Page 57 of Silent Schemes

Like a predator checking the wind for prey.

Her green eyes reflect the neon sign on the business behind her.

She takes a drag, then grinds the cigarette to pulp under her shoe.

“Your friend is mad at me,” she says. Her voice is low, a little throaty from the smoke.

I shrug, roll my shoulders, feel the crackle of old injuries. “He’s afraid you’ll break my heart.”

She laughs, a bitter little sound. “You don’t have one.”

I stand next to her, close but not touching.

She shivers in the wind, but she’s not cold.

She’s burning something off.

“You’re letting them watch you,” I say, softly.

She flicks her tongue over her teeth, eyes on the traffic below. “Maybe I want them to see.”

“Why?”

She stares at me, hard enough to feel it in the molars. “I want you to know everything. In case you have to kill me.”

I reach up, brush the hair off her forehead, my thumb smearing a drop of rain down her cheek. “I won’t have to.”

She closes her eyes, leans into my hand just for a heartbeat, then pulls away.

She turns and goes inside, shedding water across the marble as she heads to the elevator.

I fall into step beside her. “I have work to do tonight. You can come with, after you change into something a little less…” Eyeing her up and down, I trail off.

Her eyes roll back, but once we’re back at my suite, she heads back to my room and changes.

“Ready.”

I take the Crown Vic tonight.

Less traceable, more honest.

Also, the minor detail that I have a package in the back that’s been in there since the morning.

If I didn’t deal with it soon, it would cause some issues.

The seats smell like a lifetime of spilled coffee and dead cigarettes, the interior patched up with duct tape and the kind of love only a career criminal can show a car.

Sienna rides shotgun, her hair slicked wet from the rain, but the rest of her is dry.

She rolls the window down, letting in the stink of city pollution.

She doesn’t ask where we’re going.

Doesn’t care.

She hums to herself, some old Italian pop song that turns to static in her throat.

We cut through the warehouse district, then east into the part of town where the streetlights are more shattered than not.