Page 34 of Savage Princess

I can tell she’s hurt by the fact that I got up so quickly when I came out of the shower. She pushes past me to go take her own, giving me a cursorygood morning, and she doesn’t bother asking me if I’m going to go get breakfast. She knows I am—we’ve done this same routine every morning, sometimes with both of us in the shower, and sometimes separately, but she usually asks.

It’s better if she’s upset,I tell myself as I get dressed.Upset with you means she’ll put some distance between you. That’s better in the long run.

The fact that the dull ache is still lingering in my chest is just another reason why it’s for the best.

When I come back, she’s already sitting at the small table—all these motels seem to be furnished very similarly—reading her book. She glances up as I walk in, her face tense.

“We’re picking up the passports today?”

I nod, handing her a container of breakfast. “We’ll go in a few hours. I don’t want to head over too early and have to go back.”

She nods, poking at her food with seemingly not much appetite. “And then?”

“And then, with any luck, he’ll have a pilot and a plane out of here lined up for us. Maybe tonight, maybe a couple of days from now—but we should be headed to Boston very soon. You’ll be with your sister before you know it.” I say the last encouragingly, wanting to cheer her up, but Elena just glances at me.

“This hasn’t been that bad,” she says softly. “No one’s even come after us since a few nights ago. Maybe they’ve decided it’s a lost cause.”

I look at her curiously. “All the same, we have to get you to Boston. And I need to get back to New York.”

Her face falls the tiniest bit, although I can tell she’s trying to hide it. “Yeah, I know.”

The few hours before we go to pick up the passports are tense. Elena sits and reads her books quietly while I pack up our things in one of the shopping bags, and the silence is heavy. She follows me out as we leave, staying behind me without my having to tell her—like everything else, it’s become a part of our routine.

I notice she doesn’t limp as much as we head towards the main road to get a cab. Her ankle healed well, especially since she has mainly stayed off of it for the last few days. “I’m glad to see it doesn’t hurt you to walk as much now,” I tell her as I raise my hand to flag down a cab, and Elena nods, her gaze still slightly averted.

“It feels a lot better,” she says neutrally, sliding into the cab the moment I open the door and leaving a gap between us that feels purposeful.

It’s for the best,I remind myself, but that dull ache remains in my chest. I care about her more than I should, and the sooner I can put real physical distance between us, the better. If Elena is already doing that, it will only make it easier.

“Stay close to me,” I warn her as we approach the house to pick up the identification. I don’t really need to tell her that now, but I have a nagging feeling that it bears repeating. I haven’t stayed alive as long as I have in this line of work by ignoring my intuition.

Elena nods silently, and I glance up and down the street before approaching the house. We’re yards away still when I realize that something is wrong.

I shake my head at her, holding up a hand as I back up. I scan the road again, waiting to see any sign of movement, but there’s nothing. I can see that the door to the house is ajar, but whoever was here appears to be gone—unless they’re still inside.

Motioning towards the door, I glance at Elena. It takes her a minute to see what I do, but her eyes widen once she does, her face turning slightly ashen as I see fear flicker across her features.

“We need to go in,” I murmur, keeping my voice very low. “I can’t leave you out here, as much as I don’t want to take you in with me. But whoever broke in may still be in there. I need you to stay very close to me. If there’s an attack, drop down, hide, run, whatever you can do to get out of danger. I’ll catch up to you.”

“Can’t we just leave?” Elena asks, her voice trembling slightly, and I shake my head.

“The passports and ID that we paid him for might still be in there, even if he’s not. I can’t leave them if there’s a chance that we can get them. We don’t have enough money to start over.”

Elena swallows hard, but she nods. “Okay,” she whispers. “I’ll follow you.”

Not for the first time, I’m impressed by her nerve. I know she’s afraid, but she squares her shoulders, that familiar way of her tipping her chin up, letting me know that she’s ready whenever I am.

There are very few people in the world born into circumstances like hers who would adapt so quickly.

I move towards the house slowly, gun out and held down alongside my thigh as Elena stays close behind me. When we reach the cracked-open door, I motion for her to stop, nudging it aside as I lean towards the gap.

There’s no sound from inside the house. It’s utterly dark and silent, and I have a feeling that whoever was here is long gone. Still, I motion for her to follow me closely as I slip inside, careful not to move the door too much and make unnecessary noise. It’s all second nature to me, years of training making all of this as innate as breathing, but for Elena, it’s not. I hear the slight creak of hinges as she slips in behind me and bumps the door, and I stiffen, waiting for some sound or movement from the shadows that tells me that someone is waiting for us. But there’s nothing.

Slowly, we move through the house down to the office at the back. By the time we reach it, I’m all but certain that we’re alone here. The office door is ajar as well, and I see scattered papers peeking out from the crack, but I don’t hear any sounds.

Motioning for Elena to stay close to the wall, I push the door open, aiming into the room as I wait for someone to come out from behind the desk or another part of the room. There’s no motion at all, only a shaft of light coming in from a window on the left side and the light still on at the desk, illuminating the body slumped over it. Blood covers the desk and the floor surrounding it, and there’s no question that the man we’d met with a few days ago is dead.

“Oh god.” Elena’s whisper behind me is shocked, and I turn quickly towards her, one arm around her waist as I steady her. He’s not the first dead body she’s seen, but there’s a violence to this one that’s different than the others she’s witnessed. “Who did this?”

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