Page 90 of Gatsby's Starlet
That hung there. Heavy. Because it wasn’t a threat. It was a statement. Behind me, Ruby made a small sound, barely there, but enough that he heard it, enough that his attention flicked past me for half a second.
“You can imagine all you want,” I snapped, cutting that moment off before it could settle on her. “I’d rather die.”
His gaze snapped back to mine.
That did it.
I saw the shift in his posture, the slight tightening in his shoulders, the way something in his expression went colder, less amused.
“Careful,” he said, quieter now, but heavier for it. “I can make that happen, but I’ll still get mine.”
“Then do it,” I shot back before I could stop myself, before I could second-guess it.
Silence settled between us again, thicker this time, heavy in a way that felt dangerous, and for a second I thought I’d pushed too far, until he smiled, not wide or friendly but something else entirely.
“You’re different than I thought,” he said, almost to himself.
“Yeah,” I said, forcing my voice back to even, forcing everything back under control. “You don’t know me.”
“I’ll be gettin’ to know you real well,” he said. The way he said it told me I had definitely pushed his buttons and would pay for it.
He straightened fully then, stepping back from the edge, the light shifting again as his shadow moved, and for a second I thought he was leaving.
Then something dropped.
A small container hit the ground a few feet from us with a dull thud, rolling slightly before settling.
“Food,” he said from above. “Don’t say I don’t take care of what’s mine.”
Then the opening scraped again, the light narrowing, shrinking until it was just that thin strip again, and then less, until we were back in the dark, the sound of the cover sealing overhead final in a way that settled deep in my chest.
Neither of us moved right away or said a word, we just waited there in the silence, listening and counting the seconds until his footsteps faded far enough that I finally trusted he was gone.
Only then did I move, shifting forward slightly, my eyes adjusting again as I looked toward where we’d covered the stone, my heart still hitting too fast against my ribs.
“They’ll rape us and then kill us,” Ruby whispered behind me, her voice shaking again, worse now than before.
I closed my eyes for half a second, just long enough to steady myself. “No,” I said quietly. Then I opened them again, harder now, more focused. “Not if we get out first.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
BY THE TIMEwe hit the dirt road Mystic had clocked,the night had gone quiet in that wrong kind of way, the kind that didn’t feel empty so much as watched, like the woods themselves were holding their breath right along with us as we killed the engines a good distance out and rolled the bikes off into the trees, pushing them deep into the brush where the growth was thick enough to swallow them whole, branches dragging low across the handlebars while we worked them in farther, taking those extra seconds to make sure nothing caught the light, nothing stood out, because if the Fire Dragons had eyes out here, and they would, sloppy got you dead.
No one said much because no one needed to, the shift already happening as boots hit dirt and weapons were checked low and quiet, and then we moved, spreading just enough to cover ground without losing each other, the kind of formation that didn’t need to be called out because it came from doingthis too many times to count, every step measured, every sound controlled as we worked our way along the tree line.
The road stretched ahead in a narrow cut through the trees, tire tracks fresh in the dirt and deep enough to tell me there’d been traffic recently, more than a couple bikes, more than a casual run, and that sat wrong in my gut as we pushed forward, keeping low, keeping quiet, the feeling settling in deeper with every step that something about this wasn’t lining up the way it should.
I felt it before I saw it, a flicker of movement up ahead that was too big to be an animal and too controlled to be anything natural, and I lifted a hand just enough for the others to catch it, slowing us without stopping as we dropped lower into the shadows and closed the distance.
The shapes started to form through the trees as we eased closer, and it didn’t take more than a second to realize what we were looking at, not bikers, not Fire Dragons, but something cleaner, more controlled, the kind of movement that didn’t belong to chaos but to planning, with vehicles tucked back behind the tree line in careful placement and men moving between them in quiet, efficient bursts, gear tight to their bodies, weapons ready, voices low and clipped in a way that told me everything before my brain even caught up.
Feds.
The word settled in hard as my jaw tightened, my eyes tracking movement without meaning to, counting heads, watching positions, reading the layout the way I’d been trained to read any threat, and the more I looked, the clearer it got, this wasn’t local, wasn’t something small or sloppy.
DEA.
Had to be.
