Letting ourselves into the building, we head up to the fourth floor, and I count the doors as we pass, trying to match the right apartment to the signage in the window. I don’t exactly want to bust into the wrong apartment. I know people around here like to mind their own business, but that’s not something I can guarantee will go ignored, especially since my face has beenplastered across every news station in the country. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were offering reward money by now.
The cops are going to be nervous that they haven’t caught up to me yet. More than that, they haven’t found a single lead. Their search is wearing thin, and they haven’t got a clue where I’ve disappeared, which makes coming here a massive risk. If I were smart, I would have taken Aria somewhere off grid and figured out how to live off the land. But I can’t fathom the idea of moving on from this chapter of my life without making those who hurt her pay for what they’ve done. Justice needs to be served, and in the case of these assholes, I’m the motherfucking Grim Reaper.
We come to two doors that are almost side by side, with barely a foot between them, and I clench my jaw. The vacant apartment could be behind either one of these doors.
“Which one is it?” Aria murmurs, keeping her voice low in the dim corridor.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Shit,” she mutters, holding her fist out. “Rock, paper, scissors. Best of three chooses.”
I roll my eyes. “Or, we could just listen through the door and figure out which one is vacant.”
Aria scoffs. “It’s as though you’re allergic to fun.”
Ignoring her, I step up to the door on the left and press my ear against the wood, listening intently to anything on the other side that could suggest the home is occupied. Aria does the same, moving in close to the door on the right and copying my stance, her hand pressed against the door. She listens for a moment before her brows pinch, and she glances up at me. “What am I listening for exactly?”
I swear, this woman is going to be the end of me, but I’ll welcome it with open arms. Though she should know, if I’m going down, I’m dragging her to the deepest pits of Hell with me. I won’t be without her again.
I start to explain what she should be listening for when a clanging noise on the opposite side of the door echoes through the apartment. It sounds like someone’s moving around the kitchen, and I immediately step away before pointing to the door Aria’s face is squished up against. “That one,” I tell her.
She grins and reaches for the handle, quickly twisting it, but her smile falters when it doesn’t budge. “Locked.”
“Not for long.”
Aria steps aside, and just as I’ve done to all the other locked doors in my way the past few days, I play with the handle, twisting it just enough to fuck the mechanism on the inside. The door swings right open.
I double-check the mess I’ve made, making sure the broken lock isn’t too obvious from the outside, and usher Aria inside the small apartment. She glances around as I close the door behind us and lock the deadbolts.
“Not bad,” she murmurs, making a quick assessment of the apartment before striding to the kitchen, stopping directly in front of the sink. She curls her fingers around the faucet handle, giving it a twist. Then, with a choked sputter, water rushes freely from the tap.
“Oh, thank fuck.” She sighs with relief. “We’ve officially got running water.”
I take the for lease sign out of the window, not wanting to draw any unnecessary attention to the apartment, and Aria grabs our bag and heads into the bathroom.
As she showers and helps herself to feel somewhat human again, I sit on the cool ground, my back up against the kitchen island and my Polaroids clutched tightly in my hand.
Obviously Aria is no longer at the top of my kill list, which only leaves four.
The head of the Bone Reapers gang: Lux Valen. He tried to initiate Ash into his ranks by giving him the assignment tosacrifice the one who was most important to him and bring her to him.
Collaroy Munroe, the asshole who first introduced Ash to the Bone Reapers and got him hooked on drugs, brought this shitstorm over us in the first place.
Talon Wilder, second in charge. Technically, he didn’t do anything. I just feel he deserves to be on the list simply for existing in this world.
Last but not least, Nico Vega. The one who got away. There were seven men in that basement, not six, and Nico was the one who narrowly escaped with his life. He sat across from me in that courtroom and painted the picture of innocence. At the time, I didn’t have the will to fight. If only I knew that my Riley was comatose in a hospital bed somewhere. Everything could have been different. I would have gotten a few years, potentially even walked free, but the idea of Riley’s betrayal stung deeper than any life sentence ever could.
Riley strides out of the bathroom, her long auburn hair damp as she brushes it through with her fingers. “There’s an old mattress in the bedroom,” she tells me. “It’s probably infested with all kinds of DNA, but if we put a blanket down, it might not be so bad.”
My face scrunches at the thought. I’ve slept on worse, but I can’t stand the idea of Aria having to lower herself to a filthy mattress, especially after living such an incredible life over these past seven years. She deserves the best.
She ambles closer and steps over my legs, ready to drop down onto my lap, when her stomach rumbles so loud it all but echoes. “Hungry?”
“Starved,” she admits, dropping down anyway and fixing me with a concerned stare as her arms hook around my neck. “I know you’re not going to love this, but I was thinking that I could go down to that corner store and get us a decent meal. Maybe—”
“No.”
“Don’t younome, Stone Blackthorne. You need energy. You can’t keep going like this. I’m fine just eating snacks and shitty food, but you’re on the run. You need to be ready to go at a moment’s notice and have your wits about you. You can’t do that when you haven’t eaten and barely slept in a week. I’m not about to let you get caught because you’re too stubborn to let yourself eat and sleep.”
