Had I killed someone else?
SEVENTEEN
Lyric
My room was too quiet,and I refused to take the knockout pills Robbie said were good for me. All they did was knock me unconscious and unable to protect myself, and I was over being an invalid and spending all my time with fuzzy edges. Two a.m., and I sat on the side of the bed, legs pulled up, arms wrapped around them. The silence pressed in on me. Midnight was way too heavy, and I was restless. I’d promised Rio I’d put him on his knees, and yeah, maybe I hadn’t meant it, but fuck, now that was all I could think about.
Enzo was tonight’s Lyric-guard-duty, and Robbie was nearby too—the two were together in every sense of the word, and never strayed far from each other. They would be in that room to the side, door shut, butI’d seen Enzo move when he needed to, and I wasn’t worried anyone could get in because I was familiar with the security of this place. Jamie hadn’t needed to explain it—when he saw I’d already hacked the local network and traced every single camera and alarm. I knew which doors were armed and which ones triggered an alert if they stayed open longer than six seconds. He’d taken the hack I’d done and made the system safer for us all, which had to be a win, although he grumbled about me, which was kind of funny.
I could easily go downstairs, stretch my legs, because I was going out of my fucking head up here alone.
I’d set a real-time passive signal sniffer on my laptop, something to sweep for any outbound signature that might track me, and rerouted everything through layers of ghost proxies. Now all I could do was wait to see if Kessler’s system was anywhere near finding me, although chatter on the dark web about the current contract on me was insane. It had gone up another ten.
And it was dark. And I was thirsty. And hungry. Yeah, there was a fridge in here, but everything inside tasted no better than wet cardboard.
I need to move.
Carefully, I swung my legs off the bed, eased upright, and padded to the door. The hallway was still and I stepped out onto the landing and peered down the twelve metal steps leading into the garage’s main floor.
I could do this. I needed five minutes. Air. Movement. Something to convince my body it wasn’t still locked in that panic cage of survival. Only as I stood waiting to move, there was a clatter, a door opening, and then a shape I knew was Rio appeared in the shadows. He knocked on the door of the room where Robbie and Enzo were, and it opened immediately. I couldn’t hear everything, but their voices carried—Enzo’s was clipped, sharp with anger, and Robbie’s softer, rushed, and anxious.
My pulse jumped.
Had someone found me? Had the signal sniffer caught something I’d missed? Was an assassin with a contract already close? What had I missed?
I crept down a step to peer through the gaps. Rio stood tense, his hand pressed to his side as if something hurt. He was wet with sweat, or was that blood? He moved a little into the wash of light from the room behind that door; it was obvious someone had beaten him.
“Have they found me?” I blurted, and all three men turned to stare at me. “I need to leave. I’m not safe here. None ofyouare safe.” Not if they were drawing heat, not if it put other people in danger. I could go… somewhere quiet, somewhere I could vanish again. Someplace I could finish what I needed to do before someone else got hurt.
“Go back upstairs!” Rio ordered, then coughed, the big, bad man bending at the waist.
“Fuck that.” I gripped the railing hard enough to make my knuckles ache. “Who hurt you? Are they here?”
No one answered.
Rio was wrecked—his breathing shallow, posture crooked, one eye starting to swell shut. His mouth opened as if he was about to speak, but nothing came out as he stood there, bleeding.
“What the hell happened?” I pushed. “Did someone hurt you? Fuck, did someone follow you here?”
Still no answer. But I saw the flicker in Rio’s eyes. Guilt. Or maybe shame. Maybe both.
“I hacked the security system. I know how airtight this place is. If something got in, it was becauseIbrought it in,” I pushed, and my voice cracked. “I’m aliability. Every second I stay here, I’m putting you all in danger.” The words tore out of me harsher than I’d intended, but fear had a way of sharpening everything—my voice, my edges, my breathing. I wanted to sound controlled, rational, as if I’d already made peace with the choice, but underneath it was nothing but panic clawing at my chest. “I need to leave, before it’s too late.”
Robbie stepped in then, quiet and calm. “It’s okay, Lyric.”
“It’s not!” I swallowed, throat raw. “Did someone find us?”
“No,” Rio rasped.
“Then what the fuck happened!” I shouted, mentally grabbing my stuff and leaving. I didn’t know where I’d go—maybe nowhere—but if Jamie still knew where I was, then we had a shot. I could still do this. I could stillwin. But first, I had to get the hell out before I became a liability.
“It’s okay,” Rio said, his lip split, his voice hoarse.
“It’s not fucking okay?—”
“Calm down,” Enzo ordered, “we got this.”
And, oh no, I wasn’t having that. I wasn’t going to be told what to do as if I was some kid witnessing their parents argue and being sent back to bed. I shoved off from the railing and stormed the rest of thestairs—only it wasn’t a clean descent. It wasn’t so much storming as slip-sliding down half of them, a yelp escaping my throat as pain lanced up my side.
