Page 123 of Brutal
“What are you going to do?” I ask.
“Move you.”
I exhale slowly. “I have work here,” I say, gesturing vaguely toward the desk. “Notes. Leads. I’m not just?—”
“I know exactly what you’re doing,” he cuts in.
“Then you know I can’t just walk away.”
He furrows his brow. “I didn’t say walk away.”
“Then what are you saying?”
He steps closer. Close enough that I have to tilt my head slightly to keep eye contact. Close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him again. Close enough that my body remembers before my mind does.
“I’m saying,” he says, voice low, “that you don’t do it from here anymore.”
My pulse jumps.
His hand is at his side.
The ring catches the light. Dark metal. Hard edges. That strange shape. The key. The same key I saw etched in different places at Vexley House.
The key must open things. Places I haven’t seen yet. Places he hasn’t let me see.
I look back up at him. “You’re taking me somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see.”
I should hate that he’s not more forthcoming. Part of me does.
A bigger part—the part that stepped into him last night instead of away—leans toward it.
Because whatever is happening here isn’t small. It isn’t just about my apartment or the new scratches on the lock. Or even the man who died on that dock.
This is bigger.
And Samson—for once—isn’t trying to keep me out of it.
He’s pulling me in.
Danger.
That’s what this is.
Not just the people outside.
Him.
Me.
This.
All of it.
