I don’t know what I was expecting to find up here, but it definitely wasn’t this. A perfectly normal, boring executive-looking floor, with a large, glass-walled conference room and a number of doors lining a long, carpeted hallway.
Not the kind of place you’d imagine the state’s most powerful people to work in. The kind of powerful people who are friends with the President, while also having an army of killers at their disposal.
The only thing thatisn’tnormal is how deserted this place is.
I gulp nervously. I really had no idea what I was expecting when we decided to try to sneak up here.
Well, I guess what I was expecting was that it wouldn’t work.
Even if we managed to get past the receptionist, there was just no way in hell our badges would still work, let alone bring us up here.
It would’ve been Security 101 for there to be different levels of access for different floors. And these badges aren’t old-fashioned, either. One click on the computer would have disabled them, so I can’t understand why they’re still working.
How the hell can you rise to the most powerful position on the East Coast and not have basic security?
But now we’re here, and I realize this place isn’t the kind you can hide in. We literally could have walked straight out onto Logan Colt, and then what?
My stomach twists and I can tell Josh is just as nervous and uncertain as me. Even though he didn’t grow up with the larger-than-life legend of Devil looming over him, he knows of them, just like everyone does. And right now, standing in a deserted, quiet-as-death hallway, we’re both silently freaking out.
Then suddenly, he grabs my arm and dives toward the door to his left, just as two pairs of feet pad toward us.
It takes me a second to realize we’re in a kitchen.
Then Josh pulls me down lower, and I’m crouching beside him under a counter, barely concealed by a garbage can and a random stool.
We’re in a kitchen. A fucking kitchen. The criminal, all-powerful founders of Devil have a kitchen on their executive floor.
I don’t know why that strikes me as funny. I mean, everyone has to eat, even bloodthirsty criminals. But there’s just such a dissonance about the coffee machine in the corner that’s not even some fancy namebrand—just Keurig—the stack of cups in the corner, an unopened bag of chips and some pastries haphazardly placed on a tray.
This is all so…normal.
It reminds me that they didn’t grow up in incredible wealth. They’re from the slums south of Astley, a little town called Oakley that Astley folks avoid like the plague. In fact, even I’ve never set foot there, though I’d probably fit in better there than in snooty Astley.
But it’s so pummeled into your brain when you’re growing up that if you place even one foot into Oakley, you’ll get shot or stabbed, that I’ve never even been tempted to go visit it.
I hear Josh swallow beside me as the door suddenly swings open, and the footsteps follow us in.
I grow so tense my joints hurt. I draw back until my body’s pressed against the far wall under the counter, which, by the smell of it, doesn’t get cleaned all that often.
I’m terrifyingly aware, just as I was the last time we were in sub-sub basement level, that it would take just one glance in our direction to see us.
But like with Liam and Dane, neither person now looks around. I guess it makes sense, if they’re not used to people intruding. Though I can’t think how they’renotused to it, with the insane lack of security there is.
For a while they talk about boring business matters, pressing a button on the Keurig machine to make coffee, and I relax just a bit, glancing up at them to see if I recognize them.
I do.
One of them is the blond, blue-eyed Devil founder—Everest Grant—and the other is Vincent Murilla, the youngest Devil, who joined after the tragic death of Vale Jennings, one of the original founders.
Well, tragic death is the way it was called in the news—I personally don’t have an opinion about it.
The local news always fawns over Devil, and it’s strange to reconcile that idyllic vision of them with what I inadvertently learned from Quill.
But right now, all I care about is why the hell my dad asked if I knew who Logan Colt was, and how the hell it relates to me and to my name being in big block letters on some paper on Bob Nelson’s desk.
So my ears perk up and I’m back to tensing when I suddenly hear my name on their tongue.
I can’t help but shiver as Everest Grant says, “That Day girl, now.”
