Shameless - Sybil Bartel Page 0,31

cabin on her own if she needed to.

“You implied it,” she argued.

The snow coming down harder, the wipers not keeping up, I strained to see the road ahead. “Your point?”

Her voice got quiet. “Would I have… you know, died out there, if I had to make my own way to the cabin?”

I spared her a glance. “No.” My gaze cut back to the road. “Not if you kept moving.” She probably would’ve had frostbite by the time she got to the cabin, and it would’ve hurt like hell, but she would’ve been alive.

She leaned back in her seat. “I almost died once.” She let out a small laugh that was nothing like the one she’d given me before. “Which seems really selfish to say to someone like you.”

“Why?”

“Because you served.”

“I chose to serve. Did you choose to almost die?” I wondered what the hell had happened to her, but asking would’ve given her the impression I cared. As a rule, I didn’t care about women, but goddamn, this one was getting under my skin.

“No. Well, maybe. I mean, I don’t know.” Shifting in her seat, she reached for the handle above the door but then dropped her arm. “I asked for it, I suppose. By my actions, I mean. The choices I made.”

Fuck it. “What happened?”

“I was shot at the Ultimate Music Festival.” She shrugged like it was nothing, but her voice had hitched.

Anger surged. “Vos and Knight didn’t tell me that part.” Not that I listened to any of the bullshit gossip about clients around the office on the rare occasion I was there, nor were either of those two fucks talkers, but both of them had dealt with her. I should’ve known if she’d been shot. Luna ran a tight ship. Clients at L&A didn’t usually take lead. “What the hell happened?”

She shrugged again. “My dealer thought he owned me. I disagreed. He tried to, I don’t know, contain me. He’d been acting like a dick all day. He dragged me to the festival with him and his stupid entourage. I decided to take off when he wasn’t looking. He sent his asshole runners after me, and they fired into the crowd. I got shot twice, but if I hadn’t accidentally run into Preston, it would’ve been a lot worse.”

The Escalade made the last sharp turn in the road before the cabin. “Where’d you get hit?”

“Lower back and my upper arm. But my arm was only grazed.” She glanced at the drop-off on her side of the road.

“Hurts like hell, doesn’t it?” Outside the military, I’d never met a woman who’d been shot.

“It burned too, but it really hurt when André’s friend Talon dug the bullet out.”

“Talerco, huh?” Goddamn. Was there any of Luna’s circle she hadn’t met?

“Yeah, I guess he was some sort of medic or something in the Marines.”

“I know who he is.” Fucking golden boy wonder. “I served with him.” Best damn SARC I’d ever met, but that fucker nicknamed everyone, and he was still on my shit list for what he’d called me after the last deployment I was on with him.

“Oh.” She flinched as two of the tires spun and the SUV drifted.

“We’re good,” I reassured as I kept my foot on the gas steady.

She glanced behind us. “We made it farther than last time.”

Thank fuck, because it was dumping snow now. “We’re close.”

“Good. I guess that means no one’s coming after us tonight. Not up here at least.”

Not unless they were out of their mind, and Antonio Vincenzo was exactly that. His psycho wife was a close second. The only thing I could ever count on when I worked for Vincenzo was that he was unpredictable. I had no idea what the hell would happen over the next few days. All I knew was, with every passing second I spent with a teenage trust fund brat, I regretted sticking my dick in my last conquest that much more.

I tipped my chin at the barely visible break in the trees. “Cabin’s up ahead.”

MY HEART POUNDING SO HARD I could hear it in my own ears, I kept pretending like I wasn’t freaking out and looked to where he said the cabin was. There was only snow and more snow.

I leaned forward. “Where?”

He slowly drove us up a short but steeper incline. “On the left.”

The road leveled out, then just ended with a thick of snow-covered trees in front of us. “The cliff side?” On the left was nothing but down.

“Roofline is there.” He

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