Page 19 of The Hunted
Silva pulled at the neckline of her shirt, feeling all too hot at the reminder of his words. On anyone else she would have cringed and found him corny. She probably should have found him overbearing, but the way he had uttered the words, like he was just as shocked to feel something for her, made him breathtakingly honest.
It told her whatever she was feeling between them wasn’t one-sided and all in her head.
And she liked that a little too much.
The door to the café opened up again and she hated how she seemed to sit up straighter, feeling the excitement of possibility that the next customer might be him. When it wasn’t, she hated even more how disappointed she felt.
It was a long shot coming here today. She would have had a better chance just texting him on her own. She had typed out a message when he initially texted her but got distracted by the news of two dead bodies being found on Cypress, near the guardrail on Route 160. She’d been so distracted, she never hit send.
A cold chill swept down her back. She hadn’t been in Nova Springs for long, but she thought it was a relatively safe area. People said good morning and waved at strangers constantly. This had been the perfect spot for her to move to and try and recalibrate her nervous system after….
She shook her head. It didn’t matter why she came here, she just knew it was supposed to be safe.
So safe a woman was found on a side of a highway missing body parts.
Silva’s gaze glanced over to the TV behind the cashier. They were playing the same news segment nonstop. The sound was off, but the subtitles read what Silva knew by heart now:
A woman in her late twenties had been found, brutally stabbed and missing her right leg, next to the guardrail, and another body, a man—a Marcus something—had been found farther into the foliage. The news had stated it had all the markings of a serial killer. She shifted in her seat, feeling uneasy. It didn’t take much for women to go missing or get hurt. Strangers and familiar faces always set their sights on easy targets—usually women who didn’t pay attention.
She wouldn’t be a victim.
Not again.
She needed to up her sparring lessons and get a new mace key chain. The one she had was empty. She drove by the route a lot and was super predictable in her routine. Got up at the same time every day, went for a morning walk before she hit her yoga class. Tuesdays and Thursdays were her in-office days and Mondays and Wednesdays she came to the café for her coffee and to write.
It was time to change things up.
She looked at her phone as if it solved her need for a routine shake up.
It did, by the name of Santino Alvarez.
“Just text him already. The man was probably too busy with the dead body business to notice you didn’t respond right away,” she mumbled under her breath and picked up her phone.
She made quick work of pulling up his text and deleting her original message. She smiled at what he wrote, still annoyed he caught her pickpocketing him.
Silva: I didn’t pickpocket you. I was trying to find out the information you refused to share.
Silva: And no we don’t need a sparring session. We need to schedule when I’m going to kick your ass and get anything I want from you.
“There. Text sent.” She put her phone face down so she wasn’t tempted to watch for the little bubbles to appear and then disappear. If he responded great, if he didn’t, she could obsess about it later in the quiet of her apartment. For now, she would focus on her next piece of advice forRitual Magazineso she could get paid.
She logged back into her laptop, and the screen flashed to a blank Word document. She moved the document down to reread the question that had been sent to the magazine’s inbox. They got nearly three dozen a day, but one of the admins for the magazine always flagged the ones they deemed important, thankfully not leaving the decision up to Silva. If it were up to her, she’d either answer all of them or none of them. Her mind would see the constantly full inbox, and it would make her flee or sit in front of the laptop and never get up till the little red number went down to zero.
“All right, what do we have, yes, here it is. I’m a twenty-three-year-old woman, yadda yadda yadda.” Silva continued to read and started jotting down points she wanted to focus on in her response. She felt rather than saw someone standing too close to her table. Her body tensed, looking around for something to use as a weapon. Even though she was in a crowded coffee shop, she knew that didn’t deter people from being aggressive.
In her experience, nothing ever did.
She took a steadying breath and a hint of pine and something citrusy filled her nostrils. She abruptly looked up to see Santino Alvarez looming over her table. He looked exhausted, there were dark circles under his eyes, but his full lips looked like they were fighting a smile. His scruff was coming in too. He was either too tired or lazy to shave, and she couldn’t say she minded the facial hair.
She let her gaze take in the rest of him, feeling her blood warm at the way his clothes seemed to give him a boost in his quiet confidence and attractiveness. He wore a black short-sleeve shirt that stretched over his muscled frame, making her stomach tighten when she remembered how he felt pressed up against her. His tattoos were on full display this time. They were intricate swirls and a skull up and down both his arms and her mouth watered. She always did have a thing for tattoos and forearms.
“Have you gotten your fill, princess.” His deep voice made her shiver, even as she felt her face flame at being caught checking him out.
“Something tells me with you, I’ll be left starved.” She looked up at him. The words fell from her mouth before she could stop herself. They weren’t true, looking at him and his big hands, she had a feeling he’d make her forget her own name—not that she would give him the satisfaction of admitting that.
He barked out a laugh that transformed the tiredness on his face. There was a gleam in his eyes like he enjoyed that she didn’t give in so easily.
“You are so stubborn, princess. You can never let me have the win, can you?” He murmured, looking her over.
