Page 217 of Like Grim Death: Part One
Atlas slowly turns to face me again, a darkness flickering across his features that freaks me out, but he says nothing.
I pick my head up, every instinct in my body telling me to bolt. “Did they do something to her?” The words seem to scrape out of my mouth, like I'm not sure I want an answer. Like I know I should shut up, but I won’t. I don’t. “Did the 6 find her…lacking?”
Atlas's face is expressionless, but no less eerie. My pulse gallops in my chest. “Why would you ask me that?” His tone is neutral, but it's pretty clear something happened to her. I think of her that night at Liber. Another time, at a bar, where we all were together, Sid pushing her drinks to me.
Shortly after, Jeremiah was there.
I wonder what Atlas thinks of Jeremiah. The subject seems safer than Natalie, so I just blurt it out, the words vomiting out of my mouth before I can really think it through, my mind tripping over the drugs in my system, maybe the ones I’ve been taking all this time. “Where’s Jeremiah Rain?”
Atlas arches a brow, but I can tell he's grateful for the change of subject too. “Excuse me?” he asks anyway.
I shake my head, annoyed with myself. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t even know why I followed him anymore. It seemed like a good idea, in the heat of the moment. Things always do then… until I realize how stupid I am. And I got that realization too late last night, when Maverick walked away from me.
“Never mind,” I mutter, resting my cheek against my knees, exposed through the rips in my jeans. Mav went with me to get this. I don't even like being in the mall by myself. He said we could order them online. Have a shopper take my measurements, and go that way. But… He wanted to take me out, he claimed. And he told me these make my ass look good. They do, I guess. I should be with him right now. I should’ve fought for him in that pool and I should’ve run after him when he left me.
“You want to know where Jeremiah Rain is?” Atlas repeats, amusement in his voice. It’s weird, because no one, including me, can say his first name without his last.
“No,” I say.
Atlas laughs. “Do you have a crush on him too, Ella?”
I open my mouth and my eyes, ready to snap out a retort. I don’t have a crush on him. So what he kissed me? He was using me to get to Sid, which is what everyone seems to do, really. He's no better or no worse. I’m not even sure I dislike him. Maybe if Sid chose him, she’d be out of my fucking hair. But I know better. I know Lucifer would kill for her, even if he broke her while he did it.
But just as the words come to my throat, something likefuck offon the tip of my tongue, a scream pierces the air.
I sit up straighter, stretching out my legs, ready to get to my feet as my heart slams between my ribcage. Atlas is already on his feet, his hand going to his back. I see it a second later, the black gun in his hand, pulled from the back of his pants. Something about gun safety and stupidity runs through my mind, but I ignore it.
“What was that?” I whisper instead.
Atlas takes a few steps, glancing toward the hallway that leads to the door as he offers me his hand. “Get up,” he says, a cold command laced through his voice.
I take his outstretched hand and when he's yanked me to my feet, he spins me around, wrapping an arm around my chest, my back to his front, the gun aimed toward the ceiling. I can feel his heart racing against the thin material of my shirt, his fingers curled just to the side of my breast. But he's perfectly still, every muscle coiled tight in his body.
Several long seconds pass. There's nothing again but the sound of my pulse in my ears.
“Whatwasthat?” I ask again.
Atlas still says nothing, and he doesn’t move.
I take a breath, catching his clean scent and the musk of his sweat.
“We’re in Liber, right?”
“Yes,” he says, his breath fanning across my neck, my hair over one shoulder.
“But no one knows where we are?” All the things I wanted to ask about come out at the worst moment.
“No one.” His lips brush my skin.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I grip his forearm, banded across my chest, with both hands. “Then who—”
It shatters the silence again, louder this time. A single, high-pitched scream. I jump, holding tighter to Atlas as I back into his lean form.
My eyes find only darkness and a door, but the scream isn’t inside.
Not yet…
“What is it?”
