Page 77 of Ravens
“Come on.” I help him up. “Let’s get you to bed.”
August and Carter take him off me in the hallway and help him up the stairs as I return to the kitchen and start cleaning everything up. I’m on my hands and knees, sopping the blood up off the floor when William comes in.
“So many interesting revelations happened today, Tripoli.” I ignore him and scrub at the floor. “Untouchable, eh?”
“I’m worth more alive than dead.”
“Is that right?” He rips me up from the floor and pins me against the counter. “Tell me more about that.” His hair falls forward as his dark eyes look down on me.
“I know a lot of things. Like the duke.”
“That seems like agreatreason to put a bullet in you, not keep you alive.”
August walks back in and starts cleaning up the counter, completely ignoring the pair of us. I can’t shift back anymore, and when I lean my torso away, the cupboard bumps the back of my head.
“You are keeping secrets,” William says softly.
“You aren’t?” I roll my eyes. “We’re all hiding something, William, and I would argue that you’re hiding more than me.” The set of his jaw and the intensity of his glare begin to make me nervous. “What was the plan tonight? If York weren’t hurt, I mean. Where were you going after?”
“Airport.”
I nod. “So, you use me, all of you use me for what you can and then bail, leaving me in the lurch . . . A fugitive.”
“First of all,” he whispers, “don’t pretend like you don’t like beingusedon occasion.” His breathing thins out. “And second, I’m not that easily distracted.” My skin warms at the insinuation, and I drop my eyes, but he grabs my chin and tilts it up. “What was it you said to me again, Tripoli? Eyes on me? Yeah.” He nods. “Look at me when I’m speaking to you.”
I swallow hard as he holds my gaze. I did say that to him over the radio . . . although I was asking him to have my back, and this situation is not that. The heat that floods low in my belly makes me question my sanity, but it’s there, nonetheless. York awoke a little demon inside me, and I don’t think it discriminates. William’s right. It wants to get used.
“What did she say that was interesting today, August?” he asks the other man without taking his eyes off me.
August pauses in my periphery. “She threatened him by reciting his family’s address . . . then said she was untouchable . . . She said she knows, and her head isn’t the only placeitlives.”
“Really?” William whispers.
I really did get carried away in the moment. I should have stomped on the radio and knocked August out before I said a fucking thing . . . I really wasn’t thinking things through.
“She saved my ass,” August adds quietly and stops wiping the counter. “You knew his ex-wife’s address . . .”
My eyes shift from William to August as my back prickles with sweat.
“You knew about the duke . . . but it wasn’twhatyou knew about him that bothered me . . . You remembered the date and time of the call, off the top of your head . . .” He trails off.
Shit. If anyone was going to put something together, it was going to be August, and I suddenly wish I had a gun on hand.
“You have an eidetic memory.” He stares at me. “Don’t you?”
Blinking, my gaze meets William’s again, and he moves closer, leaving just inches between us.
“So . . . you remember everything?” William presses.
“Generally, yes,” I whisper.
“Everything you see, hear, read?”
“Yes.”
“With perfect recall?”
“Ninety-eight percent accuracy.”
