Page 101 of Bad Seed
Two more shots and the chaos I need erupts. People leap from their seats and rush for an exit. Any exit. And the casino is designed to be a maze. Some run forward while others go back, each one plowing into the men coming for us. I glance over and catch a hint of a red suit moving from the dark recesses of the bistro.
“Let’s go!” I take Sadie by the arm and join the crowd. We can’t go out the front door. We need a place to hide. Somewhere they won’t think to look. Somewhere that’s…
My eyes trail across one of the banners for Crudité where a smiling tomato welcomes all. It’s perfect.
“Fuck.”
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CHAPTER THIRTY
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SADIE
Instead of fleeing with the crowd, Aubry takes us up another staircase. The screams of panicking people fade as he kicks open a service door and leads me down a cement hallway. Every door is a uniform gray with no hint to what’s back there, but Aubry stops before one, grabs the handle, and shoves me inside.
I rebound into darkness. Cloying dust races to suffocate my lungs, and I lift my head higher. Light seeps in from the far end of the room, but it can barely cut through the boxes teetering around the place. They’re covered in tarps, some of them spotted with dark stains.
“Is that chocolate sauce?” I babble, resting my palm on the tarp. Dust leaps off before raining down on me and Aubry. He leans against the closed door, one ear to it while staring through space.
“I bet they get messy,” I say to myself.
“What does?” he asks, not listening.
“Chocolate. The fountains. Casinos have those, right? At their famous buffets.” My stomach growls. I haven’t had so much as a Kiss since they abducted me somewhere in the day to day and a half range.
The sound of my angry belly cranes Aubry’s head around. His look pierces through me, and I want to say a million things at once. How I’m starving. That my back hurts. Did mobsters really kidnap me? He came back! Why did he come back? Why did he leave me?
Feet echo down the hallway. I slam a hand under my jaw, keeping all my rambling thoughts pinched between my teeth.
Aubry presses a finger to his lips as he listens. Centuries crawl by. I can’t hear any footsteps outside, but I don’t dare breathe until he lowers his finger. With a quick glance to the tarp I’m leaning against, he says, “That’s not chocolate.”
“It’s not… Then what…?”
It’s a mob casino. Where they do mob things. Like wrap up bodies and carry them to the desert. It’s blood. That’s a bloody tarp. That they put on a box. Lots of boxes. That could be full of dangerous things like guns.
I shot a gun?!
“Hydrogen peroxide could get that out,” I babble. “Or bleach, maybe. I haven’t really worn canvas panties before. But if I did, I bet that would be very uncomfortable in the downstairs region. Lots of chaffing. Cause things aren’t—”
Aubry lowers the gun he’s holding. The one he took from me. That I fired. I stare at the metal that burned my stomach as we ran through the casino floor. The top part that sliced back and bit into my hand. The way it jumped so hard I thought it was going to break my wrist.
“Are you okay?” His voice that was commando meets ninja assassin while we were running shatters in half. Aubry strains a quivering hand out toward me. He’s my naked golden prince who came for me. Who saved me when bad people abducted me out of my townhouse tower.
I can’t believe he’s here.
I wanted. I hoped.
I didn’t think…
“You left,” I sputter, stepping back. The crates creak from my spine pushing into them. “You left me.”
“I know—”
“I told you to not do that. That I don’t like that. One day you’re there, the next you sold your house that you didn’t even own! I didn’t think I’d ever see you again!”
“Well, I’m here. Now.” He keeps reaching for me as if I’m going to leap into his quivering, muscled arms and press my bra-less chest to his bare one. Grab his naked ass in my palms and kiss him as his cock—
