Page 16 of The Contract

I’ve made a deal with the devil.

***

When I hear knocking, I ignore it. You learn to tune things out in a building like this. But it goes on and on.

What the fuck? Is thatmydoor? No one knocks on my door.

“Tristan Marshall?” a female voice calls through the flimsy wood.

Shit, is that the police?

“Just a minute!” I shout.

I scramble up from my bed. I grab my sweats off the floor, yank them on, and hurry to the door. My mind races. What’s the last thing I stole?

The clothes, obviously!

Shit, they’re on full display on the wheeled rack by the bed. There’s nowhere to hide them. The computer’s a bigger problem though because it is also very much stolen and even more traceable.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I undo the useless deadbolt. The door is like a fucking closet door or something. I unlock the handle. I pull the door open about two inches and set my eye to the slit.

A woman with a short blonde hair, shaved on one side, raises an eyebrow at me. Her makeup isn’t heavy except around her eyes, where black eyeliner, smoky eyeshadow, and mascara make her look edgy as hell. I glance down to see a black blazer over a white t-shirt, leather pants, and combat boots.

Okay, so not a cop.

“Um … yes?”

She snorts. “You’re cute. Can I come in? It smells funny out here.”

“Who are you?”

“Kenzie Slade. I work for Dante.”

Kenzie. The name rings a bell. He mentioned her. His driver?

I open the door and let her in. She wrinkles her nose but doesn’t state the obvious, which is that it doesn’t smell much better in here.

“The building has mold,” I mutter.

“Tea tree oil,” she says.

“What?”

“It kills mold.”

Her gaze travels quickly around my apartment. She makes a sound of appreciation at my computer then walks over to my clothes rack. She flicks through everything while I snag a t-shirt off the back of my computer chair.

She pulls out a pair of suspenders and smirks. “I bet he liked these, didn’t he?”

“Oh, I … I don’t know.”

“Are you always this shy?”

“Listen,Kenzie Slade, I was dead fucking asleep when you knocked on my door out of fucking nowhere. I thought you were the cops! Then you walk into my apartment like some goddamn reality TV star—”

She laughs. “Ah, there we go.”

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