“Rowan—” Sloane’s hand darts out and encircles my wrist, leaving sticky fingerprints on my skin. A jolt of electricity crackles through my flesh at her touch. I can barely contain my amusement at the rising panic in her eyes.
“Something wrong, Blackbird?”
The waitress stops beside our table with a bright grin. “Can I get you something?”
I keep my eyes on Sloane, raising my brows as her wild gaze flicks between me and the exits. “Two more beers, please,” I say. Sloane’s glare turns flat as it alights on me, her eyes narrowed to thin slits.
“Coming right up.”
“Like I said,” Sloane grumbles as she unfurls her fingers from my pulse. “The worst.”
I give her a lopsided grin. Sloane’s gaze catches on my smile, and her glare softens even though I can tell she doesn’t want it to. “You’ll love me one day,” I purr, keeping hold of her eyes when they reach mine. My tongue passes in a slow lick over the sauce she left on my skin. Sloane’s eyes glitter in the warm afternoon light filtering through the diner’s windows, that dimple next to her lip a shadow of the amusement she can’t quite contain.
“Don’t think so, Butcher.”
We’ll see, my grin says.
Sloane’s dark brows flick as though she’s issuing a challenge, then she shifts her attention to her food. “You still haven’t really answered my question about Briscoe.”
“Yes I did. Hacking limbs. Enjoying agony.”
“But why him?”
I shrug. “Same reason you picked him, I assume. He was a piece of shit.”
“How do you know that’s why I picked him?” Sloane asks.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” I reply as I lean my forearms against the aluminum trim on the Formica table. Sloane raises her chin, her expression indignant.
“Maybe he had nice eyeballs.”
A laugh bubbles from my chest as I pick up another rib. I let the silence linger, taking a bite before I reply. “That’s not why you pry their eyeballs out of their skulls.”
Sloane’s head cocks to the side, her eyes shining as she assesses me. “No?”
“No. Definitely not.”
“Then why would I do that?”
I shrug, not ready to meet her gaze despite the way it beckons me. “The eyes are the windows to the soul, I suppose?”
Sloane scoffs and I look up to catch the shake of her head. “More like ‘foster a raven and it will peck out your eyes.’”
My head tilts as I try to decipher her meaning. Very little is known about Sloane, or at least very little makes its way to the press. She specializes in other serial killers and she leaves an intricate crime scene. That’s pretty much it. Any other theories the FBI might have about the Orb Weaver are half-baked. From what I’ve read, the idea of the elusive vigilante being a woman hasn’t even broached their little formulaic, predictable brains. Whatever her past and her motivations, whatever she means by her comment, it’s all still locked away.
From the second we met, she sparked my curiosity, fanning banked embers into glowing coals, and now she’s ignited the first thread of flame.
I want to know. I want the truth.
And maybe I want her to feel the same curiosity about me.
“Did you know I was the one who killed Tony Watson, the Harbor Slasher?” I ask.
She lowers the beer glass from her lips, her movement slow, her eyes locked to mine. “That was you?”
I nod.
“I thought he got into a scrap with someone he was trying to kill.”
“That part of the story isn’t wrong, I guess. He did get into a scrap and he definitely tried his hardest to kill me, he just didn’t succeed.” That piece of shit Watson. I beat him until his skull cracked and his body seized, then watched as a final, bloody, gurgling breath spasmed past his broken teeth and split lips. When his body stilled, I left him in the alley for the rats to gnaw.
It wasn’t a pretty kill. It wasn’t elegant. There was nothing staged or clever about it. It was visceral and raw.
And I enjoyed every fucking second.
“Watson wasn’t as stupid as I thought. He caught me following him. Tried to ambush me.”
A thoughtful hmm passes from Sloane’s pursed lips. “I’m bummed.”
“Bummed why, because he didn’t kill me first? Harsh, Blackbird. I’m wounded.”
“No,” she says on the heels of a barked laugh. “It’s just that I had such a cool plan for him. The bodies of his last five kills were already mapped out on my web,” she says. Her sticky fingers dance in my direction as though tracing a pattern in the air. She doesn’t even look up. It’s as though this isn’t some giant revelation she just dropped on the table between us.