“Thing is, there’s going to be people out there who are going to look at you like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and some of them are people you might even call friends,” he pointed out. “Everyone knows you, Jonas, and Sparky had a blowout at the Post. Money’s tight for some people, and if things are broken between the people you hunt with, who’s to say you aren’t now just another black-dog pelt to them?”
“Get out,” Ryder barked before I could respond. My stomach was someplace down around my knees, and any breath I had coming out of my lungs couldn’t get past my closed throat. “Leave the knife and go.”
The chipping away at the wall around me was constant, doubts and thoughts working like ivy through the cracks I’d made in my confidence, in my faith in the people I’d drawn near me. I wanted to shove everyone away, keep myself safe by distancing myself from anyone who could get ahold of me, but isolation had its own dangers. I’d seen that in Dempsey. He’d become an island of bitterness in a cold, hard desert, waiting for me to swing by with carcasses to peel skin off, all the while hammering at me to be better, to do better as a Stalker—anything to take his mind off of how far he’d let himself fall.
I didn’t mind carrying him. He’d carried me far enough, but neither was I going to bend myself over to hoist his burdens. Trusting people—elfin or human—was a leap of faith I needed to take, especially if I’d ended up on someone’s hit list.
And that trust was going to start with Ryder.
“Jerem, just go.” I jerked my head toward the door. “If I get to Kenny before you, I’ll let you know, but I’m taking him off the table. He’s got something of mine, something Dempsey left him. If you get him before I do, I’ll match the contract for him. Whatever it takes. We’ll work it out.”
“Deal,” Samms said with a nod. He took a step toward the front of the car but then changed his mind, shifting directions to walk past me and go around the back. He didn’t need to brush against my hand, but he did, sliding the envelope between my fingers before pulling away. “That’s a copy of the posting. I wasn’t going to screw you up, Kai. I might be an asshole but not that kind of asshole. It was just going to be one tire. Enough to slow you down but not take you out.”
“Get. And keep your word about Kenny.” I clutched the corner of the envelope, bending the paper between my pinched fingers. “I’ll see you around.”
Ryder and I both watched him leave. Then I walked over to pick the knife up off the floor. It was a good blade, heavy steel with a sharp edge. It would fit in several sheaths I had on me, and I liked its matte black steel, less likely to catch any light while on a nighttime run. Turning around, I found Ryder staring at me, a bemused look on his face. He was wearing sleep clothes, a pair of loose cotton pants and a T-shirt that looked gray under the garage lights. But their illumination was suspect, also turning the Mustang a dull dark shade of maroon. For all I knew, he was wearing something bright neon yellow and left everyone he’d passed by in the hall bleeding from their tortured eyes.
“What?” I teased. “Not like this is the first wet contract taken out on me. I got Dempsey out on the last one. And before I forget to tell you this, good job on coming up on us. Gun and everything. How’d you know he was out here?”
“I didn’t.” A sheepish look slipped over Ryder’s features. “I… um… had to go to the bathroom and—”
“You went to the bathroom with a gun?” I arched an eyebrow, glancing at the Beretta in his hand.
“Seemed prudent. You kept going on about how dangerous it was for me to walk around. I thought having a gun on me was a good idea.”
“And you came out here to check up on me?” I crossed my arms, rested them on the Mustang’s roof, and leaned against the car, getting a kick out of Ryder’s odd, sudden bashfulness.
“Well, more like I had to come find you,” he muttered, an actual flush of pink creeping over his high cheekbones. “See, while I remembered the gun, I forgot my shoes and the keycard. So I’m not only locked out of the room, I also might have stepped in something while in the bathroom, and I’ve tracked it all over the station’s hallways coming to get you.”
Eleven
THE MUSTANG took the curves of the Post’s steep hills with ease, rumbling in a deep throaty growl as if warning other predators away. While I was grateful for Cari’s family letting me borrow the Nova, I was glad I had Oketsu back on the road. It’d been too long since I’d been cradled in his black leather seats, letting the wheels eat up the miles on a distant run. The trip back had been shorter than going up, but that always seemed to be the case. Finding out Kenny Dempsey had bolted toward San Diego cut the trip short, but it’d been a good one.
Except for one thing, and that was sitting in my back seat, complaining about how his rib cage hurt and about the bellyache he got from taking the antibiotics the station medics pushed on him.
“If there was anything that really convinced me I didn’t want kids, it was this trip back down.” Muttering at Ryder didn’t help, because he barely glanced at me. “The twins don’t cry this much, and they barely have teeth.”
He probably was used to hearing people complain. More than likely it was the first bullet point on his Grand Poohbah job description. A Sidhe probably didn’t even get their lordship title until they sat through at least six ten-day sessions of people whining about how their skin hurt or that they didn’t get guacamole on their carne asada burrito. Either way, he seemed to be immune to every single one of Malone’s whine fests.
“Bugs, can you maybe hold your breath for five minutes? If you can, Uncle Kai will give you a nice shiny silver coin.” I gritted my teeth, ignoring Ryder’s nearly imperceptible chuckle. “Don’t laugh at me. It’s still not too late to shoot him.”
“You promised his aunt you would bring him to her at the Post,” the lordling reminded me in a smug tone that made my hand itch to curl into a fist and punch his perfect nose. “It’s only a minute or two more.”
“Less if I gun it.” Oketsu leaped forward when I pressed down on the gas, jerking everyone else back into their seats. “Sooner we dump Malone into Sarah’s lap, the sooner I can get down to business.”
At least Ryder took the acceleration easily. From the sounds of things, Malone might have tumbled around a bit, but at least he stopped talking. The switchbacks were tight, throwbacks to the days when engines were horses and the Merge pushed the hillside out and up, creating a towering mesa point. We came up onto the parking lot fast, hitting the last curve with a dip of the car’s suspension to hug the angle in the road.
We’d made good time coming down from the border, stopping at the automat again to grab some food and a little bit of sleep. Scavengers—the human kind—had already made off with the black dog’s corpse and the mangled motorbike, leaving behind only a greasy smear, a crimp in the guardrail, and the acid-etched pits in the ground where the monster’s blood and spit scored the asphalt. Dawn was just a thin slice of orange along the edge of the mountains when we hit the county line.