Page 38 of Love, Nemesis
People kept watching.
She slid her hand down to his chest, fingers tentatively coiling the fabric in a silent threat. Now she was all fire.
She nudged him, eyes locked. He obliged. She stopped short, disarming him before she shoved him back harder.
A hard surface stopped his calf, and he fell back into a seat. Ana’s foot hooked the link between the chair legs, slamming it down to prevent the chair from falling backward. It jerked him forward, forcing his hand to land on her knee between his.
She stood over him, shoulders rolled back, back straight. She took a measured breath through her nose. “I’ve put bolder people in prison and bigger threats in the ground.” Holding his eyes, she said, “Stay away from me. Stay away from the State.”
People cleared a path for her as she walked off.
Lethe leaned back in the chair, running his hands through his hair as he released a breathy laugh. He saw Cal approach from the corner of his eye, glass in hand.
“What was that?” Cal offered him the drink.
“No.” Lethe smiled, removing his cigarette and lighter.
“One of them has a Numbers uniform,” Cal said. “Lethe, you’re playing with fire.”
He smiled and exhaled, watching her leave the festival through the smoke.
His mind felt at ease. He knew this excursion to track down Evira would be over soon, and he had dreaded the thought. Now, perhaps, he had a reason to stick around a bit longer.
The truth was, Ivan Rowe was probably dead. It was Evira that Lethe wanted.
Granted, discretion wasn’t his strong suit, and Evira’s death would likely be a messy ordeal. He couldn’t quite escape either. He’d promised Cal secrets, and he was a man of his word if nothing else.
Lethe rubbed his face. Maybe he couldn’t stick around.
“Ah, well,” Lethe said. “I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.”
He fished out his stopwatch and flipped it open. “Should be about time for Evira’s show to end.”
“Isn’t that a stopwatch?” Cal asked, craning his neck.
Lethe snapped it shut and rocked to his feet. “I’ll meet you back here in let’s say…ten minutes?”
Cal’s brows furrowed as he looked back at the stopwatch and then at Lethe as he slipped it back under his shirt. “But you didn’t even start it.”
“Ten minutes?” Lethe repeated.
“All right,” Cal agreed, scratching his head. “Sure.”
Chapter 10: Black Planet
JASPER FOLLOWED ANA toward the main performance tent, but his words did nothing to draw out answers. Initially, they were here to wait for Evira to finish. At this point, she wanted to be anywhere else but at this festival.
“Who was that?” Jasper asked again.
She wasn’t even sure what manner of insult could properly describe him. He was an Ocean’s War hero if there ever was one.
Ana pulled back the flap to the tent, charging through. She’d opened her mouth to utter a word back to Jasper, but as soon as the tent flap closed behind them, there was nothing to be said.
They’d entered The Ocean’s War, a history that closed in with suffocating presence. Its stakes, swords, and tools hung like hieroglyphs along the walls, sending complex messages that gave the past they’d murdered and buried a voice again.
Ana felt it speak from the inside out, the dark calling to the dark, and impulsively, she pushed Jasper back toward the door. He grabbed her arm, pushing back as he sought to catch her eyes.
Everyone inside the tent wore wristbands, hats, and rings of the Strike’s broken arrow, sitting in row after row on folding chairs in the grass, all set up around the circular stage. Once a dangerous symbol, now it was nothing but a cheap fair keepsake.
