Convince her to let me explain…
She’ll try to find a phone, unless I can find her first. I turn left and race down the wet sidewalk, my boots splashing through growing puddles, sending water flying up and soaking me even more, but it doesn’t matter.
Nothing does right now except finding Bishop.
She’s terrified, angry, and has nothing but the clothes on her back and the screwdriver in her hand.
The chill in the air makes me shiver as much as the fact that she’s out here barefoot, running down the filthy street, looking for anyone she might be able to trust who can give her access to a phone, a way to contact one of the Hawkes.
Time isn’t on my side. Once she makes that call, it will be too late.
I check every alleyway.
Behind every building.
Inside the burned-out, abandoned houses half a block from my place.
For twenty minutes, I scour the entire area, but there isn’t any sign of her.
Where the hell did you go, Hellcat?
Knowing her as well as I do, I’m confident she ran hard and fast. The fact that her body is still recovering from a severe concussion and weak from the injuries she sustained being thrown by the blast would be irrelevant to her.
Once the adrenaline kicked it, she would have been gone and not looked back.
All out until she felt safe.
A middle-aged woman turns the corner ahead, approaching me huddled under her umbrella carrying a small bag from the store up the street.
I jog up to her, plastering on a smile when the gaping hole in my chest where Bishop lived feels like it’s stealing my ability to breathe. “You haven’t seen a woman run by, have you? Barefoot with long dark braids wearing a man’s T-shirt?”
She narrows her gaze on me, her hand tightening on the umbrella so much that her knuckles whiten. “What makes you think I would tell you if I did?”
Fuck.
I sound like a goddamn scumbag kidnapper chasing after my captive who just escaped my evil clutches. It would almost be funny if it weren’t so close to the actual truth.
The woman keeps walking, glancing back at me several times with an intensely suspicious look that tells me she’s probably going to pull out her phone and record me, too.
Let her.
It doesn’t matter at this point. By the time the cops show up, I’ll be long gone. Just like Bishop is…
“Fuck!”
My scream rips through the air, but there isn’t anyone around to hear it. The woman who had every right to be suspicious of me must have turned down one of the side streets, leaving me standing here with nothing but my regret.
I shouldn’t have left her alone in the loft.
I should have known a goddamn lock wasn’t going to stop her from getting into that room.
But I got complacent.
I got too comfortable having her in my space and in my life.
I forgot what the fallout would be if she ever discovered what I have been keeping from her.
I let myself believe that those people in that bed together last night were who we really are and not two people who have been lying to each other and themselves.
