Fortune Favors the Cruel - Kel Carpenter Page 0,31

straw mattress and waved at him. “Got it,” she replied. Lazarus kept his eyes on her for several moments before he sighed and thanked Lorraine one last time before leaving.

“Your manners are atrocious,” Lorraine said as she crawled into bed beside Quinn. It wasn’t long before she drifted off and Quinn was left to stare at the ceiling in peace.

An hour or so later, the sound of raucous laughter from the alley below pulled her from her inner musings. Quinn sat up and silently slid off the bed and onto her feet, padding toward the window. She looked down and tracked the movements of three figures as they made their way toward the main road.

They were probably nothing more than small town drunkards, Quinn surmised. But that didn’t really matter. She was pretty sure that those men could lead her somewhere entertaining, or at the very least, somewhere that didn’t smell of mildew and away from a place where every move was being watched.

Quinn glanced back at Lorraine, making sure she was still asleep. There was no way she could walk out the front door without Lazarus knowing. There was too much risk of someone seeing her. She’d have to climb out the window—and quickly, if she wanted to follow the men in the road. She slid her fingers under the bottom of the window and edged it up. Every squeak and groan from the frame had her snapping her gaze back to Lorraine, but through it all, the other woman snored softly. The first makings of a smile curled around the corners of her mouth as Quinn turned and slid her feet out first before working the rest of her body through the small opening.

Her muscles strained as she held herself to the side of the inn with one hand on the window sill. Licking her bottom lip, Quinn balanced herself on the thin wooden border as she reached up and closed it shut behind her. Then, with both hands latched onto the window’s edge, Quinn swung her legs and released her grip, landing hard on a pile of hay just a few feet to the right.

Grinning at her ingenuity, she got up and dusted herself off before striding toward the street. The men walking along it had no idea they were being followed. As far as they were concerned, it was shadows and dirt. That’s all.

For Quinn, it was a breath of freedom. Fear might be her drug of choice, but it was freedom that chased the nightmares away. A dream she reached for, through the invisible bars that others could not see. An illusion for the night, but not forever.

It would have to be enough.

She followed them through the quiet town, not even needing to pretend otherwise when they never thought to turn or glance around them. They strode forward like bumbling idiots, high on spirits and low on wits. They didn’t look because they were confident, self-assured. They didn’t know to look closer at the shadows or to listen for the things that go bump in the night. That made her life easier tonight, because they didn’t notice as she followed them into a slight tavern on the outskirts of town.

The wooden frame rattled behind her as the door swung shut and the scents of smoke and sweat filled her nostrils. She earned a few narrowed glances as she strode past the bar and into the low candlelit room where men were being entertained one way or another.

The three that led her here had just taken their seats at a table in the corner where an older man was enjoying the company of a whore and another much younger man enjoyed his bottle of spirits. Quinn sauntered over, plastering a wicked little grin on her face as she plopped down into the final empty seat. The table fell to a hush as all eyes turned on her, and then not so subtly, to the dealer.

A sober man with a clean-cut beard and plain tunic looked her over. “You play?” he asked, shuffling the worn deck of cards between dexterous fingers. Quinn leaned forward, tapping the tips of her nails lightly on the weathered roundtable.

“Depends on the game,” she replied in kind, noting the shortened clip of his words. Lazarus still wouldn’t tell her where they were going, but north was apparent. If the creeping cold hadn’t told her, the accents in this town would have. She’d heard them before. Not these specific men, but others like