Butcher & Blackbird (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #1)(10)

I consider throwing my half-packed luggage at Lachlan’s smirking face when his phone rings. Any trace of humor disintegrates from his features like ash falling from a charred log, leaving only cracked carbon behind.

“This is Lachlan,” he says. His voice is gruff as he responds to the caller with clipped ‘yes’ and ‘no’ answers, his timbre low. I twist the shirt I’m rolling into a tight coil until my knuckles bleach. My eyes are fused to my older brother, but he doesn’t look up from the switchblade turning over in his hand. “I’ll be there. Give me thirty minutes.”

When he meets my eyes, Lachlan’s brief smile is grim.

“Night shift?” I ask.

“Night shift,” he replies.

By day, Lachlan runs Kane Atelier, his specialist leatherworking studio where he creates beauty from the skin of death. But by night, whenever Leander Mayes calls, my brother becomes the ruthless tool of the devil.

Personally, I enjoy taking the lives of whatever scumbags happen to float my way through the hellish soup of modern society.

Lachlan…? I don’t know if he enjoys much of anything these days. He kills with purpose but shrouds himself in cool detachment. Unless he’s carving hide with his hands or taking the piss out of me and Fionn, I don’t think life matters to him at all.

A pang hits my chest as Lachlan rises from his chair, pocketing his blade and cracking his neck as he threads his stropping belt back into place across his waist. A faint trace of his smile returns when it lands on me.

“Be safe, dickhead,” he says.

“You too, asshat.”

Lachlan sneers, but still claps a warm hand on my shoulder as he passes by. He presses his head to mine for a breath and then he’s gone, heading toward the door to do the same with Fionn. Our youngest brother has never been good at hiding his worries. Fionn wears every shade of sadness and worry in his light blue eyes, and he watches Lachlan stride away with aching concern spread across his boyish features.

“See you later, kids,” Lachlan says as he strides over the threshold and disappears down the dimly lit hall. “And move home, Fionn.”

“Hard pass,” Fionn replies, and a chuckle responds from the dark before the heavy door of my apartment closes with a reverberant thud. Fionn turns to me, that anxiety still etched as a crease in the space between his brows. “You sure this trip of yours is a good idea? I mean, how well do you even know this Sloane?”

I drop Fionn’s gaze, grinning as I zip my duffel and sling it over my shoulder.

“Not well at all. I’ve met her only once.”

Fionn’s nervous swallow is nearly audible. “Once? How did you meet?”

“You really don’t want to know.”

“This sounds a bit impulsive, Rowan, even for you. I know you’ve got the whole middle child thing going on,” he says, waving a hand in my direction the way he and Lachlan always do to explain my wild behavior and reckless decisions. “Meeting with some serial killer woman who you’ve only spoken to once a year ago is…not normal.”

My laugh seems to do little to reassure him. “Nothing about us is normal, but I’ll be fine. I have a gut instinct about her.”

The burner phone dings in my pocket.

I’m about to take off. If this were a race, you’d already be behind.



Oh wait… it IS a race! Look at that. I hope you like disarticulated eyeballs because I’m going to kill this shit, pun intended. Safe travels and get fucked! xo



“Yeah, Fionn,” I say with a bright grin as I slide my phone back into my pocket and head toward the door. “I think I’ll be okay.”





5





CERTAINTY





SLOANE


T his is absurd. I’m absurd.

I’m sitting in the lobby of the Cunningham Inn, trying to focus on the same page on my e-reader that I’ve been stuck on for the last five minutes as I deliberate between making a run for it and staying.

What the fuck am I doing with my life?

This is dangerous.

And stupid.

Absurd.

But I can’t seem to make myself leave.

My lungs fill with the scent of Pine-Sol and bad decisions as a deep, nervous sigh passes my lips. Giving up on my book, I sit back and take in the quiet lobby where my only company is a morose gray cat who glares at me from a leather chair next to the unlit fireplace. The room is dated but comfortable, with dark oak paneling and an ancient patterned carpet that was once burgundy. The antique furniture is mismatched, but polished and gleaming. A pair of taxidermied owls in mid-flight stand guard over the sun-bleached reproductions of Rodin paintings and heirloom railway and mining tools scattered across the walls.

I sigh again and check my watch. It’s almost two in the morning and I should be tired, but I’m not. There was a lot of rushing around tonight, between slicing up Michael Northman’s body and stuffing him in my freezer as I booked a flight out of Raleigh, to packing in a record thirty minutes, to renting a car for my arrival in West Virginia while Lark drove me to the airport. When I lamented that this whole escapade was a stupid idea, her response was: “Maybe, but you do need to get out and make more friends.”

“I have a friend,” I’d said. “You.”