Dusk Avenger (Flirting with Monsters #3) - Eva Chase Page 0,105

so you’d know it was her.”

Isaac froze. Then he reached out and took the ring from me, holding it up to the light. His throat bobbed. “She really… She managed to hold on to this all this time?”

“Nothing meant more to her,” I said softly.

“And those monsters—" His voice shook with more fury than it could hold.

An answering anger flared inside me. What about all the monsters he’d ordered tortured and slaughtered who’d never harmed a single mortal? Did none of their lives count while he acted out his revenge for the savage one that had ripped his fiancé from him?

Heat prickled through my chest—and I yanked it back with a hitch of breath I couldn’t quite hide. Cool waves, a salty breeze, the rhythmic hiss of the ocean. Focus on that. Focus on that and keep my fire in, or so many more monsters would die under this man’s orders because I’d screwed up our one chance to stop him.

My emotions settled with an ache around my heart. I could do this. I could stay in control. At least as long as I didn’t need to fling any fire around and could keep all of it inside.

The big boss was watching me again. “Are you all right?” he said carefully.

“I’m not totally well either,” I said as if embarrassed to admit it. “But it’s Carmen who kept me going all this time—I had to do this for her. Will you come to her? She’s nearby—it won’t take five minutes. I don’t want to leave her too long. If she sees anyone but you, I think she might run.”

So don’t call up someone else to handle this. You don’t really want to anyway, not when it shows so much of the life you’ve tried to keep away from all your colleagues’ eyes.

Resolve flashed in his eyes. Something I’d said or done had gotten through. He spun on his heel and hollered to his guards. “Is there anyone at all in the lower hall or any report of trouble from the lobby?”

An intercom crackled. “No, sir,” the woman replied. “It’s been totally quiet all night except your guest.”

He wavered but only for a second this time. Then he gave a brisk nod, made a gesture toward the camera, and strode off. He returned moments later pulling on a suit jacket that he stuffed a phone into the pocket of. Something about the way it hung on him pinged understanding in my brain.

“That’s a good one,” I said, eyeing the jacket with feigned approval. “It’s got strips of silver and iron sewn right into it? I knew a lady who had a dress made like that.” I patted the lapel, just a brush of my fingertips to prove to him that I didn’t shy away from those metals. And to get a feel for the fabric. Sooner rather than later, I was going to have to wrench this thing off him.

“I believe in taking every precaution,” he said. “Let’s go. You and Carmen will be safe from the fiends in here. I can bring in doctors and whatever else you need.”

He opened the door to the elevator, leaving his guards behind. Leaving them watching the surveillance feeds. Fresh tension wound through my body as I followed him in.

We’d thought he might bring his lackeys with him, so that Thorn and Flint would need to bash their helmeted heads right off their bodies when we emerged into the hall. It looked like we wouldn’t be able to stage our ambush there after all. If we attacked just him, the guards would see and come running to the rescue.

The others would have to wait until we were out of the hall below. Actually, better that we weren’t even in the building, since I knew for sure he had his phone. We couldn’t rely on this going so smoothly that the building’s own security wouldn’t notice and interfere.

Ruse would be relying on his read on my emotions to tell him all of that. I concentrated on the worry of them acting too soon, my longing to be somewhere out of the cameras’ view. Not yet. Not yet. And woven through all that was my hope that he’d understand.

The elevator door slid open on the brilliant hall of light. No shadowkind leapt from their constructed patch of darkness. And how terrible it would be if they did just yet. I let that horror fill me all the way to the second elevator, even as I studied