Page 47 of My Crazy Killers
“Wren Rivers,” I say out loud, trying to help ease some of the tension she’s holding on to. “I love the sound of your name.”
“Thanks,” she says, tilting her head up to me with a small smile.
“Dexter Rivers,” I say with a nod. “Has a nice ring to it.”
“You want to take my name?” she asks, looking both confused and surprised.
I shrug. “Of course. It’s not like you’d be able to choose between ours, right?”
She tilts her head up and kisses my jaw, offering me one of her dazzling smiles. “You know me so well, Dex. But don’t you only take your partner’s name when you get married?”
“Is that not an engagement ring on your finger?” I fire back, pointing to the ring she hasn’t taken off.
“The ring Elias gave me?” she asks as she stares down at the shiny ring on her hand.
“We’re a package deal now, baby,” I tell her while giving her a soft squeeze of reassurance.
“Since when?” Elias asks. He doesn’t sound upset; he sounds surprised.
“Since you jumped in front of a bullet for me.” He just stares at me in shock, as if unsure what to say.
Jagger breaks the tension slowly building as he diverts us back to the conversation.“Maybe there’s another Blackburn,”he suggests.
“That makes the most sense,” Elias agrees while Wren stares at Jagger with a frown.
“What is it?”he signs when he sees she’s staring.
“Sign his name again,” she asks. He repeats the action, and she nods. “Okay, that first part means black, but the sign you did for burn, that’s different from what I would have done.” She raises her hands and does a different action, and Jagger nods.
“They are close. This one,”he repeats his sign,“means b-u-r-n,”he spells out the word.“And this one,”he repeats her sign,“Means h-e-a-t.”
She gasps, her eyes growing wide. “That’s it!”
“What?” Elias asks as she leans forward, pulls the headphone cord out of the laptop, and replays what she was listening to aloud.
The Russian words play out, and I have no idea what it’s saying, but she clearly does. She suddenly pauses it and yells, “There! Did you hear it?”
Elias and Jagger both frown, shaking their heads, and she restarts the clip, playing the same part again. “Right there. Where they’re sayingchyornyy ozhog, but it’s notozhogwith ano, it’suzhog, with au! They aren’t saying Blackburn, they’re saying Blackheat!”
“Black heat?” Elias asks, and she nods excitedly.
“What’s the difference?” Pete asks, taking the question right out of my mouth.
“I don’t know, but it must mean something,” Wren says excitedly.
“Elias?” Sly asks, and when I glance at him, he looks deep in thought.
“I feel like I’ve heard that name before, but I can’t remember where. I need to do some digging.” Jagger slidesthe laptop over to Elias, who pulls it into his lap and starts clicking away. After about thirty seconds of us all staring at him, he lifts his head and looks at us. “This might take a while. You don’t need to watch me.”
Wren looks around at the rest of us before asking, “What should we do while we wait?”
Pete and I exchange grins.
“No,” Sly says when he sees the looks on our faces. “I’m sure Wren is still a little sore and needs more time to recover.”
I glance down at her. Had we gone too far last night? It seemed like she’d loved it at the time.
Her cheeks start to grow pink as she looks down at her hands and shrugs. “That’s an affirmative,” Sly translates for us.
