcasting the location of the phone is something else. It’s elegant and creative, beautiful even, and that ghost that crept into my periphery manifests into a full-blown vision.

“Fuck,” I breathe.

“What is it?” Echo asks, her hand squeezing my shoulder.

It’s impossible. It can’t be him. He’s supposed to be dead.

But as I watch the code unfold before my very eyes, I recognise the signature. It’s the man who took me in after I fled from my home, the man who taught me and then stole all my fucking work. “Cypher.”

As soon as the word leaves my lips, all the lights cut out and the electrics switch off. The crowd on the dance floor start to murmur and complain, the noise filtering through the glass windows.

The sound of a creepy distorted music box cuts through the speakers, and white noise plays on the screens dotted around the dance floor. A laugh cackles around the room, and Max puts the speakers back on in his office so the full force of the laughter scrapes against my eardrums.

“Ladies and gentlemen, and all those in between,” the voice begins.

It’s modulated, like someone is speaking through an app to transform their voice into something robotic.

“In your midst are a handful of really bad people. If I were you, I’d leave before you get caught in what I’m sure is going to be an epic shoot-out.

I love a shoot-out; it’s always the best bit in the movie. ”

“Fuck,” I mutter. “It’s him. It’s Cypher.” He always loved action movies, saying that the final shoot-out was always the most tense, exciting part of the film. I had always loved horror movies, and he used to tease the shit out of me every time I jumped.

“Who’s Cypher?” Angel asks, his voice soft and warm, and I know he’s trying to connect with me on some level, but a panic attack is creeping around the edges of my body. My chest heaves, and blood rushes through my veins.

I thought I’d killed him, but here he is, larger than fucking life. How is this even possible?

I‘d shot the man, for Christ’s sake. Right through his fucking chest.

“An old acquaintance,” I manage to say between the hazy breaths leaving my lungs. I need to focus. Need to find a way to stop, but I’m frozen. Just like I had been back then.

I can feel his presence suffocating me, robbing me of my ability to breathe, and I will my fingers to move over the keys of Max’s laptop, but the fear cripples me.

Cypher’s back.

He’s going to finish me.

He’s going to take revenge.

“Hey.”

Hands clasp my face, and auburn hair and blue eyes fill my vision.

Veon.

“Deep breath for me, Sphinx.” He takes a deliberate breath, and I copy him, mine a hell of a lot shakier than his.

Fuck. My fingers are trembling, and my skin is all clammy.

“Good boy,” he mutters, and I’m gone. Drowning under the soft syllables leaving his mouth.

Why the fuck do those two words have such an effect on me?

“Now take another breath,” he commands, and the room around me fades into the background. Veon kneels on the floor in front of me, his gaze steady and sure. “That’s it.”

A few moments pass, I don’t know how many, but I don’t feel like I’m going to pass out any time soon.

“Th-thank you,” I manage to mumble. Eloquent, Sphinx. Real eloquent.

Veon shrugs as if it were nothing; maybe to him it was. Maybe he was just being a good person and helping, but I’ve had nobody to help me through a panic attack before. I used to have loads back when I was first on my own, and I thought I’d gotten over them when Cypher died.

Apparently not.

I look away from Veon before I do something stupid, like confess that he’s actually amazing and that I want to suck his dick and turn my attention back to the laptop.

The code evolves even as I watch it stream across the page. It really is beautiful.

And I have no hope of solving this here within what I’m sure is going to be a very tight window of time.

The screens flash around the dancefloor, and a face appears wearing a mask.

One of those creepy ones with the ‘X’s’ for eyes.

Cypher did always love to be dramatic. “To those of you who are here for the fun, I salute you. The phone in question is now sharing a live location. Mr Walker was a sensible man and put in a system on the phone that would broadcast its location if he failed to enter a code every seven days. Now, I’ve generated several new codes which you’ve all received.

Should one of those be entered, the live location will cease to be broadcast, and you can keep the secrets. ”

“Did we get a code?” Max asks Angel, but the blonde shakes his head. That would have been too easy. Cypher must have worked out who has the phone or some kind of way to identify people who don’t have the phone and send them the invite to this murder party.

Part of me thinks Cypher set up all the sophisticated encryption on Bennie’s phone in the first place.

Fuck, maybe there is a whole file on Cypher in the damn phone, but I don’t know his real name, and there is way too much data to comb through even if I wanted to try and discover it.

It would be like searching for a very small needle in a ridiculously large haystack.

I take a quick glance down at the dance floor and see several people have already started to leave. There are a few who are watching the screens with interest, but I’m sure they’ll be running out when the ‘real fun’ starts.

The masked man laughs manically, the sound weird and distorted through the voice modulator. It sounds wrong and makes my stomach churn uncomfortably. How could I have failed to kill this maniac? How the hell did he survive?

A few ominous-looking people clad all in black start moving across the dance floor, pushing past the lingering partygoers who eyeball them with caution.

“May the odds be ever in your favour,” Cypher says with a laugh. “I’ve always wanted to say that. Did I do it justice, Sphinx?”

My face burns as I feel several stares graze against my skin like a physical touch, but I do my best to ignore them because any doubt I might have had that this mysterious masked man was someone else vanishes with that one little question.

Cypher cocks his head to one side, and I can imagine the face behind the mask. The piercing green eyes, the black hair probably now peppered with streaks of grey, and his mouth that was always so harsh.

“Better run, Sphinx,” Cypher laughs before the screen cuts out completely. The electrics all come back on, music blasts through the speakers, and strobe lights flash in time with the beat.

But there aren’t any dancers left on the floor.

Just a collection of lethal thugs and deadly assassins. All staring up at Max’s office. All with one goal in mind.

We’re fucked.