Page 20 of Cruel Games

. . . turned her face into tire tracks.

“We’ve gotta get him to the car, Coyote. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Can you bring back the dead?

“He sleeps like the dead, man. Fuck, what have you beenfeedinghim?”

It made mesick.Made me see red. The memories and the reality blurred together, making it hard to focus.

I shouldn’t be struggling like this. They wereright there.All I had to do was reach out, knock one out, and then chloroform the other.

Yeah, and then you’d be left in the back hall of a busy club with three fucking trained killers, no means of escape, and a very real CCTV camera in the corner that would catch it all.

Fuck.

I couldn’t take them tonight. I had planned to subdue the one, lead him into the alley where the car was waiting, and then lock him up in the warehouse I’d been rentingon the side.

If I didn’t find another job soon, it’d be where the fuck I was living, too.

But now, that plan was down the drain, and I’d have to be satisfied with the fact that I’d confirmed they weren’t immune to drugs.

Especially not the one I’d targeted tonight.

I hadn’t planned on drugging a mortal enemy at the Swizzle Stick tonight. I was here to apply for a bartending job. But when the opportunity presented itself, when I spotted his bike outside, the paint still coated with flecks of blood here and there, his mask’s emblem spray painted on the side of his gas tank, I couldn’t resist.

I had hoped to find the other one, Jackal, facedown in a bottle somewhere. But what I found instead was a room devoid of his presence.

It hadn’t taken long to identify the one here, though. His pin gave him away.

Shiny, prominently displayed on the lapel of his leather coat, it did nothing to hide his identity and affiliation. His eyes had been on me from the moment I walked in, and until I knew who he was, it had made me feel . . .

Desired.

Something I hadn’t let myself feel in a very long time.

Of course, the feeling was ruined the second I spotted the pin and knew him for who he was.

Now, it just made my skin crawl.

I fingered the edge of my cutoff vintage knit sweater and wound the red bow around my fingers a few times, focusing only on the smooth sensation of the silk ribbon sliding across my skin, trying to regain my composure as the voices neared. My breath hitched in my throat, even though I knew damn well I had no reason to panic.

It wasn’t like any of them had ever seen me before.

You’d better man up, bitch. You’ll have to handle worse situations than this if you want to make them pay.

With that thought in mind, I tugged the edge of my shirt up to reveal a little skin, tugged the waistband of my shorts down, undid the first button like all the girls these days wore, and fixed my face like I was going to battle.

Because I was.

EIGHT

JACKAL

“Come on,Coyote, we have to drag his ass to the car. Can’t you lift your side more?”

I had Dingo’s head, and Coyote his feet, and we were slowly, half-assedly making our way to the back exit, where we could reasonably slip out of the damn bar and go mostly unnoticed by anyone with too many questions on their tongue. There were just two more corners, and we were home free.

We turned the first one with no issue. But of course, I should have known there was no way we could escape without a single witness.

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