Page 84 of Amber Gambler

When he backed out, Kierce stepped forward, slotted his fingers into the handle, and pulled without any hesitation. I wasn’t sure if he trusted Farah or if he was that unafraid of pitting himself against Armie. An unwelcome flashback to Kierce, bleeding out and pierced with bone, flooded my memory, a reminder he could be hurt. That Armie was a threat, whether Kierce viewed him as such or not.

The door opened to reveal a box as large as a backyard storage building squatting inside of an otherwise empty room. The sides of the box were smooth and black, and energy radiated from the metal when we got closer. This, whatever this was, held Armie’s secret. The rest of the space he had used as a buffer to prevent customers or employees from getting curious about it.

“What do you think it is?” Farah tucked herself close to me. “Do you think Audrey could be in there?”

“Without knowing what it is, I can’t say one way or the other.” I circled it, searching for a way in, but Kierce stepped up and punched his fist through the metal before I could flinch. “For the love of?—”

Magic blasted through the room, knocking me into the wall and Farah right through it.

Kierce, however, stood firm as he wrenched his hand back, and the low-level hum in the room slid away.

Wobbly from the percussive blast, I decided to lean against the wall for a while longer.

“A heads-up would have been nice.” I massaged away the ache. “Sheesh. That really rang my bell.”

Bash appeared as I tipped my head against the wall, spotted me, and edged past Kierce to reach me.

“What was that?” He gripped my shoulders. “Are you okay?”

“Kierce broke the ward.” I let him hold me steady. “The blowback caught me off-guard.”

A static crackle lifted the hairs on my nape, and I peered around Bash to find Kierce staring at us through eyes gone electric. An alien creature, perhaps the vastness Bash had warned me of, peered out of his eyes for the span of a heartbeat before a somber gray, as foggy as graveyard mist, rolled across them.

“Frankie,” he whispered, foreign magic clinging to his voice.

“I’m good.” I extricated myself from Bash, unsure what I was seeing. “You okay there?”

“We tripped an alarm.” He blinked away the distance in his gaze. “I had no time to warn you. I had to act or risk the repercussions.” Muscle flickered in his jaw. “I don’t think you would have survived them.”

“Ah.” I rubbed the base of my skull. “That explains it.”

Smoke billowed from the cube, proving it was disarmed, for which I was grateful.

Kierce turned his back on it, ignoring the contents, and stopped with his shoes bumping mine.

“I would never harm you on purpose.” He searched my face. “I apologize for my carelessness.”

Over his shoulder, I watched as white flickered across Bash’s vision in cool bursts.

“I would rather be alive with a headache than dead with a warning any day of the week.”

“Guys?” Farah drew our attention to the cube. “What is all this?”

After patting Kierce’s chest, I slipped around him to investigate. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Monitors glowed softly, each screen showing a different area from within the restaurant.

But that wasn’t what caught my eye and held it. No. That would be the feeds revealing three very familiar apartments. From the inside. As well as a shot of the exterior of The Body Shop.

Knees weak, I sank onto the floor, watching as the screens flickered to even more angles.

“All this time.” I trembled, not with fear but with rage. “He was watching us.”

Our friendship had afforded him the access and opportunity. He must have laughed when I asked him to recommend a contractor to wire cameras for the exterior of The Body Shop when he had covered it in them. Unless he viewed that moment as his chance to embed himself deeper, but I got the sick feeling he had already been peeking through our windows by then.

How much had he seen? Had he bugged the apartments too? How long had he been spying on us?

And how was I ever going to tell Josie?

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