Rio’s eyes strained against the darkness and her body jerked as she tried to get a bead on the man. Other than his slight accent, she had nothing to go on.
“Would you like to see me?”
A light flared, the lantern the man held in his right hand coming alive with an LED illumination that was icy bright. Her murderer was dressed in black and had a tight black hood pulled down over his face, looking like some kind of wraith out of a nightmare.
Recoiling and blinking, Rio tried to think. Then worried about her breathing as her nose was stuffing up and there was nothing going in and out of her mouth because of the gag. As panic choked her, the man put the lantern down and stepped forward.
When he knelt down next to her, he was careful to stay out of the camera’s way, and she could feel his eyes on her as he looked her up and down.
With a steady hand, he pulled the mask off himself. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Ainhoa.”
He had pale skin tone, pale, nearly white eyes, and white hair. His age was . . . unknowable. He was not young, but he wasn’t old, either, his lean face unlined and hawkish.
There was a sharp sound of metal on metal, a switchblade triggered.
The blade entered her visual field, shiny and clean, and the hand that held it was wearing a dark gray glove. In the back of her mind, she thought that the reflected light on the honed steel was the color of the man.
Icy cold.
“We’re going to have some fun now.”
The knife left her eye line—
As she felt the tip in between her breasts, she groaned and the man laughed again. “We’re going to have so much fun, Ainhoa. And I shall call you by your given name as we work through this process together. Although I’ve heard people call you by Rio, I prefer to be formal about things. No reason to be common in this.”
As the Hyundai sped away from the alley, Lucan knew he wasn’t going to last long under the damn thing’s belly. His hands were sweaty from the effort of holding his two-hundred-and-sixty-pound weight up off the blur of pavement—and the engine was transferring more heat down every piece of metal he was gripping or next to. And the woman was continuing to accelerate.
She was swerving, too. So if he timed the drop wrong, he was going to get mowed flatter than grass.
Meanwhile, his abs were screaming in pain from this death plank, his pecs and biceps were worse—and the going was rough, every manhole and sewer-access panel in Caldwell passing under the car like the woman was steering for the things.
“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” he growled through gritted teeth.
The car lurched around a corner—
The brakes were hit so hard that he didn’t get a chance to form an opinion about releasing his hands. His body just shot forward as the car stopped short, momentum taking control of his destiny as he was propelled out from under like a missile.
Lucan had a brief image of the front wheels passing on either side of him and then the front bumper—
Blaring. Honking. Flashing lights.
Sudden death.
As he exploded into the intersection, the vehicles traveling through on a green light swerved and stomped on their own brakes. Twisting onto his side, he bounced along the asphalt and the car chaos, Ping-Pong’ing off the box grille of an old Toyota, before rolling up the sloped hood of a low-slung Pontiac from the eighties. As the firebird stencil made an impression in spite of the danger he was in, he thought of his female from the night before.
Not that she was his.
And then it was time to stop with the freestyle acrobatics. Kicking out on the windshield of the Firebird, he jumped himself into a change of direction, and got the fuck out of the way on a tight tuck—
Just as a series of impacts crunched and crackled in the center of the intersection, vehicles crashing into each other.
Lucan’s boots landed flat on the ground and the second he felt his feet under him, he burst into a run. Zeroing in on the shadows in front of him, he plunged himself into darkness to get cover. When he was sure he was out of sight—not that those humans were focused on anything other than their airbags—he slammed his back against a dumpster that was empty, given the hollow clang!
Panting, he caught his breath and focused on the pileup. Out under the dangling traffic lights, a collection of body-repair jobs had replaced the previous going concerns of five vehicles—but his blond unknowing Uber driver was not having it. Even though she still had the red light and there was a junkyard of automobiles in front of her, she shot up onto the sidewalk, bypassed the accidents she’d played a solid role in creating, and hit the gas.