Page 8 of Killer Bones

We pull away.

“This is fun.” I turn my head as the man beside me speaks. It’s Noah, who isn’t Noah, and he’s just being insufferable.

“I’m going to die,” I whisper.

I feel him shrug. “It happens.”

I’m incandescently angry, suddenly, and I raise my heeled foot and stamp where I guesstimate his foot must be. He grunts, swears, and I smile. May as well go out in style.

“Bitch.”

“Definitely. You, though, are a liar.”

“Comes with my hobby.”

Leaving me wondering what this man’s hobby is.

The car accelerates.

“Killing people,” he adds in a wry tone, so that I’m unsure if he’s being serious.

I swallow then dare to say, “And being an asshole.”

That makes him chuckle. Somehow, who the hell knows why, his laugh lightens the mood.

Now I remember him. The large build. The laugh. The competent but silent and deadly theme he has going. He was the other man at the bar. A fearsome man, built like a mountain troll that crawled from under an old bridge. The scars may have improved his face.

“If you are Izabella Fenway, Montez really will kill you.”

“Yes.” He knows I am. I frown. Why say that, unless he is pretending that he didn’t know? I stare into the blackness of the bag. I try to breathe normally though it’s stifling. “Dying. Now that is a problem.”

“I always plan to leave this world in the best possible way. Dignified.”

He’s spewing philosophy. I shift my rear and discover how little his body moves when I wriggle against it.

“Huh. Dignified. I’m assuming that excludes being thrown to the sharks?”

“Yes. Lacking that, I will take down as many of my enemies as possible.”

Head down, I mutter the next part to myself, “So I’m back to the bomb in Montez’s underwear then.”

From the grunt and the shift of his body, as if he is looking down at me, he heard that.

“Your name isn’t Noah.” I’m sure of it. Noah fits him like a discarded glove he pulled from a corpse. When he stiffens, I’m even surer. It’s not him. “I’m calling you Dead Guy.”

“For fuck’s sake.”

Someone else laughs at that then adds, “She’s right. You don’t look like Noah, man. You don’t even have a boat full of animals.”

The three men laugh, but Dead Guy remains silent. Have I annoyed him? If I have. Good.

5

Izzy

By the time the bag is removed, I’m shoeless again. I tripped, stumbled, then chose to kick off my shoes on the journey from the car to the interior of some vast house. Better to do that than to break my leg. I did wonder if the size of the house is just me imagining things, but no.

I shake my head, letting my hair rearrange itself, strands slipping past my eyes. I am barefoot, lipstick smeared, and have tear-stained cheeks. My dress is mildly shredded from the knife, and I am sure my red silk coat ripped when it caught on something in the car.