Page 28 of Bleeding Outside the Lines

The front door slams behind me, echoing in the empty night.

Pressing my back against the wall, I wait. Suspense and need boil over all my edges.

I never really understood the phrase silence is deafening.

Until now.

Nothingness. Emptiness. A cavern of quiet.

I strain to hear something, anything, but I can’t even hear the sound of my own breathing.

Eternity. That’s what this is.

Disappointment cloaks me.

Defeated, I open the door.

Nothing.

She’s gone.

Vanished.

I thought she was the captain of the ship, but now I see she’s the iceberg.

twenty

“Our client wants toknow why Mr. Cross is not dead yet,” Rowan hisses at me, struggling to keep up. “And the rest of the Reds are starting to ask questions. It’s been weeks and he’s not even on the schedule yet.”

“Do we know who hired us?” I ignore the rest of her statements, keeping pace to put distance between us and the rest of the reds exiting the meeting.

“Anonymous.”

“Not really, though, right?”

“I dug Rubes, whoever wants him dead covered their tracks,” she hesitates, “and, they completed the objective.”

I pause to look at her, not following.

She pulls my braid from behind my back, a red ribbon tied in a perfect bow on the end. It’s not a coincidence that the first meeting Alice attends is the meeting in which they succeed. There are no coincidences in life. Only fate.

Fate can either lift you up or bring you to your knees, which is exactly where I find myself ten minutes later. The smallestAmelia stands in front of me with a wooden training blade in her hand. Her movements are jerky and unpolished, but we’ll get there.

“You must think of your blade as an extension of you,” I tell the girls, rising to my feet. “It is part of you, as if your hand has been replaced with hilt and steel.”

A middle Amelia stabs at the dummy in front of her, her body stiff.

“We are women. We are graceful. Killer ballerinas. Light on our feet and fluid.” I pull my knife from its sheath on my thigh. The room spins, the earth stills. I stand behind the dummy, my blade at its throat and my eyes on Alice. See me. Be me.

She twirls, her blonde hair fanning around her. When she comes to a stop she lunges forward and then loses balance and falls.

The oldest of the girls laughs, and the others follow.

Alice offers the girl a smile, but the smile is a warning that only I see. She raises her arm behind her, the training knife soars through the air. There are gasps and then a cry as blood pours from Amelia’s nose. The rest of the Amelia’s stop laughing. Alice is doubled over in giggles.

“You,” I say pointing at Alice, “stay here. The rest of you take Amelia down to Rosalie.”

The girls shuffle quickly and silently out of the training facility, leaving me alone with Alice.

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