Page 153 of Beautiful Prey

I let him drop, turning as the last one runs.

I let him get sixty yards ahead, then follow, catching him halfway down the slope and driving him into the drainage, where we roll together through the wet. He fights harder than the others before I put an end to it.

The service track runs along the bottom of the slope, only a few minutes from the hollow where Jade is hiding. Vasco is waiting at the edge, his hands in his coat pockets and his visor pushed up on his head, letting everybody else do the work.

He looks up when I step out of the trees, barely bothering to straighten. “About fucking time. Which one are...”

I take the front of his coat in both hands, lift him off his feet, and drive him back into the nearest pine tree. Then I rip the visor from his head. “Hello, Vasco.”

For half a second, he freezes. Then his mouth twists as he recovers. “Clement. Fuck me. You really did get attached to the pretty one.”

“You put men on my husband.” I tighten my grip on his coat. “That’s the last clever thing you do tonight.”

His bravado slips as I shove him harder against the trunk. “Come on, man. You know what this is like. This isn’t what you think it is.”

“It’s exactly what I think it is.” I drive him into the tree again. “You took my father’s money, came into my forest, and hunted something that belongs to me.”

His lip catches on his teeth, blood running over his mouth before he spits red into the leaves.

“You think Dad pays well?” I lean closer. “He’ll leave you here the second this gets inconvenient. You’re a receipt with a fucking face on it, Vasco. That’s all.”

His hands stay twisted in my coat for another second before they loosen, his eyes narrowing as he starts measuring me instead.

“So here’s what I’m going to do.” I set him back on his feet and straighten his coat. “I still own your company, and unless I badly misread you, you want it back.”

That gets him. He wipes the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, looks at it, then gives me a bloody grin. “Now we’re talking. What are you offering?”

“Thursday. My registrar in the city, ten in the morning. You sign first, I countersign, and you get on a ship to Calder owning everything you had before I sat down at your table.”

His eyes sharpen, calculation replacing the panic completely. “So what do you want? Let me guess. Pretty boy stays safe?”

“You got that right. Clever man. But there’s more.” I hold up a finger. “One. You never met Sebastian Clement. Never spoke to him, never took a credit from him, never even heard the name. Tonight was your idea, yours alone. A grudge. A game of revenge. You came here to settle it.”

Vasco stares at me. “Are you fucking kidding me? He’ll kill me.”

“Maybe. He’ll try, at least. But you’ll be on Calder with your own mine and my name behind you.” I raise a second finger. “Two. If you ever go near my husband again, I won’t do this. I’ll do the other thing and take my time. Nobody will ever find enough of you to bury.”

The forest is silent. Vasco runs his tongue over his bloodstained teeth, thinking it through before giving me a brief nod. “Thursday.”

“Ten o’clock it is. Now go.” Tapping the controls on my slate, I open a single gate farther down the track, steel groaning as it slides aside.

He takes four or five steps before stopping and turning around. “You’re a better man than your father.”

I don’t answer him. Instead, I stand and watch him limp along the track until darkness swallows him.

He’ll spend three weeks telling that story to anyone who’ll listen.

And there is no registrar. There is no Thursday. There is no signature, and there never was.

He'll work it out eventually. By then, it won't matter, because a man from Calder walked into my forest tonight with House visors in his boot, and he didn't get them himself.

Dad's been handing me the pieces for weeks. Calder. Ryven. Onyx. Tonight. He taught me to check everything twice and never once thought I'd check him.

Dropping my visor back into place, I go find my husband. Jade is beneath the roots of a fallen pine, bracken hanging over the hollow where he’s folded himself into the wet earth. The gate sits beyond the next line of trees, close enough to make something twist inside me. He nearly made it back.

My boot sinks into the leaves beside the roots. Jade’s head jerks up. He scrambles backward through the mud, a raw, terrified sound tearing from him.

“It’s me. Jade, it’s me.” Dropping to one knee, I rip the visor off. “Look at me. Look at me.”