Did I spill a drink when I fell?
No, I realize as the scent of iron hits my nose.
It’s blood.
Her boots stomping on my toes, colliding with my dick hurt like a motherfucker.
Now the pain barely registers as stars and shadows fight for control of my eyesight.
There’s a blip of quiet, then she whispers, “Shit,” and suddenly there are hands on my face, pressing something—the beanie—against my skin. “Keep the pressure there.”
Shouts ring out somewhere in the distance and she curses again.
Then she’s stepping over my prone body, her footsteps clipping across the floor as she rushes away from me?—
But she’s not moving toward the window.
She’s heading for the safe.
I hear the distinctbeep-beep-beep-beepas she inputs the code again.
Hear thewhirof the lock disengaging.
The scrape of the door opening.
A moment later the footsteps are coming back toward me. I groan, try to lift up so I can grab her, but she just sidesteps my hand, moves to the window, and yanks it up.
Then pauses, looks back at me.
The last thing I see before the blackness in my vision swells up and takes over…
Is a ghost with silver hair.
FOUR
BRIAR
I don’t relaxuntil after I’ve made the drop and I’m inside the shitty motel room hours from the grand mansion hidden among rolling hills that was supposed to be my happily-ever-after.
My knees give way and I sink to the floor, my back against the door.
I changed after I left the flash drive at the drop point—and not just my clothes.
I’d dumped the piece of shit car I bought for two hundred bucks off Facebook marketplace on a secluded roadway after changing and ditching my clothes in three separate public garbage bins.
Except my boots.
Those are too valuable to trash.
Too expensive.
Too—
I lean forward and examine the smudge that’s oddly shiny and flecking off of the black leather, then lick the pad of my thumb and rub until it’s gone.
But when I start to shove my hand through my hair, the locks tickling my face, I catch sight of my thumb.
It’s stained a deep coppery red.
