Of all the things I might have anticipated—pleading, snarled threats, some frantic attempt at bargaining—I never guessedthatwould come out of her.
I give her a severe look. “That’s what happens when people get in my way. Or don’t give me what I need.”
She ignores my threat. And everything else. “A very visceral…” Jordan shapes each word, testing their merit as she pieces them together, “manifestation of…of blocked masculine energy.”
I keep my expression blank out of habit, but I nearly snort. The fuck does that even mean?
She’s spinning her fantasy in real time, weaving a gossamer lie to stretch over the raw, jagged event. Draping a silk scarf over a corpse and pretending it’s a mannequin.
She’s consistent, I’ll give her that.
“It was an opportunity for me to be present.” Her hands, which had been clutching everything she could reach moments ago, flutter now, tracing little arcs in the air between us. “In a high-stakes moment. To witness…unhealed trauma.”
People come apart in all sorts of different ways.
Hardened criminals howl like babies. Killers crumble and beg, their bodies quaking with ancestral, ancient fear. I’ve seen tough guys at the very edge of dying go pale and lose control of their bowels.
But I’ve never encountered this.
Trauma shrink-wrapped in a neat package of words. Reality redressed in language so far removed from what just happened, it barely belongs to this world, this hour, or this space.
She shifts to face me, a smooth veneer settling over the panic in her eyes like a hard frost forming over dark water. She’spiecing her persona back together, shard by shard, crafting the mask as I watch.
“I suggest you work on your aura. It’s attracting some seriously challenging karmic encounters.” Her voice is breathy. Ethereal. I can’t tell if it’s due to residual fear or some mystical garbage she’s trying to peddle.
I raise a brow. “That was karma, huh? Felt like something else.” A light workout, maybe. And a couple of speed bumps.
“That’s because you’re out of touch.” She acts like she’s dispensing wisdom instead of sitting in a car with a man who just killed four people without breaking a sweat.
“Oh, and you’re ‘in touch’?”With whatis the real question. I’m guessing shrooms.
She turns away, staring out the window into absolute darkness, her own reflection a doppelganger trapped in glass and searching for a way out.
I expected screaming. Tears. Swinging fists. Or even a complete shutdown. Her eyes glazed as her mind retreated somewhere I couldn’t follow.
Those reactions I know how to use. I’ve always known how to leverage fear and shock to get what I need.
But I never anticipated a live-action reinvention of a gunfight.
And a fucking psychic evaluation.
She’s not recovering. She’s wallpapering over her terror, layer after glossy layer, pasting words like “energetic exchange” and “karmic encounters” over the carnage, screams, and bloody flesh. As if the right words could render the bullets harmless and rebranding could overwrite recent events.
I don’t understand. She’s not broken or shattered. Just…strange. Defective, maybe. Whatever worry is writhing inside her, she’s running it through a filter I can’t even begin to touch.
For the first time in longer than I can remember, I am genuinely, completely baffled by another human being.
She’s kind of impressive.
Like watching someone use tarot cards to cover a hole in the hull of a sinking ship.
Absurd and doomed, but you have to admire the effort.
More importantly, her reaction leaves me without a clear path forward. Fear is a sharp, predictable tool. This…
I have no idea how to use this.
“Where are we going?” Her tone shifts back to a normal volume, as if we’re on a road trip instead of fleeing a crime scene.
