Butcher & Blackbird (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #1)(16)

“Rowan—”

“And then I heard something else,” I say, grabbing her wrist with my free hand. I tow her behind me. She squirms and protests, but I refuse to let her go. “You’re right, there was someone watching you in the wall. And he took off before I had a chance to see his face, let alone bludgeon it with a lamp.”

We stop at the gaping hole where the ruined painting hangs askew and I drop Sloane’s wrist so she can peer into the narrow room. She leans in, twisting to assess the exit point to a hidden corridor in the back wall.

“Motherfucker,” she whispers.

“Right? That’s what I said.”

Sloane turns to me, her arms crossed over her chest. I expect to see lingering anger or suspicion, not her eyes dancing in the dim light and the murderous grin that sneaks across her lips. “I fucking knew it.”

A heartbeat later, Sloane is marching past me.

“Wait…what’s going on?” I follow in her wake to stop at her door as she tosses on a plaid shirt, not bothering with the buttons. She slips on her sneakers and whips her sheathed hunting blade from the floor, and then she’s pushing past me again to stalk down the corridor toward the staircase. I toss the lamp into her room with a crash of broken glass and jog after her, catching up as she hurries down the stairs.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m boobing boobily, Rowan. What does it look like?”

“You’re…what?”

“Chasing that motherfucker down, that’s what.”

“Who?”

“Francis,” she says as she storms through the lobby. “Francis Ross.”

All the pieces click into place, the picture coming into view. The car in the river. The plates from New York. When the right victims made the wrong decisions and wound up at the Cunningham Inn, he watched them. And sometimes he killed them.

He watched Sloane. Maybe he would have tried to kill her too.

Rage stains my vision red as we burst out of the lobby and into the night.

The thought that he could have hurt her collides with another realization, stopping me dead in the parking lot as Sloane storms forward on a paved path that winds around the side of the hotel, leading toward the caretaker’s house. “That emo wannabe fuckboy with the pink tie is the killer? And you went on a date with that wanker?”

Sloane snorts a laugh but doesn’t stop. “Gross.”

“Sloane—”

“It’s a competition, Butcher,” she says as she reaches the corner of the hotel. She doesn’t even look over her shoulder as she gives me the finger and leaves me with two parting words: “Get fucked.”

Sloane turns the corner with a devilish cackle, her running footsteps consumed by shadow.

“Like hell,” I hiss.

And then I take off after her into the night.





7





CUBISM ERA





ROWAN


S loane’s figure is little more than a silhouette as she runs up the hill toward an old black house, the steep peaks of the roof jutting toward the moon like javelins. Wedges of yellow light spill from the windows, down the steep garden and the path that cuts through it, giving me just enough illumination to spot my quarry.

My grin is feral as I eat the distance between us.

I run full-force into Sloane and take her out in a rugby tackle. We twist in the air so I suffer the brunt of the hit. Grass and gravel grind into my forearms as I slide to a halt and roll us over to pin her beneath me.

Sloane’s heavy breaths flood my senses with ginger and vanilla. She blows a lock of hair from her eyes and glares at me before she squirms beneath my weight. “Get the fuck off. He’s mine.”

“No can do, Peaches.”

“Call me that again and I swear to God I’ll chop your balls off.”

“Whatever you say, Blackbird.” I grin and give her a swift kiss on her cheek, the feel of her soft and yielding flesh branded into memory the moment my lips touch her skin. “See ya.”

I push away and run, the delicious sound of her frustrated protest the most beautiful melody behind me.

My heart thunders and my legs burn as I sprint up the steep hill. I’m nearly at the low, wrought iron fence surrounding the house when the sound of an engine cuts through the night.

Francis is running.

I detour and follow the line of the fence toward the driveway where light tumbles down the asphalt from the vehicle in the garage. I reach the edge of the pavement and scoop up a rock from the border just as the garage door slides open and the car barrels out of the building.

So I do what any sane person would do.

I jump on the fucking hood.

Sloane yells my name. Tires screech. I lock eyes with the driver as his panic collides with my determination.

With my body flat against the hood, I grip the edge of it with one hand and smash my rock into the windshield with the other. I don’t stop, not as we pick up speed, not even when the car swerves as the driver attempts to dislodge me. I deliver hit after hit. Glass crumbles with my repeated blows. It bites into my knuckles. It slides into my skin when I punch through to the other side and drop the rock to reach for the steering wheel.

A panicked cry rises above the chaos.

“Rowan, tree!”