She squirms beneath me and I take a sharp breath, suddenly fighting for my life. Even now. Here. In the rain.
“Okay, I need you to stop moving like that or this isgoing to get really embarrassing for one of us.”
She pushes at my chest again, then drags her hands angrily down my body. “Let me go—”
I take another breath. “Me. Just me. Really embarrassing for me.”
“James—”
“I’m sorry, I just, you know, when I imagined this moment in my mind I really thought it would go differently.”
“This isn’t funny,” she snaps.
“I never said it was funny.”
She bucks upward, the effort gaining her an inch of leverage. She manages to get one of her legs scissored around me, but it’s the way she grabs my hips as she torques her body that leaves me a little lightheaded.
“Okay, Jesus,” I say, my chest heaving. “I tap out, okay? I swear I’ll let you go. I just need you to promise not to run.”
“No,” she says angrily. “I don’t have time to go back to prison. I left for a reason—”
“You don’t have time?” I repeat, grateful for the chance to reset my head. “You mean you would if you could but your busy schedule just won’t allow it?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“Wait—What?”
She glances at something behind me, then takes a shaky breath, licking rainwater from her lips. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m really sorry. You don’t understand—I have to get home before it’s too late—”
I gasp.
The pain is immediate and shocking, and in the secondsmy body contracts in response, she rolls us over and quickly pulls the knife out of my side.
Myknife.
That she stole offmybody.
“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry,” she says in a rush, wiping the blade on my jeans before getting to her feet. Rosabelle looms over me like she did the day she slit my throat, but at least this time she has the decency to look upset. She flips the blade closed. “No vital organs, I promise.”
“You’re so fucking mean to me,” I say, grimacing to exaggerate my pain. “And I’m always so nice to you—”
I grab her ankle and pull.
She cries out, free-falling as I launch badly upright, wincing for real as the pain in my side screams; still, I catch her before she falls, then spin her against the wall of the airplane hangar, the metal reverberating as the two of us collide. I stare at her, breathing hard, water dripping off my nose. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, you know that?”
She’s looking at me with something like panic. “James,” she says desperately. “I’ve still got your knife.”
My eyes widen a fraction.
“Goddammit,” I bite out, staggering backward as fresh pain explodes in my thigh. I yank the knife out of my leg with a muted cry, flipping it shut before stowing it in a safer place. By the time I look up, Rosabelle’s already fifty feet into the darkening distance, and now I’ve got a limp. But when I hear the rising rush of footfalls, I know I’m well and truly screwed.
Minutes.
We’ve got less than minutes.
I grit my teeth and push forward through the pain, more irritated that Rosabelle’s ruined my clothes than I am about the injuries. It took me forever to find this windbreaker in my size; it’s an original issue from an era long before I was born. There’s a reason I wear technical gear when I’m doing real work. I don’t run laps in a tuxedo like Warner; I don’t like messing up my stuff.
Though, to be fair, he doesn’t mess up his stuff.
