Page 24 of Cruel Lies

"You thought wrong, whatever you thought," I snarled, shoving him back with a jerk of my wrist. I watched him fall on his ass, tugging a leash attached to a tiny little dog who vaguely resembled a cottonball on legs. The pathetic creature yipped at him in protest, and he quickly scoped it up and made a run for the apartment building whereshelived.

My eyes flicked up, scanning her window for a light that was no longer on. I’d snuck up to her room when she was asleep and left her a little message on the kitchen counter. Even left behind a little memento: the knife she’d dropped in the alley. It’d serve its purpose well enough. The fear it would elicit from her would be worth the trouble I’d gone through to sneak into her place while she was out cold.

As I watched on, her light came on, and her shadow started to move around the room with purpose, back and forth,pacing like a caged tiger before disappearing altogether. I waited for her to return to the room and turn it back off, but she never did.

A glance at the clock told me it was far too early in the morning for her to be awake for the day. She’d return any minute to go back to sleep, surely. But as the minutes ticked by, she didn’t, and the feeling of somethingwrongbegan to worm into the pit of my stomach.

Time to investigate.

I abandoned the Torino in search of the thing making my spidey senses tingle, only half remembering to shut it off and take the keys as I rounded the building in a jog, sticking to the wall like glue. The typical sounds of a raggedy neighborhood in the middle of the night echoed around me as I slowed my breathing, watching the front and the back of the house simultaneously to the best of my ability.

Damn it all; this would be so much easier with a second.

Unfortunately, according to the text I’d received just a short while before passing out, Rowan was drunk—and, Angel suspected, drugged. And that meant they were both off the clock until the one sobered up and the other stopped worrying he might choke on his own vomit or swallow his tongue.

I was on my own.

Good thing I was up to the challenge.

I knelt behind the dumpster and settled in for a good old-fashioned stalking session, staking her out like a cop would a target. How ironic that between the criminals and the cops, we shared a similar method.

Every time that front door opened, I was on high alert until I knew it wasn’t her, only relaxing when I spotted someone new or watched them re-enter the building. Every person who came out of that place that wasn’t her was a liability. Another chance for her to slip away while I was distracted.

I couldn’t let that happen. Regardless of who she was, or might be, or whatever, until further notice, she was our target.That meant, until we decided what to do with her, she was our top priority.

And if she ran? Then I’d chase her like a dog, keeping our target in sight until I had the order to take her out or bring her back.

Something about the contract, though, really confused me. The client had suggested she’d been using a fake identity. But as far as we knew, Hannah Flagg didn’t exist anywhere. If she was using a dead girl’s identity, there should certainly be a birth certificate, at the very least. Even if this persona wasn’t from here, there would be something—a paper trail, a hint of her. But according to Rowan, there was nothing—not even a death certificate.

For all intents and purposes, Hannah Flagg didn’t exist.

Which meant they had trumped up the accusations to get the hit on her accepted.

And they’d asked for us specifically.

The plot thickened.

I flicked my pocket knife open and closed methodically, repeatedly, to stave off the boredom setting in. It didn’t distract me from my inner turmoil, though, and I almost dozed off, sitting there against the wall, wide awake but mentally asleep.

And then I spotted her.

Shit.

She was making her way across the parking lot, her eyes glued to the Torino as she approached the far side of it wearing the most pathetic attempt to be obscure I’d ever seen.

There was nothing more notable to a passerby than an all-leather, floor-length trenchcoat.

My brain short-circuited because there was no other explanation as to why my next thought was to what she was wearing underneath it.

She had a very stuffed duffle bag over one shoulder, amessenger bag over the other, and in her spare hand, a very familiar knife?—

"Well, well, you’re smarter than I gave you credit for, Harper."

Saying her name out loud felt wrong. She wasn’t supposed to be alive. Let alone be right underneath our noses. The number of times I’d likely passed her on the street since that night?—

Okay, well, those were slim to none because ever since that bitch cut up my face, I didn’t go out in public if I could avoid it. But if I’d been Angel, or even Rowan, there would have been ample opportunities for them to pass her on the street, and they would not even notice she was standing right next to them.

She might’ve worked on the Torino. Might’ve worked a job nights at a gas station while she was going through school. Might’ve even rode the subway to school next to one of them when they still showed their faces in the daylight.

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