Fuck you.
“Ric, she’s stopped.” Koen’s voice comes through. “She’s… she looks pissed.”
You’re useless to us if you can’t even steal a car.
I don’t need you. Can you say the same?
A reluctant smile pulls at my lips, even as the tension winds tighter inside me. There she is. The fire, the bite. But I need more. I need her todothis.
What I need is to know that you can steal a car.
Trust me, I can.
I don’t trust you with shit.
A beat. Silence. And then.
Test is over. Find someone else.
My stomach twists.
Shit.
“Well, I fucked up,” I mutter, and Koen lets out a sharp curse on the other end.
“She’s fucking walking away,” he spits out, clearly frustrated.
I swallow hard. “Where is she going?”
“I don’t know, on the move, heading away from the Heights. I’m trying to follow, but she’s quick. She’s… wait…”
The sound shifts abruptly like he’s shoved the phone into his pocket. The line crackles with static, and then, barely audible, her voice filters through. It’s faint, distorted, like a conversation heard underwater, but the anger in her tone is unmistakable.
“What? Are you going to make me do it? Compel me into stealing that fucking car?”
The words sting, even through the muffle. She’s seething, the heat of her fury bleeding through the crackling line.
“Fuck,” I mutter, closing my eyes, pressing the heel of my free hand to my forehead.
Did I screw this up for us?
The plan is hanging by a thread now, and that thread is her.
I replay the scene in my head, trying to pinpoint where it went wrong. Maybe it’s the risk, the demand itself.
Stealing a car in broad daylight with thousands of people around is a hell of a gamble. And truthfully, it’s not like she’d actually need to do that for the plan. It’s what I’ll have to do. This one was only to test her, see if she could break into a car, if shehad the balls to do it. Maybe I pushed too hard. Maybe I’ve been too focused on the damn plan to realize I overstepped a line.
Her voice cuts through the static again, sharper now, though barely reaching me.
“I fucking dare you. Because if you do, it’ll be the last thing you ever do to me. You’ll never see me again.”
A challenge.
A threat.
A promise.
And she means every single word. She’ll leave. She’ll disappear, and there won’t be any pulling her back. No mending what I’ve broken.
