Page 40 of Enter if you Dare: Part One

Cave’s posture changes; his shoulders drop a smidge, and his jaw goes hard. It’s almost as if the air around him stills. He reaches up and works the rope free from Cipher’s wrists and helps him down.

“I vote we use the rope for Valli next time. Wouldn’t that be fun? Taking turns—oh, and we could spin her around. Maybe you should both get dressed. As much as I enjoy looking at you naked, I’m not sure Clay and Ares would appreciate it.”

I play with the rope while they get dressed, tying it into a noose and slipping my head through the loop.

Cipher comes out and races over to me. He punches me in the arm and rips it off from around my neck. “Don’t even joke about that,” he hisses.

I rub my arm. Damn, the guy has a good fist on him. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, but asphyxiation might be something I want to try.”

Cave walks over and wraps his hand around my neck and squeezes.

“Yep,” I wheeze. “My dick is hard.”

Cave releases me and shakes his head.

“You are both insufferable,” Cipher mutters, but he’s smiling while he says it, then tugs his shirt down over his head.

“I prefer the term delightful, but I will accept insufferable as a close second.” I drop the rope, coiling it properly this time, and hang it back on the hook by the bench. I know Cipher will absolutely lecture me about proper tool care if I don’t. “So what do you think Clay and Ares want?”

“They probably have the information we need,” Cipher responds, pulling on his jacket.

Cave doesn’t say anything, but he’s already moving toward the door before either of us notice.

“Hey,” I say, falling into step beside him as we head out. “You good?”

He nods, and all three of us walk to Clay and Ares’s house. They live with Brawley, Vero, and Kayla, though she only recently moved to the island when she was kidnapped and buried alive. After that happened, none of them would let her out of their sight, and she has been here ever since. I hope kidnapping is not a theme for how we get women to move to the island—that would look suspicious.

It’s a short walk from the shed to the residential area, but long enough for me to fill the silence with whatever is currently living in my head. Today is a detailed theory on whether Vesper will kill Vero one day, and I am only two minutes into my evidence when Cave makes a sound that I recognize as him reaching the absolute edge of his patience.

“But I’m almost done,” I tell him.

“You are never done,” Cipher adds.

“That’s probably true,” I admit solemnly.

Cipher walks a half step behind us, and I catch him glancing sideways at Cave like he’s trying to read the same thing I am and getting nowhere either. We’ve both learned the differences in Cave’s silences over the years—the bored one, the patient one, the one that means leave it be, and the one that means something is wrong.

Clay is on the porch when we arrive, and while I dislike the way he looks at Cave, I also don’t blame him.

“Inside,” he grumbles, and we all follow him in. Ares is seated at the kitchen table, waiting for us.

“Steedy’s men have been tracking Valli for the past week,” Clay says, jumping straight to the point. “They have been watching her house and tracking her car. We only picked it up because they’ve been careful, but not careful enough.”

“From what we can tell, they are targeting her over her brother and will strike soon,” Ares adds. “Steedy wants leverage on Rowan, and he thinks that’s her.”

“How soon is soon?” Cipher asks.

“Could be tonight, could be tomorrow morning.” Ares folds his arms on the table. “We don’t have an exact window, which is a problem. We just know it’s close.”

“And Rowan?” I ask. “Does he know any of this?”

“Rowan is the reason this is happening,” Clay says. “Whether he knows specifics doesn’t matter. Steedy doesn’t care about him anymore, not really. He cares about leverage, and Valli is easier to get to than her brother.”

Cave makes a sound which vibrates through his chest. He crosses the room before anyone can speak and grabs my face between both of his hands, then stares at me with an intensity that pins me to the spot. “Go,” he says.

Cipher is already heading toward the door when Ares tosses me a set of keys, which I catch out of pure reflex.

“Take my car,” Ares says. “The hearse is easily recognizable, but mine isn’t tied to anything, not even the island. Do not let her bring her own car—it’s being tracked.”