“You actually—I wanted them dead but I never thought—” She pushes herself up from the couch, swaying slightly. I can see the careful way she favors her left side. They roughed her up.
I move closer, needing to get between her and the carnage, to shield her from the worst of it. “Hey,” I say softly, catching her attention. “Look at me, not them.”
But her focus keeps drifting back to the bodies, to the blood spreading across the floor.
“Saylor.” Her name puts her attention back on me. “These men were going to kill you. We stopped that from happening. But we need to go. Now.”
She’s looking around the room now, really taking it in—the blood, the bodies, the overturned chairs. “Jesus... it’s like a fucking slaughterhouse in here.”
She’s right—this is exactly what it is. Her hands are shaking now, and I want nothing more than to wrap her in my jacket and carry her far away from this place, from this world, from everything that could hurt her.
“Why are you here? What do you want with me?”
“I was a friend of your father’s.” I keep my voice steady, calm. “I’ll explain everything once we get to Grimlock. My home. Where you’ll be safe.”
“Safe from what? And what the hell is Grimlock?”
“We need to leave.”
She processes this, stunning eyes studying my face like she’s trying to read my thoughts. Smart. Too smart for her own good.
But I can see the fight building in her posture, the stubborn tilt of her chin that reminds me so much of Peter it hurts.
“I know this is a lot,” I begin, but she cuts me off.
“A lot?” Her voice rises. “A lot is finding out your coffee shop raised their prices. A lot is getting a parking ticket. This is—this is fucking insane!”
She’s right, of course. Completely, absolutely right. But we don’t have time for a philosophical discussion about the nature of reality and how quickly it can turn to shit.
“I’m not going anywhere with two fucking strangers.” Her voice rises, panic edging in. “I don’t care if you knew my father. You just killed three people in front of me. You’re clearly as dangerous as they were.”
I take another step toward her, ignoring the way she flinches. “Saylor, listen to me—”
“No!” She backs away, her shoulder hitting the wall. “Stay away from me!”
The raw terror in her voice stops me cold. This isn’t just about the bodies or the blood—it’s about trust, about control, about a twenty-three-year-old woman who’s been through hell and is now being asked to trust two more killers with her life.
I catch Hans’s eye and nod toward the chloroform in his jacket pocket. She’s going to fight this, and we don’t have time for a lengthy negotiation. Every minute we waste here is another chance for more Crow to arrive.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her, meaning it completely.
Hans moves behind her with surprising grace for such a large man. The chloroform-soaked rag appears in his hands like a magic trick, covering her nose and mouth before she can scream or run or throw something at my head.
Her eyes lock on mine as the drug takes hold, wide with shock and betrayal. She trusted me long enough to let her guard down, and I just violated that trust completely.
But she’s alive. That’s what matters.
“The steamer trunk in the corner,” I tell Hans, pointing to the antique chest they probably used to transport her here.
Hans lifts her gently, placing her inside the trunk with more care than these assholes ever showed her. She looks impossibly small curled up in there, like a sleeping child.
“This still feels wrong, Boss,” Hans mutters, securing the latches. “Like we are kidnapping her.”
“We are kidnapping her.” No point in pretending otherwise. “But we’re kidnapping her away from people who would torture and kill her. Context matters.”
“Will she see it that way?”
Probably not. She’ll wake up angry, confused, and ready to murder me with whatever’s handy. But she’ll wake up alive, which is more than she can say if we’d left her with the Crow.
