Page 8 of Tyler's Rule
Tyler took me in. The guest in the clean, warm, well-stocked house. A perfect cage for a girl like me.
“I half expected ye to be waiting with a bat to knock me out.” He paused for a beat. “Would’ve been fair.”
I raised a shoulder. “I’m not strong enough to hurt you. Even if I wanted to.”
He hung his coat on a hook and removed his boots, leaving them by the front door. “Ye don’t want to?”
“I should. You kidnapped me, hun.”
He didn’t deny it. Only prowled closer, a dark shape against the moonlit window.
A ghost indeed.
Tyler settled into a leather armchair with the sigh of a man who’d been on his feet all day. Not that I felt sorry for him. It had been his choice to take the long trip to snatch me.
Outlined in the faint glow from appliances in the kitchen, he rested his elbows on his knees. “Are ye hungry?”
“Just breezing on past the prisoner detail, huh?”
His lips twitched in a grimace. “I only want to keep ye safe. Even if ye don’t believe me yet.”
“Can I leave?”
I’d tried the doors. Searched for keys. For any other exit. Trust Tyler to have designed an impenetrable fortress dressed as a log cabin.
Silence again.
Irritation gathered in my muscles. “That’s what I thought. This is a very pretty jail, gotta say.”
“There are a lot of people trying to find ye.”
“Oh no, competition. Sucks to be you.”
To my surprise, he laughed. Once, a short bark of amusement. God help me, my lips curved into an answering smile. I flattened it, because his words revealed a truth.
“You found out the Marchant thing, huh?”
I hadn’t wanted to ask this. I didn’t want to say the name or summon my past. But in the few hours he’d been gone, this bitch didn’t panic. I was all out of stock of it. Nothing in the tank. Instead, I’d forced myself to sit and calm then work through my life in a way I hadn’t since I’d run from the warehouse.
Yet Tyler’s inclined head chilled me to the bone.
“Who else knows?”
“The skeleton crew leadership. The skeleton girls.”
“Be specific, hun. Name them. Every one.”
“Arran, Genevieve, Shade, Everly, Cassie, Riordan, Manny, Lovelyn, Kane, Convict, and Mila.”
So many. My heart hurt over one in particular. “Mila?”
My sister.
Tyler continued, “She and Convict are a couple. Did ye ever meet her?”
I clamped my lips together, my gaze fleeing to the floor.
He said my name. I ignored him. It was his movement that had me lurching up straight with a fast intake of breath. But hewasn’t coming for me. Tyler crossed to the kitchen and snapped on the overhead spotlights, flooding the room with a warm, bright glow. From my darkened haunt, I drifted a few feet to watch him take food from the fridge.
