Vicious Rebel (82 Street Vandals #2) - Heather Long Page 0,37

stream. It was ice cold, but I wanted my hands clean more than I cared about warm water.

I’d just gotten a handful of soap when a door at the back of the kitchen swung open. Oh shit, I hadn’t even realized it was there. The guy stepping inside wasn’t anyone I’d been introduced to. Maybe he was another mechanic? Or the owner? I gave him a quick smile as I soaped up my hands.

“Good morning,” I said, greeting him, and then focused on washing my fingers. There was oil darkening the corners of each nail. Hopefully, that came out easily. I might need a brush or something.

The guy at the door had stopped there for a beat, like his eyes needed to adjust. I supposed it was a little brighter outdoors than in. At least his entrance had shoved some cold air through the kitchen, and it helped dispel the sour odor of whatever died in here…

I shot the guy another glance when he didn’t move. There was letting your eyes adjust, and then there was rude.

A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold—either the temperature of the room or the water—raced up my spine. He stared at me. My shoulders stiffened, and I raised my chin. Shutting off the water, I shook the droplets from my hands.

There was no hand towel easily visible, but the overalls Kestrel had tucked me into were not only oversized and rolled up several times, but mostly clean. So I wiped my hands on the top.

The man took a single step forward, his eyes narrowed. The scent of cigarettes wafted off him, made sharper and more pungent by the chill he’d carried. Worse was the sour odor of sweat under it all.

There was a grease stain on his shirt, and despite the fact he wore a button-down with a jacket, he had no tie and the collar was undone. Rumpled, like he’d slept in the suit.

His hair was too long. His belly too wide. His shoes too cheap. And when he opened his mouth, his teeth were just a little too stained. Everything about his clothes said cheap, business attire. Everything else said he played dress-up and was intensely uncomfortable.

Except his eyes.

They were bloodshot, narrow, and mean-looking above the flushed jowls and unshaven cheeks. If the smell wafting off of him wasn’t so distasteful, the unkempt nature of his appearance would have glared warning signs at me.

Call me a snob, but I’d had my share of bad encounters.

This guy was trouble in great, drenched in garbage neon letters. With all the noise out in the bays, I wasn’t sure the guys would hear me if I started yelling. The newcomer took another step in my direction, and not once had he looked away from me.

Since I was wearing the mechanics overalls and I was basically a shapeless blob, it wasn’t my attractive appearance that appealed to him.

“Take a picture, it lasts longer.” The cool words leapt off my tongue as I glared at the guy. Sweat gathered at the base of my spine, and the earlier shiver turned into razor blades of ice.

“Emersyn Sharpe.”

After weeks with the Vandals, the very last thing I wanted was to be recognized. Even when I’d wanted to escape them, this guy would not have been my eighteenth, much less my first, choice.

The door to the office was behind me and even then, I had to get through another door to get back to the garage. There was the door behind him that I hadn’t even noticed with its crash bar to get out. I guessed it should have been locked?

Stinky clapped a hand onto my arm, and I reached for the coffee pot at the same time. It was one of those old-school coffee pots you always saw in diners, with the heavy balloon bottom and the narrow black mouth and a heavy handle made out of the same black plastic. It was stained, like one too many pots of coffee had been brewed in it.

The coffee the day before had been sludge. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had stained my insides. But the pot was heavy, and there was already coffee in it. It was also still hot, and the sludge was definitely sludge.

I locked my fingers around it, even as Stinky hauled me toward his pot belly.

No.

Thank.

You.

I swung the pot, and it crashed against the side of his head, spraying us both with burnt coffee and chunks of glass. Fortunately, it missed my