Page 44 of Villains Series

THIS AFTERNOON

THE ESQUIRE HOTEL

ELI was still staring down at the gridded screen of the police database when he heard the door open behind him. He tapped the screen, closing the profile of a suspected EO named Dominic Rusher just as a pair of slim arms wrapped around his shoulders, and a pair of lips grazed his ear.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“Looking for Sydney.”

He tensed. “And?”

“No luck yet, but I’ve put the word out. At least we’ll have a few more pairs of eyes. How was the bank?”

“I don’t trust Stell,”

said Eli for the hundredth time.

Serena sighed.

“How was Barry Lynch?”

“Dead again by the time I got there.”

He lifted the childlike drawing from the desk, handed it blindly back to her.

“But he left this.”

He felt the drawing plucked from his fingers, and a moment later, Serena said.

“I didn’t know Victor was so thin.”

“This isn’t a time for joking,”

snapped Eli.

Serena spun his chair to face her. Her eyes were cold as ice.

“You’re right,”

she said.

“You told me you killed Sydney.”

“I thought I did.”

Serena leaned down, and slid the prop glasses from Eli’s face. He’d forgotten he was still wearing them. She tucked them into her hair like a makeshift headband, and kissed him, not on the lips, but between the eyes, the place that wrinkled whenever he resisted her.

“Did you really?”

she breathed against him.

He forced his skin to smooth beneath her kiss. It was easier to think when she wasn’t looking in his eyes.

“I did.”

He sighed inwardly with relief as he said it. Two small words—half truth at most—and nothing more. It was hard, and it left him drained, but there was no doubt, he was getting better at holding back.

She pulled away enough to hold him with her cold blue eyes. He could see the devil in them, silver-tongued and cunning, and Eli thought, not for the first time, that he should have killed her when he had the chance.