“...then your Uncle Lachlan said he was going to set the entire building on fire if…” Ethan’s laughing at his father’s story and his cousins Logan and Ewan are chatting between themselves, something about girls they met at a family club.
The first intersection isn't right. Not busy enough. I can’t look for a police officer, this is MacTavish territory and I’m sure they own the law enforcement around here. I just need to disappear.
There was one time in London when two men were following me. I turned a corner and glanced back and recognized one of them, one of my asshole stepfather’s employees on the “dirty” side of the books. I bolted down an alley, knowing they would follow me, but they didn’t know was that I’d researched this neighborhood. I knew every alley that had an exit, whether it was a locked fire door or a gate into someone’s backyard. This particular one had an unlocked back door to a bar that was always crowded that time of day.
I could hear their footsteps echoing off the brick walls, their low curses when I darted left and into the bar, slamming down the red-tabbed lock on the door. By the time they rounded the corner and angrily paid the entry fee to get in, I was wiggling out a window in the ladies' room. There was a nice woman there,mid-thirties, touching up her lipstick. She watched me wrestle open the window, fluffing her hair.
“I never saw you, right?”
Halfway out the window, I gasped out, “Yes, please.” I disappeared into the crowd of people outside the bar and it was my last close call.
Until now.
Pushing back my self-disgust, I focus on the street. The light ahead of us turns red and Cameron slows down, still talking to Ethan. The instant the wheels stop turning, I click my seatbelt and rip open the door, nearly getting clipped by the car to our left.
Fucking drivers on the wrong side of the road…
Digging in my heels, I race across the intersection, flinching at the horns and a shout that I know is from Ethan. Oh, god. He’ll send those cousins of his after me. He can’t catch me with a bullet hole in his leg.
Breathlessly mouthing apologies, I weave through pedestrians, eyes scanning for the next turn. There- a sandwich shop, one of the chain ones where there has to be a bathroom and a back door. Bursting through the door, I flush when everyone turns to stare at me. I race through the shop and into the kitchen where a woman slicing bread stops to stare at me.
“S- someone’s chasing me. Someone who wants to hurt me,” I gasp, “please let me go out the back door.”
Her faded blue eyes harden. She’s older, wearing a name tag that says ‘Flora.’ “No, ya get under there.” She points her knife at a cupboard with a sliding door. There’s just enough roomand I bend my legs like I’m folding up a card table and dig my fingertips into the wooden slab to close it.
This is such a fucking risk. I’m trusting her to keep quiet. What if she knows the MacTavishes? What if-
“Fecking hell!” It’s Ethan, out of breath and panting. “Ma’am did a girl run through here? Pretty rough-looking?”
My eyes narrow over the hand I have covering my mouth.
Asshole.
She’s quite the actress, her voice irritable and confused. “Aye, racing out the back door like her shirt was on fire. Is she on drugs, then?”
“Thank you, uh, Flora.” His footsteps thud and I hear the kitchen door slam shut. It’s silent, aside from some light humming from her and thesnick-snicksound of her knife cutting through bread again.
“Stay right there, lass,” she murmurs. “Let’s make sure he dinna circle back, aye?”
“Thank you,” I whisper through the crack in the cabinet door, “so much.”
She shakes her head, chopping hard at the loaf of bread. “It’s always the pretty ones, the bastards. They think they can get away with anything. You just stay still for a moment.”
So, I do.
Chapter Seventeen
In which Ethan learns that his reputation as the blood-soaked Scottish Demon is not helpful when creating a foundation of trust.
Ethan…
What the feck just happened?
I know Sloan was scared when my fecking eejit cousin bragged on about me being the Demon. My gut still clenches, thinking about how she curled in on herself, her back to me. I thought I’d talk to Da and let her calm down. I’d explain it all after she’d seen the doctor.
She’s insane! What is she thinking, runnin’ off like this? She knows Masters sent more people after her.
“We’ll give you a taste before we take her. Masters doesn’t care what condition she’s in when we deliver her as long as she’s still breathing.”
