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Someone had hired him, I realized. He wasn’t anyone from town.
“Tempted to finish you right here, right now,” the man in front of me growled, balling the collar of my shirt and yanking me forward, slamming my back against the brick wall. The other attacker stumbled to the front, bringing his knee up to kick my face. Finally, I had an in. I turned sideways so I could use my cuffed hands, seizing his knee and twisting it to one side. The cracking sound it made told me I had broken something. The scream that followed confirmed my suspicion.
I kicked the first attacker in the face, leaving a nice imprint of my boot on his balaclava. Blood began filling the dark material.
“Shit!” the second attacker crouched over, nearly toppling to the ground. “Fuck, he broke my…” The fabric of his pants clung to his thigh as blood spread around it too. “Fuck this shit, dude. I’m outta here.”
The two spun around, running toward the street. I chased them down, ready to kill someone. It wasn’t the pain that slowed me down. It was the blood trickling from my forehead. It scorched my eyes and made it impossible to see anything.
Actually, it wasn’t even that either. My abs burned. When I looked down, I saw a dark stain spreading over my white chef jacket. Blood.
Fuck. They’d knifed me. The adrenaline flowing through my veins dulled the pain. Slipping on my own blood and slowing down to a limp, I rounded the corner after them. My cuffed wrists didn’t help my speed. I inched closer, close enough to kick down one of the attackers. An Acura juddered to a halt in front of me. The back door flew open, and the two stuffed each other inside. The car bolted, speeding through a red light, zigzagging across the street. I squinted to catch the license plate, but my vision was punctuated with milky white dots, blurring by the second.
Which was just as well because my body decided now was a great time to pass the fuck out.
“Chef! You okay?” Taylor’s voice was urgent behind me. The sound of his sneakers hitting the pavement rang through the street. “Shit! Stay awake. I’m calling an ambulance.”
Before I went under, there was another voice.
Familiar. Soft. Ethereal.
“Row. Oh my God, Row!”
I collapsed into arms that smelled of green apples and white musk and everything that was beautiful and right in this world, and even though I couldn’t see her, I could feel her.
She sobbed into my neck, cradling my face.
“If you die, I’m going to kill you.”
ROW
oBITCHuary: Hi
oBITCHuary: This is just to let you know I told you so.
oBITCHuary: I told you that you needed to investigate, look into who was doing all those things to you.
oBITCHuary: Now I need to kill someone, and I really don’t want to do that. Blood makes me queasy. And I don’t even know who I should off.
oBITCHuary: But I’m going to find out. Before you even wake up. True crime isn’t my passion for nothing.
ROW
I woke up in a hospital bed, wearing one of those hideous gowns where your ass was bare. I was hooked up to two different IVs, looking like a human hookah.
So it had happened. Somebody had finally tried to off my ass. I officially owed Rhy fifty bucks and a beer.
I was lying on a mattress that had seen thousands more asses in its lifetime, itching to punch my way through every face in Staindrop, minus one.
Dot’s.
Speaking of my little angel, she was right beside me, stroking my hand in her lap, a worried look stamped on her celestial face. This resulted in me having a semi, which was very bad news to everyone around us, since that hospital robe covered nothing.
Mom’s, Dylan’s, and Taylor’s eyeballs were all glued to my face, trying to ignore my body’s priorities, which apparently put fucking Cal before survival.
“What’s with the circle jerk?” I barked out, glowering at the three of them. “It was just a little scratch; I don’t need an entire assembly.”
“We thought you might want company,” Cal started, standing up. “We’ll give you some privacy—”
