Savage Vandal (82 Street Vandals #1) - Heather Long Page 0,59

in the sand or in one place, a word that looked like it had been etched with a stick.

I had to step closer, but it said starling.

“You do really good work,” I told him, and he jerked a little before turning to look at me. He blinked like he had to refocus his eyes, and I almost laughed.

“You’re still here,” he said, then gave me an almost heartbreaking smile. “But it’s cold.” The smile vanished, and he was packing up his stuff. The sun was already edging down in the west. We’d been here all day, and my stomach had started rumbling earlier, but I ignored it. Watching Rome work had been fascinating. “You should have told me it was getting colder.”

“You were the one without a shirt,” I reminded him. “Even your nipples are on point.”

He paused to glance down at himself, then shrugged before he pulled the shirt on over his paint splattered chest. The hoodie was next, and he scooped up the bag with the mostly empty paint cans. They had to be mostly empty after what he’d done.

“I’ve survived worse,” he told me.

“So have I.”

Since we were done, I pivoted and headed for the wall we’d come down before, and I didn’t wait for him to help. I just gripped the edge with my good hand and pulled, even as I used the broken bits in the wall to climb. At the top, I glanced back to find him staring at me.

“You coming?” I repeated his phrase from earlier, and the corners of his mouth curved. A bottle smashed behind me, and I turned in time to see three guys I didn’t know heading toward me.

“Well, well, well, what have we here?”

Chapter 15

Emersyn

The crash of the bottle and the splintered glass scattering wasn’t my concern. The way the three moved, swaggering and spreading out like they wanted to cut me off from any avenues of escape worried me. I didn’t recognize them, and in the half-light of the alley, I couldn’t make out much of their features. Of the three, one moved with a faint limp, a second one had his jacket tied around his waist, and the third one wore his baseball cap backwards.

“Hey, pretty girl, you lost?” Backwards Baseball Cap asked, his lips curling into a less than friendly smile.

“She looks lost,” Faint Limp suggested as he moved sideways with a shuffle step. He wasn’t quite bending his left knee.

He’d be the way to go if I had to get past them.

“Nah, she’s not lost,” Jacket Around His Waist threw into the conversation as he strolled right up toward me. “We’ve got you. Don’t we, pretty girl?”

They were all medium build to tall, most of them were skinny though. Not muscular. Didn’t matter. Most guys started off stronger than girls. Biological bullshit rules. Mother Nature had a really vicious sense of humor if you asked me.

I shifted my weight to the balls of my feet. The splint would protect my wrist, but one thing weeks of inactivity had done for me—my bruises had healed. I could breathe better. My chest no longer constricted. My ankle was solid, tired and a little achy, but solid. Even the headache from the concussion no longer plagued me.

If I had been working out, I’d be more confident, but I had stretched and I was warmed up. I knew the distance between the top of the wall where I stood and the uneven ground below. If I jumped, I’d make it. Rome was down there too. I didn’t turn to check. I didn’t dare give these guys my back, and I sure as fuck didn’t want to warn them I wasn’t alone.

The smell wafting off Jacket Around His Waist hit me with eye watering force. Sweaty body odor, alcohol, and something like day old garbage rolled into me. I swore it had to be coming off him in waves.

He was within arm’s reach when he grinned this vicious little smile, but a hand clamped down on his arm before he reached me. Rome had come up from behind me. One minute, he wasn’t there, and the next, he just surged up next to and then in front of me. He moved like a wraith. No words. No warnings. No sound.

Well, the sound of Jacket Around His Waist’s arm breaking echoed through the sudden plummet of silence. The man let out a shriek and there was a flash of a knife, but Rome was already moving, twisting the guy around