Page 4 of Irrevocably

I try to get some moisture into my dry mouth. “I-I’m sorry,” I force out. “I didn’t see you.”

“Perhaps you need your glasses checked,” he says.

Automatically, I push my glasses up my nose, my cheeks burning for the second time that day, and before I can stop myself, I say tartly, “Or perhaps you shouldn’t be in my way.”

His gaze flickers and abruptly narrows, and I find myself being studied as if he’s taking note and cataloguing every part of me with that focused stare.

I’ve never been looked at so intently or with so much purpose, and it’s unnerving. It makes me feel exposed, as if he’s seeing into my head and going through all my thoughts, dispassionate as he reads every one, and suddenly I’m desperate to get away.

I open my mouth to tell him to move, but before I can speak, he releases the end of the cart, reaches into the pocket of his black jeans and pulls out a phone. My phone.

Shock moves in a cold wave through me, making me forget my discomfort. I must have been more distracted than I thought if I didn’t even realise it was missing.

“Where the hell did you get that?” I demand.

“You dropped it when you ran into me. I’ve been trying to find you to give it back.” He holds it out to me, not moving, and I have the weird thought that he’s holding it like bait, using it to lure me into a trap. Which is stupid. My anxiety must be working overtime today.

Forcing the shock and the weird sense of vulnerability away, I grab my phone from him like I grabbed my tampon earlier, and this time I make sure that our fingers don’t touch.

“Thank you,” I say, pocketing it. “How did you know where to find me?”

“I asked around.”

I should feel better knowing that the reason he’s here is to return my phone, but I don’t feel better, not with the way he’s looking at me.

“Could you move, please?” I say, suddenly desperate to get away from him. “I’ve got books to shelve.”

He stares at me a second longer, then steps to one side, making an “after you” gesture. But he doesn’t walk away, which means I’ll have to squeeze me and my cart past him, and that’s not ideal since he’s very close and I really don’t like that.

Still, I don’t have a choice, so I determinedly push the cart on. As I go past him, I catch his scent, dark and spicy and masculine, and an unexpected shiver goes through me. I don’t know what that means, so I ignore it, but the back of my neck is prickling, and even though I should stop and shelve these damn books, I don’t want to.

“You missed it,” he says from behind me. “The three hundreds are here.”

I stop and shut my eyes, cursing myself silently. I have no idea why he’s still standing there watching me, or why he’s even talking to me, but I don’t like it. Every threat sense I have is shrilling a warning, telling me to keep going, to put some distance between him and me, but I have a job to do. And I’m not going to let some guy stop me from doing it, no matter how scary he is.

“Oh, right,” I say, pretending I’d merely forgotten all about the three hundreds. “So, they are.”

I straighten, steel myself, and turn to face him, but he’s gone.

As if he was never there.

Chapter Two

LUCIEN

I have my car parked a few yards down from a two-storey white house, with a porch and a gabled roof. The fence is literal white pickets and the lawn is overgrown. A family home, though there are only two people in this family. A father and daughter.

The night has long since crept in, and the leafy street is silent, the children who were playing in it a few hours ago, now safe in their beds.

Blackwater is quiet for a campus town. It’s got that sleepy, quaint quality that some towns have, as if nothing bad ever happens here. As if there are no monsters, human or otherwise, roaming its streets.

But I know something the parents of those sleeping children don’t know. Blackwater is also a harbour town, and Blackwater port is the nexus of a very lucrative arms business, currently under the control of the local biker gang, the Hellhounds.

That business is why me and my family, the Frosts, are here, and it’s why I’m currently parked outside the house of Blackwater’s Chief of Police, Elias Starling.

The Hellhounds operate with no interference from the law, and we suspect that’s because the Hellhounds’ club president and the police chief have an understanding, and we need to know what that understanding is, because we’ll need it to continue when we take over.

We also need to know more about the club before we can make our move. So my sister, Thea, has someone trying to get an in with them so we can start gathering intel.