Rogue - Michele Mannon Page 0,95

a tequila-induced bender. Riding high in the same sinking boat as the drunken idiot who boasts that revenge is sweet.

Fairy tale? My ass.

Life is having your heart ripped out of your chest. Tears that won’t come or never seem to stop coming. Days where your nails are broken along with your soul. Moments you think mud and grime and the dirt tainting your skin have become a part of you and you’ll eventually be nothing but dust.

Once I believed revenge would get me through it all. But I’ve realized there’s something else keeping me going. Love.

How Pop spent hour upon hour teaching me how to whistle. Mama tugging a comb through my “rat’s nest” until my blond locks glistened in the daylight. Madelyn’s glee after I tossed a brick of solid potassium—which I’d borrowed from the school lab—into a pond and caused a Yosemite-like geyser to shoot two stories into the sky.

And then, there’s Jaxson.

Running his lips briefly across mine beneath a decomposing tree stump. Holding me in his arms. Telling me, “I love you.”

Damn him.

Life isn’t a fairy tale, and neither is our unexpected, brutal yet beautiful, screwed-up-beyond-hope romance.

But I’ll take a sucky day or one full of fairy tale–like moments over no days at all.

I stop, brushing aside my thoughts as I adjust my miner’s lamp before climbing down the next flight a stairs. No sooner do my feet hit the ground, I hear it. A splash. From the rainwater that’s puddled together at the top of the first set of stairs.

Damn it. I’m being followed. And I’ve a strong hunch who’s tracking me.

I broaden my strides as I work my way down into unexplored territory. Lamps line the tunnel walls but remain unlit, limiting my range of vision. I curse this fact as my foot snags on something heavy, sending me tumbling forward onto my hands and knees.

Except the damage is done.

My palms sting. My lamp clangs angrily then goes black. And my satchel hits the dry stone floor, the contents clattering loudly, the sound echoing throughout the catacombs.

Yep. Sometimes life absolutely sucks.

I sit back onto my haunches and quickly assess the damage only to discover the lamp’s inoperable. Terrific. I feel around on the floor until my fingers slide across the cell phone I’d purchased this morning. With a press of a button, it lights up. For a second or two, I stare at it. Incredibly, two reception bars light up. First fine artwork. Now cell service? Next they’ll be opening a subterranean Starbucks. Yep, this section of the catacombs has the makings of an ultimate man cave. Or what I’ve been searching for—a Prick cave.

Scrambling to my feet, I collect my weaponry. The bottles of hydrogen peroxide, the butcher’s knife I borrowed from a corner boucherie, my gun. I frown . . . no, not mine, it’s Jaxson’s 9mm pistol, which I took it upon myself to sequester after our first hey-babe-I-missed-you-too encounter. His gun. In my possession this entire time. And I fully believed he made an amateur mistake in dropping it?

Before I even take the damn thing apart, I’m certain what I’ll find.

Sure enough, a small rectangular tracking device has been placed on the end of the magazine. If Jaxson hadn’t interrupted my using the gun I’d have figured it out.

After a long, drawn-out huff, I pry it off then retrace my steps until I spy a small hole at the base of the wall. Perfect, too, as it’s big enough for someone to fit through. With a flick of my wrists, I fling the device inside.

There you go, baby. Track that.

I turn my cell off and sink back into the darkness. But don’t have to wait long. Baby’s back and in a snap, on his knees then hard at work squeezing big body through that hole. Smiling, I silently jog back to where I left my satchel. This time, I flick my cell back on and raise it high. Wanting to avoid a repeat performance of my catacombs crawl and to see what in the hell I tripped over.

God. Please don’t be a decomposed skeleton. A bone. Or anything else that has to do with death.

I glare down at the offensive item and gasp.

A box lay in the middle of the tunnel. I quickly scan my surroundings and notice stack upon stack of them, lined up along the wall. But it’s their cherry-red warning label that stands out the most: munitions de combat. “Combat munitions,” I whisper, quickly trying to translate. “Munitions