“Yeah.” I cock my head. “We gon’ talk about that?”
“What?”
“That.” I tip my chin in the direction of the room. “You playing Molly the Maid in my shit.”
“Oh.” Pause. “No. Did they have any word on the others?”
Narrowing my eyes, I debate whether to push the issue. That wasn’t normal.
A memory from when I was a kid shimmers and solidifies in my mind before I’m fast enough to prevent it. My mother, her beautiful, shoulder-length dark curls pulled up in a big puff on top of her head, poking her head inside my bedroom to make sure I picked up my room of all the toys and books I’d playedwith before coming to the dinner table. Shit. It’s been damn near decades—two to be exact—since I thought of that. Since Iallowedmyself to think of that. I blink, giving my head a small shake, and the memory dissipates like smoke, leaving me a little unsettled by its appearance. I lift a hand, rubbing my knuckles over my chest and the aching soreness beneath it.
“Huntsman?”
My head snaps up. Huntsman. She’s back to that after calling meMalachiwhen I had my mouth on her pussy. An ugly part of me wants to remind her of that. A bitchy part. But then I remember that Malachi doesn’t exist. Eshe is the only person who can’t seem to remember that.
“The others?” she presses.
“They’re good. At least the hospital has no records of them being admitted for treatment.”
Again, she nods and reaches for the doorknob.
“Hold up.” I walk over to the old, scratched dresser and grab a black blindfold off the top. “I need—”
“Nah, we’re not gonna need that.” She waves a hand, pulling the door open with the other. “I could give you the longitude and latitude of this address. Blindfolding me is just overkill.”
She exits, leaving me to stare after her.
“Goddammit,” I growl, striding across the room and out the apartment. “This way.” I grip her upper arm and turn her toward the rear of the house. “I know you’re upset, but you gotta move fucking smarter. Do you not remember anything I told you? There’s a damn Terminator on your ass. And walking out in the middle of the street like you’re fucking bulletproof is one way to prove you’re not.”
“Look, they could empty all of Mount Doom, and I’m still headed to that hospital. Nothing is going to keep me from checking on Penn. I need to put my eyes on her myself. That’s the only way I’ll feel that she’s safe. That she’s not…”
She trails off, and I glance over my shoulder, but Eshe stares straight ahead, her expression a clean slate that I can’t decipher.The urge to stop—to pin her to the wall behind her by the throat and demand her thoughts, her feelings, her pain so I can’t just share but fuckinggorgeon her like a deranged incubus—snaps and snarls at me. But I resist. Somehow, I resist and keep walking toward the door that should lead to another lower-level apartment but instead is an annex to an underground tunnel that leads to a garage nearly a block over.
Call me paranoid, but being this careful and vigilant has kept me alive this long. Having Eshe beside me has my shit itching. Not even Jamari has seen the inside of these walls, much less joined me here.
But now Eshe has.
I don’t want to dwell on what that means.
I jerk my chin toward the black Ford GT with the illegally tinted windows. In seconds, we’re seated and rolling out of the garage onto the busy Dorchester Street. She doesn’t say much during the twenty-minute ride to Mass General. She’s so… still. No fidgeting. No talking. Hell, I can’t even catch the soft sound of her breathing.
Not for the first time, I want to pry and discover what she’s thinking. Without rival, Eshe is the most fascinating creature I’ve ever encountered, and for the past few days, I’ve found myself obsessing over her. Wondering what lies under the layers.
Am I safer not knowing?
My fingers tighten on the steering wheel, and I shift slightly away from her, placing more of a mental distance between us than a physical.
The sooner I get her to the hospital and out of my car, the better.
Though, even with a car renowned for its speed, the last twenty minutes seem like twenty hours before I illegally park in front of the Charles/MGH stop. With her fingers wrapped around the handle, Eshe glances over at me.
“Thank you, Malachi,” she murmurs. “For everything.”
At the sound ofthatname, I glare at her, but sheunflinchingly meets my gaze. And what I see there has the snarled admonishment extinguishing on my tongue.
Me popping up at both that cottage and her house to kill her didn’t faze her in the least.
Finding out her aunt put a hit on her didn’t scare her.
