Page 23 of Enter if you Dare: Part One

“I’m in,” I announce before I can change my mind. I don’t know how I feel about having sex with three men just yet, but Cipher said there doesn’t have to be any, so I guess we’ll see how we go.

Noa

Valli signed the contract, and I am super excited for our first chase. I have never met a girl who willingly dug a hole with me, no questions asked. We have been warning Cave to take it easy on her; we can’t risk scaring away the one girl who doesn’t look at us like we are freaks. I mean, seriously, who would look at Cave and think that a grown-ass man who wears a scarecrow outfit every day and sleeps in a cornfield is normal? But normal is overrated anyway. Who wants to be a sheep and copy what everyone else is doing?

I’m surprised Cave has sat here this long. Normally he will come into Ares’s bar, grab his food, and go. Yet today we all sit and wait, while I ask Ares every ten minutes if he has seen Valli arrive yet, and he is now simply shaking his head every time I look his way.

“She is probably running late,” I say to both of them.

“It’s been forty minutes,” Cipher says, and he is right. Five minutes is late; forty is something more.

I lean against the bar, angling myself toward the door as the music drifts through the air. It normally hypes up my mood, but not tonight. “Maybe something came up.”

Cipher just shrugs. “Or maybe she changed her mind. She signed the contract, but that doesn’t mean she has to follow through.”

Cave puts down his glass, and we both look at him. “Mine,” he says.

He doesn’t look at us when he says it; instead, he stares off into space.

“She hasn’t agreed to be yours yet,” I tell him.

He reaches inside his coat and pulls out a folded piece of paper, setting it down on the bar.

Reaching over, I pick it up and unfold it. Seeing that it’s Valli’s contract, I carefully refold it and put it back down. “Like Cipher said, she could still change her mind.”

Cave growls and picks his glass back up. I guess that is the end of that conversation.

The bar runs smoothly when Kayla is working. More people come in and eat, as there is something about her that draws people in. She really is in her element here.

We need to admit Valli isn’t coming tonight, and that’s okay. Maybe we came on too strong with the whole two-men-and-a-scarecrow situation.

The man sitting two seats down from Cave says something, though I don’t catch exactly what—something about the women who sign up for the island—but the word easy catches my ears. Kayla sets down the glass she is holding, and her eyes shift to Cave.

He moves without warning or sound, and it still baffles me how a guy that big can pull it off. As quickly as Cave left us, the man is off his stool and in the air. Cave has him held by his shirt with one hand, and a split-second later the man goes over the bar, hitting the shelves behind it and taking the bottles down with him.

You could hear a pin drop as Kayla places both her hands on the bar and vaults over it. In one pretty badass motion, she lands on the other side and turns to put herself directly in front of Cave with her arms outstretched. She is tiny compared to him, but it doesn’t seem to concern her at all.

Cave looks down at her, and she stares back.

Cave’s hand comes up and closes around her throat.

Shit. I jump up, but before I can move closer, the click of a hammer being pulled sounds loudly in the otherwise quiet room.

Clay stands at the end of the bar with a gun leveled at Cave’s head. “Let her go,” he says in a steady voice. “I have no issue cleaning your brain matter off the floor.”

Cave does not move. He doesn’t look at Clay; his eyes are fixed on Kayla.

Something passes between them, then out of nowhere, Vero drops from an overhead beam straight onto Cave’s back.

I had no idea he was up there.

Vero winds both arms around Cave’s neck, then leans down to bite him.

Cave lets go of Kayla’s throat and reaches back over his head for Vero, who is clinging to him like a spider monkey. Cave turns in a full circle, trying to dislodge him, and Vero’s legs come up off the floor as he spins, arms attached to a very unhappy scarecrow.

“I am not coming off,” Vero taunts him. “I have committed to dying but want to prolong it as long as possible. I live here now.”

“Vero,” Brawley growls, and Cave stops spinning. Cipher moves in and grabs Cave by his wrist.