Page 55 of Assassin's Mark
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Are you hurt?”
I rubbed my hands up and down my goosebumped arms. “I don’t—no, I don’t think so.”
We were driving. Night had fallen, blanketing us in a private cocoon, but I couldn’t get past the weirdness of the moment. Calmly talking after staring down the barrel of a gun. Riding in a car in the front seat next to Levi with no bag over my head, like we were a normalcouple. Not feeling scared out of my mind being alone with him despite knowing he’d killed six men back there.
Definitely weird. Maybe I’d finally cracked up.
Or maybe seeing Levi kill the man who’d been sent to execute me had cemented everything in my mind. Levi, good. Derrick, bad. Because I had no doubt my father was behind the attack.
“Why did…” I shook my head. Why did I keep asking thesame question over and over? The answer didn’t change, no matter how much I wanted it to.
I might not have finished the sentence, but Levi knew me too well not to follow my train of thought, apparently. He shot me a glance as he slowed, preparing for a turn. I couldn’t read it in what little illumination the dash provided. “For the same reason as everything else, I imagine. Derrick only seemsto have one motive: he’s cleaning up his mess.”
“And I’m part of the mess.”
“Not necessarily. I believe this might have been more about framing me for your murder.”
“But”—I swallowed hard—“that means having his own daughter murdered.” Sure, he’d released those pictures of me, and he didn’t seem to be searching too hard for me despite knowing I’d been kidnapped, but ordering someone to murderme?
Levi didn’t agree or disagree, and I let the subject drop. If we were right and Derrick’s plan had been to have me killed, there was really no understanding that, was there? A father murdering his daughter to protect himself? He’d never been a good dad, but this was beyond my comprehension.
I pushed the thought away and turned in my seat until Levi took up my entire view—tall, tough, sexyeven with the dirt on his skin and the grim set to his granite jaw and hooded eyes. His hands on the steering wheel were sure, confident. I focused on the safety those hands provided as we navigated a series of back alleys and cutoffs in a part of town I wasn’t familiar with. Heck, at this point we could be out of town altogether and I’m not sure I’d know it. Cabs and limos didn’t usually venturethis far off the beaten path, and I’d never been allowed to drive. Just another way Derrick had controlled me.
The silence underlying the droning hum of tires on pavement settled my stomach and my thoughts. A wave of fatigue had my eyelids drooping and my head lolling against the headrest by the time Levi pulled behind another nondescript dark building and parked. “Where are we?”
“Someplaceoff the grid. Let’s go.”
My brain translated “off the grid” to “minimalist.” A lame attempt at a grin tugged at my lips as I opened my door and stepped into the cluttered alley. A couple of dumpsters, boxes, steel barrels looking like they’d spent a hundred years in the rain…the place wasn’t inviting, but that was most likely the point. Levi led me around a pile of garbage to a dark passageway.A few feet in, I heard him jostling his keys. How he could see to find the door, much less the keyhole, I had no idea, but after a moment’s pause, the sliding of metal on metal, and a faintcrack, a break in the darkness signaled the opening of a door.
The place was much smaller than the warehouse, and excruciatingly bare. This wasn’t minimalist; this was last resort. There was no living room,only a basic kitchen setup and a card table with a couple of folding chairs. I really hoped the hall I saw to one side led to a bathroom, because I was going to need it soon.
Levi shut the outside door but didn’t move farther into the room. “There’s a bedroom in the back,” he said quietly. “A few T-shirts and sweats back there. Toiletries in the bathroom.” He eyed my clothes. “Why don’t you washthose out as best you can in the sink, change. Get comfortable. I’ll be back.”
My heart gave a sick thump when he turned as if to leave. “Where are you going?”
Levi stopped. Faced me. A hand came up to stroke my tearstained, scratched cheek. Tension drained out of me, leaving behind a sudden weariness that wobbled my knees. One touch—that’s all it took for my fear to settle. I tried to remindmyself that relying on this man was dangerous, to my heart if not my body, but neither was listening. I was simply too tired.
“I’m going to make sure Remi and Eli are secure. It won’t take long. I’ll get food on the way back.”
He wasn’t abandoning me. And he was right; he had to check on his brothers, wherever they were. They might be fully capable, but he was the big brother, used to keepingeveryone safe, used to protecting everyone around him. Even me. He’d protected me tonight in a way I could never have imagined, never have asked for, and still, he hadn’t hesitated.
My heart turned over. I stepped closer. Levi’s gaze dropped to the key in his hand, the doorknob, anywhere but me.
I didn’t care. For once I was going to follow my instincts with him instead of playing it safe. SoI eased right up to him, and this time it was my hands cupping his dust-smeared cheeks. I curved my fingers around his jaw to tug his face up. His eyes shot to mine.
“Thank you.”
He started to speak—to say what, I don’t know; Levi didn’t seem like ayou’re welcomekind of guy. But before the words escaped, he abandoned them for a hard, quick kiss.
And was out the door before my eyelids couldflutter shut.
Okay, then…
There wasn’t much to explore. In the small bedroom, almost completely taken up with a full-size bed and small chest of drawers, I grabbed the smallest pair of sweatpants I could find and an old Atlanta Braves T-shirt that would swallow me whole, and scooted into the bathroom. The sight that met me in the mirror sent a jolt through me. Dust covered my hair, smudged myface, my clothes. Across the front of my shirt, a spray of red droplets caught my attention. Blood. A sudden flash of Axe holding the gun on me, Levi’s shot, a spray of red from the man’s neck, hit me hard, making my stomach turn over. I snatched the shirt over my head and threw it into the tiny trash can before the turning over became something else altogether.
The sink was too tiny to washmy jeans, so I put them in a corner for later and focused on my underwear. When they’d been washed and wrung out, hanging on the towel rack, I climbed into the tub, turned the water as hot as I could stand it, and flipped the spray on. Thank God for good water pressure.
