“I didn’t—” she starts, then stops, eyes darting down thestairs like she expects more men to appear. “I didn’t ask you to follow me.”
“We didn’t follow you because we’re bored,” I say.
Her gaze snaps to me. Sharp. Accusing. Then it softens—just a fraction—like she’s trying to make sense of why two men from a bar would be on her motel stairs at midnight.
Shiloh steps closer. “You asked the wrong question tonight.”
Reva swallows. Her fingers dig into the strap of her backpack until her knuckles bleach.
I reach down, pick up her dropped keycard, and swipe it at the door.
Green. Click.
Reva flinches. “What are you doing?”
“Opening your door,” I say.
“You can’t?—”
“I just did,” I interrupt, and then I push the door open.
The motel room is exactly what I expected. Cheap. Small. Barely clean. A thin bedspread. A flickering lamp. The smell of bleach trying to hide other things.
Revastands in the doorway, half a second from bolting.
Shiloh nudges her gently—only it isn’t gentle. It’s decisive. “Get your things.”
“My things?” Her voice cracks on the word.
“You’re not staying here,” I say.
“I already paid?—”
“And you’ll pay again if you stay here,” Shiloh cuts in. “In blood, if you’re lucky. In something worse, if you’re not.”
Reva’s face goes pale under her golden skin. She blinks hard, then steps into the room and drops her keys on the nightstand.
She grabs her backpack off her shoulder, checks it, then snatches a charger from the nightstand and shoves it inside. A slightly larger duffel. A hoodie from the chair.
That’s it. It’s not much.
Shiloh watches her, half with impatience, half with something like restraint. “That all?”
Reva’s chin lifts. “It’s enough.”
She moves past us toward the door like she’s going to walk right back down the stairs and into her Explorer out of spite. I stop her by taking her keys off the nightstand before she can and tossing them to Shiloh over her head.
Her head whips toward me. “Give those back.”
“No.”
Hereyes flash. “Excuse me?”
“You can bitch at me later,” I say. “Right now, you’re coming with us. We’ll get your piece of shit Ford later.”
“I’m not going anywhere?—”
“You are,” Shiloh says, voice gone cold. “Because you don’t have the first idea what you’ve stepped into.”
