Page 110 of Out for Blood
I peer back once at the glowing windows before leading Cassidy to our SUV.
After we pile in, before I turn it on, I sit back.
Somewhere deep inside me, I already know this ends with blood and the kind of damage you never come back from. But I asked her anyway.
“Are you ready to go back to Florida?”
Cassidy is quiet and then she shakes her head, “No. I’m not done here yet.”
Florida means going back to the men who destroyed her life. Back to graves that were never filled and names that keep her awake at night.
And worse than all of that is, Marie and Sofie are still missing.
Somewhere out there, her friends are still trapped in the dark and Cassidy isn’t walking away from that. Not until she finds them. Not until every person responsible for taking them is bleeding at her feet.
I press the ignition button and pull away from the overhang of the trees back onto the road and head to the designated drop spot for the cleanup crew.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
We veer down the road our house sits on, headlights from a different vehicle than the one we left in earlier tonight slice through the rain and night. It’s still hours before sunrise, the neighborhood is asleep around us, every house dark.
Fresh clothes hug our damp skin now, soft loungewear pulled on in silence after dumping the bloodstained ones with the SUV somewhere miles back.
Streetlights glow past the windows in long stretches of gold.
Tyler’s hands stay sealed around the steering wheel; a muscle ticks rigorously along his jaw. The exhaustion from tonight hangs between us but also something else, restlessness.
Suddenly he stomps on the brakes, throwing me against the seatbelt as the vehicle skids into an empty vacant lot just off the road. Mud and gravel fling from the tires before the vehicle comes to an abrupt stop.
Sweltering tension fills the car.
Without looking at me, Tyler stares ahead and shuts down the vehicle.
His chest rises and falls rapidly, each breath coming faster than the last in the dull lights of the dashboard.
Water drips from the ends of his dark hair onto the collar of hisblack sweatshirt, and there’s still something dangerous stewing through his skin from tonight. I can feel it filling the vehicle like smoke.
He rotates his body to face me.
His eyes rake intentionally over my body. Starting at my face then lowering briefly to the oversized sweatshirt hanging loosely on me and the soft lounge shorts, the bottoms of them just visible.
The familiar look causes a flutter between my legs and a need within me.
“You have five minutes,” he drawls, his voice carrying a mischievous kind of temptation.
My pulse stutters, and a more insistent one comes to life between my legs.
I tilt my head, acting confused. “For what?”
A simple, almost disbelieving laugh leaves him under his breath before he reclines into the cushion of the seat and skims a hand along his jaw.
“To run.”
The words settle over me like a match to gasoline.
The rain intensifies against the glass with renewed force.
Tyler’s gaze pins me in place again, dark and unwavering.
