I take a big breath.Too big.Then I bellow, “I love this woman!”
The harbor echoes it back.
“Her.”I point at her hard in case there’s any confusion.“Right there.In the doorway.With the skates.”
A guy laughs.Someone claps once, unsure.
“I love her.I love her.I loooooove her!”I spin in a slow circle, addressing the street, the docks, the sky, the entire postal code.“I love her when she’s quiet.I love her when she’s mad.I love her when she’s fixing engines and ignoring me on purpose.I love her all the time.”
Dove laughs, full-bodied and unguarded, with pink cheeks and wet-honey eyes.
She pushes off the doorway on her skates, rolls forward, and cups her hands around her mouth.“I love you, too!”
People cheer.Someone whistles.The guy filming gives me a thumbs-up.
I bow, dramatic and unnecessary, then backpedal out of the road, grinning like an asshole with a pulse.
From the sidewalk across the street, I catch her gaze and blow her a kiss.She snatches it out of the air, licks it, and fires it back at me.
I stay there a second longer, watching her roll backward into the garage.The door yawns wider to take her in.The light shifts.She’s inside, probably already reaching for a tool.
The guards move into place, two at the door, two flanking the lot.Exactly where they belong.
That’s when I turn.
Extra eyeliner.Extra steel.Extra resolve.I head for the tattoo parlor, ready to face whatever Jag Rath thinks he has waiting for me.
A few blocks away, the front door gives way under my hand.Too easy.It should’ve been locked.The shop is closed today.
“Shit.”I pull a knife from my boot and rush inside.
And slam to a stop.
My brain tries to process the mess on the floor.
The blood.
The bodies.
One by the front desk.One half-curled like he tried to crawl.Blood slicks across the concrete, dragged by boots that don’t belong to the people left behind.Throats open.Stab wounds everywhere else.
My chest collapses.
“No.”I step around them, moving deeper into the shop.“No, no, no.”
Another body near the chairs.Another by the coffee machine.Eyes open.
I force myself to look at them, one by one, dread climbing higher with each heartbeat.
Please don’t be him.Please don’t be him.
My hands shake, and my airway pinches shut.Extra eyeliner feels like a joke as I grab wrists, check necks, and examine faces.
All four guards are dead, and they’re still warm.Not cooling or stiff.Heat clings to skin, the blood fresh.Whatever happened here is breathing down my neck.
My eyes lift.
The break room door stands open.Blood trails toward it.Or from it?Footprints overlap, in and out.
