Page 20 of Villains Series

TWO DAYS AGO

THE ESQUIRE HOTEL

DOWN the hall and behind a door, Sydney Clarke lay curled in a nest of sheets. She’d listened to the sounds of Victor’s steps in the other room, slow and soft and even as dripping water. She’d heard the glass break, heard the sound of the tap running, and then again, the steps, drip drip drip. She’d heard Mitch, his heavy tread, the muffled conversation, only tones reaching her through the walls. She’d heard Mitch’s retreat down the hall. And then, quiet. The drip drip drip of Victor’s pacing replaced by an odd stillness.

Sydney didn’t trust stillness. She had come to believe that it was a bad thing. A wrong, unnatural, dead thing. She sat up in the strange bed in the strange hotel, her watery blue eyes unfocused on the door, stretching to hear through the wood and silence beyond. When still nothing greeted her, she slid from the bed in her too-large stolen sweats, and padded barefoot from her room and into the hotel suite’s spacious living room.

Victor’s bandaged hand was now draped over the arm of a couch facing the windows, a shallow glass dangling loosely from his fingers, only a sip’s worth of liquid left inside, and most of it melted ice. Sydney tiptoed around the couch to face him.

He was asleep.

He didn’t look peaceful, but his breathing was low, even.

Sydney perched on a chair and considered the man who had saved her … no, she had saved herself … but found her, taken her in. She wondered who he was, and if she should be afraid of him. She didn’t feel afraid, but Sydney knew not to trust fear, and certainly not to trust the absence of it. She hadn’t been afraid of her sister, Serena, or even her sister’s new boyfriend (at least not afraid enough) and look where that had gotten her.

Shot.

So she sat on the balls of her feet atop the leather chair and watched Victor sleep, as if the frown lines that lingered even now would rearrange and tell her all his secrets.