to a funeral, cannot find the ability to speak, simply because a cold-blooded killer sniffed my throat.
There must be some kind of mind-altering agent in his cologne.
“I…I…”
He skims the tip of his nose against my earlobe, causing my entire body to break out in gooseflesh.
“Hmm?”
My voice choked, I say, “Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
He’s all feigned innocence, the heartless SOB. “Let me go!”
“If you answer my question, I’ll let you go.”
That surprises me. He doesn’t seem reasonable that way. “Really?”
His chuckle is low and full of self-satisfaction. “No.”
At times like these, I really wish I had super powers. It would be so lovely to manifest a pair of poisonous barbed tentacles to wrap around his thick, smug neck.
“So in addition to being a general, all-around bad guy, you’re a liar, too.”
“Aye. Comes with the territory. But people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, my mouthy little thief.”
His lips move over the sensitive skin beneath my earlobe as he speaks, raising the hair on the back of my neck and sending my pulse haywire.
Then I realize he said “my” thief, and my heart stops altogether.
Because there are far, far worse things he could do to me than throw me into the Charles River. Catching the attention of a man like Liam Black doesn’t have to end in blood.
If he decides he likes me, it could end in something worse than death.
“Easy,” he says gruffly, pulling back to look at me. “What just happened?”
I can’t look at him. My face is on fire, I’m as stiff as a board in his arms, and I can’t risk looking into those dark, burning eyes, because I’m afraid of what I might see reflected back at me.
“Take a breath. Then unsheathe your fingernails from my arm. Then tell me why you’re freaking out.”
I blurt, “Because you’re the most dangerous man in Boston—”
“In the world,” he interrupts mildly.
“—and I’m about to die—”
“We’ve already been over this. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“—and you admitted you’re a liar—”
“Hmm. There is that.”
“—and you’re holding me in your lap and sniffing my neck and…and…”
“And?”
I swallow hard, still not able to look at him, my pulse flying at a breakneck speed.
Then his body tenses.
He deposits me back onto my side of the seat with an expression like he just smelled something rotten and barks at the cab driver, “Pull over.”
The taxi screeches to a stop at the curb. Liam turns his head and pins me in his burning, unblinking gaze.
He growls something in a language I don’t understand, then continues to glare at me.
I say, “Um…”
“Get out.”
My mouth drops open. “You’re letting me go?”
“No. I’m throwing you out.”
Reaching around me, he opens the door and pushes on it, so it swings wide on its hinges. Then he retreats to his side of the car and stares straight ahead, his jaw hard and his energy that of barely controlled thermonuclear rage.
I have no idea what’s happening.
But this isn’t the time to wonder about a notorious gangster’s unexpected mood swings.
This is the time to run the hell away.
I launch myself out of the cab and do just that, disappearing into the night as if it swallowed me.
5
Jules
“I don’t get it.”
“I don’t either, Fin, but I’m telling you, that’s what happened.”
“He had you and then he just…let you go?”
“Yep.”
Her brow crinkles. Seated next to Max on the baroque blue velvet love seat tucked into the corner of our favorite murder-mystery-themed dive bar, the Poison Pen, she’s chewing her lip and frowning, white knuckling another bourbon as she watches me pace back and forth in front of the wooden coffee table separating us.
Max is watching me, too. But it’s more of a “you’re a bonehead” look than Fin’s worried one.
She mutters, “You should’ve stabbed that fucker in the eye when you had the chance.”
“I didn’t have the chance, Max, that’s what I’m saying!”
She’s clearly dubious. “I dunno, Jules, it sounds like you two had quite the long talk. There must’ve been one second in between all that yammering when you could’ve shivved that son of a goat herder and made the world a whole lot better in the process.”
She pauses to give me an accusing stare. “I mean…Liam Black?”
I turn and pace the other direction, wringing my hands distractedly. “We agreed it would be best if I kept the identity of the marks a secret. I pick the targets and research the job, you handle electronics and surveillance, Fin handles logistics and transportation. The details of each of our tasks we keep to ourselves in case