Blowing out a heavy breath, she peers down at me and asks, “Can you manipulate the iron in someone’s blood, or is it too small of a trace amount?” As I stare at her in stunned silence, she rambles, “I was only wondering because you have such enviable control. Can you imagine how easy that would make your job? You wouldn’t even have to stab someone and wait for them to bleed out. You could turn their blood against them and make them have a heart attack or whatever, make their death look like an accident. If you could perfect that so that it wouldn’t show up on an autopsy, you’d be able to kill anyone without dealing with the fallout if you had a solid alibi in place since you never actually touched them.”
I blink, then blink again, but nope, that’s still the light of my life sitting there. If anything, I think she’s shining a little brighter.
“Fucking hell, have you always been a sociopath?” Kissing her collar, I nip at the skin. “I love it. Never even thought about that, you beautiful genius, but you bet your ass I'm going to try it out the next chance I get. Want to help me?”
Her grin falters. “How? By ordering a pizza to celebrate your success afterward?”
“No, by being your normal, sarcastically-delightful self. I’ve never attempted it before, so I need time to experiment. Not like my victim will just stand there as I zone out looking constipated trying to weaponize his blood. I need an accomplice to distract him while I try to give him an aneurysm.”
That smile ticks up again. “So what you’re saying is you want an accomplice if we get arrested so you’re not lonely in jail?”
“How else are you going to break me out?” Offering my finished project to her, I demonstrate how the anklet opens. “I’m jealous that you wear something from Stone every day, but not me, so I made you a fashionable lockpick that’s also capable of shanking a bitch.”
Breathlessly, she takes it, opening and shutting the metal ouroboros a few times, testing the flexibility. “Why not a bracelet?”
“People are quicker to steal bracelets than anklets, so better chance of hanging onto it if in a shitty situation, especially if you can slip it beneath your sock. If your hands are bound behind your back and you’re chucked into a van, you still stand a shot of sawing through your bindings and escaping this way.”
Eventually tearing her gaze away from the metal snake devouring its own tail like a draconian infinity symbol, she gives me a look that has me mentally picking out gift wrap for my balls. “It’s perfect.”
Gently taking it from her, I kneel at her feet, fastening my gift around her ankle. “Yes you are.”
Chapter 14
Stone
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My eyelids feel likelead weights, but a nagging sense of unease spreads throughout my body until I fight my way back to the land of the living. Kodiak’s snoring like a chainsaw behind me, but when I roll over, the faint glow of moonlight streaming through the window highlights the empty space between us in the middle of the bed.
Icy fear slams into me, clearing the last vestiges of sleep from my system instantly. Even the sliver of light beneath the closed bathroom door does nothing to calm my racing heart, and as I roll out of bed, my terror is accompanied by an animalistic flash of rage.
Amara’s fear was potent enough to pull me out of a dead sleep.
At the last second, I pull my fist back before pounding on the door. I don’t want to scare her any worse than she already is, but if it wasn’t for the fact Iknowshe hasn’t disappeared in the middle of the night, I’d be ripping the door off its hinges. Taking a deep breath to calm myself is a stupid fucking mistake, because all I get is another lungful of her terror.
“Amara? What’s wrong, beautiful?” Three seconds pass without an answer, and a thousand horrible thoughts race through my mind, every imagined scenario worse than the last. “I’m coming in.”
