Page 38 of Walking in Darkness

Figured he’d either come to the girls at some point, or I could follow them back to whatever slum he was keeping them in. So I was going to need a place to hide out until the time was right.

Conceal myself in the shadows and watch.

I made it to the street I’d first come down, and I leaned against the wall and peered around the corner.

This end of the building was cast in a cloak of gloom, the single streetlamp on the other side of the road flickering the barest flashes of light.

The stench of corruption filled the air. As thick here as it had been when I passed by the monsters on the other street.

Blood drummed through my veins. Frustration and determination.

I slipped around the corner and started to slink up through the shadows, and I edged up to a large dumpster that kept me hidden but obstructed my view. I attempted to peer out through the back side of the dumpster near the wall, but it was too narrow, and I couldn’t get tabs on the girls.

I had to get closer, or I was going to lose them at some point.

Only the second I started to edge around the dumpster, I felt a shift in the atmosphere.

Coming at me from both the front and the back.

A torrent of wickedness and a slosh of greed.

I glanced over my shoulder. My chest tightened when I saw the same two guys who’d flanked the man come rounding up the corner of the building.

But it was the fiend standing five feet in front of me who sent a stone sinking to the pit of my stomach.

They had stalked me.

Surrounded me.

The bastard in the front cocked his head.

Pure evil oozed from his pores as he flashed a knife and said, “No one plays with my girls unless they pay for it.”

Chapter Thirteen

Aria

I couldn’t sit still as I rode in the back seat of the taxi. A taxi that had taken twelve minutes and fourteen seconds to arrive to pick me up. One that had nearly made me tremble apart while I paced in the motel lobby, anxiety ripping through my senses as I waited for it to show.

It wasn’t like I had a credit card and could download a rideshare app. I had the small wad of cash Pax had asked me to stow in my duffel bag before we left Albany.

Now I clutched two twenties in a sweaty palm, peering out the rear-passenger window at the city slowly passing by. The taxi crawled through traffic as the driver carried me to some random address that I’d thrown out.

I had to get downtown. At least that part, I knew. At least that part, I couldfeel.

That awareness thrashed inside me, gripping me by the throat as we traveled deeper into the city.

Worry and anger at Pax leaving me the way he had flashed through my senses, and I clutched the handle of the gun that I had hidden in the left-hand pocket of my jacket.

I’d never held a gun before.

Had never wanted to.

Now, it trembled in my hand.

Proof that Pax had left himself vulnerable.

Susceptible.