“Please,” he said, his voice ringing with the kind of desperation she’d heard only from men who knew they were going to die. “I need your help.”
Simone looked up at him and instantly wished she hadn’t. There was pain in his eyes. Loss. Grief. She could have been looking into a mirror.
Her resolve started to crack, and damn if Marcus Brighton wasn’t smart enough to see it instantly.
“I have a place we can go and talk. Just give me a few minutes of your time. Hear me out. If you still think I’m out to get you, then I’ll find someone else. Somehow.”
The way he said it made her wonder if he even had a plan B. Maybe she was his only shot.
There’d been a time when that would have made her feel good, but now all she felt was sad. If she was his best shot, then he was in a world of hurt.
“Fine. I’ll listen. But I’m not making any promises.”
He nodded, breathing a sigh of relief. “My place is right around the corner. Big black RV. Follow me?”
She did, riding her bike along in his wake as he jogged away. The streets emptied out fast as they moved away from the university campus. He’d parked behind a neighboring office building that was closed for the night. Security lights gleamed off a massive RV that sat like a monolith in the vacant lot.
Simone paused as she rolled up beside the vehicle. Nothing was stopping her from riding away. She had one perfect knife in her possession. It wasn’t a bad haul for as little effort as she’d exerted. Sure, it was stealing, but any pangs of guilt she’d had about that act had been burned out of her years ago. Life changed. So had she.
“You coming in?” he asked from the doorway.
What harm could there be in listening to what he had to say? She really couldn’t think of anything he could have in there that would scare her, or any sticky situation she couldn’t handle.
Unless he had a Fractogast chained up inside, which seemed beyond unlikely.
“Why the hell not?” She sighed as she climbed in.
The place was littered with tools. Rolls of stiff leather stuck out from a wooden box. Bottles of dye were stacked neatly on a wall shelf, secured with bands of elastic. A workbench took up the space along one wall, and on it was a strip of leather held in place with wire loops. The length of the belt was nearly complete, making her fingertips tingle with the need to touch.
An array of metal stamps sat in a neat row. The ends of them had raised symbols, but those shapes bore little resemblance to the finished image worked into the leather. She could only guess what the belt would do, but whatever magic Brighton used to craft his wares was potent stuff.
He started moving toolboxes and bins of metal bits to make room on a built-in bench. “Sorry for the mess. I never have company.” He waved to the now free seat.
“I’ll stand, thanks.” By the door, with her fingers on the handle.
He tossed the purse he’d made to her specifications on the spot he’d cleared, and then stared at her. The light in here wasn’t as bright as it had been in the café, but even so, the intimacy of the small space heightened her awareness of him. One subtle sign that he was going to hurt her, and she’d tumble out through the door.
So far, all he’d done was stand there, watching her.
He had intense cobalt blue eyes, like sunlit glass. His hair was buzz cut, more a dark shadow than anything. Standing this close to him in such a small space, she realized just how big he really was. Not a hulking brute, but certainly more intimidating than he’d seemed in the brightly lit café with plenty of people around as witnesses.
Her hand slipped into her sleeve, letting the warm metal of the throwing knife ease her apprehension.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, once again surprising her that he’d read her so easily.
“Of course you’re not. At least not twice,” she warned.
“There’s no need for bravado. We’re on the same side.”
“You don’t know what side I’m on.”
“The Fractogasts killed your husband. They killed my parents. I’d say that puts us on the same side.”
How had he known about that? It wasn’t exactly something she talked about openly.
As she scoured her mind for some logical way that he would know her misfortune, she asked, “And which side is that?”
“The one that wants them all to burn in hell.”
He made a good point. “And they have this hammer of yours.”
“Yes.”
“And you think I can steal it back?”
“I know you can. I made the boots, remember? I know what they allow you to do, which means you’re perfect for the job. Unless, of course, you haven’t yet figured out all the boots’ tricks.”
That gave her pause. She knew she could walk around in them unseen. Also that they worked on the Fractogasts, unlike several other artifacts she’d come across. But what if that wasn’t the extent of their power? What if she wasn’t using them to their fullest potential? “Tell me what they can do and I’ll tell you if I already know or not.”
He smiled at her, and that smile carved out a cute little dimple in one cheek. “I don’t think so. Any lever I have to gain your cooperation, I’m going to use. You want to know what they do, you go after the hammer with me.”
“With you?” She laughed. “Even if I do agree to go on this job—which I haven’t—there’s no way I’m bringing along baggage they can see. I work alone.”
“Ah, so you haven’t figured out that power yet.”
She stared, unwilling to let him know that she had no clue what he was talking about.
“I’ll show you how it works if you tell me why you don’t want to help me.”
“Isn’t it obvious? I really don’t want to die. If the Fractogasts have your hammer, then it’s gone.”
“I made a promise to get it back—one I intend to see fulfilled.”
“What’s so important about it? What value can it possibly have that’s worth you trading your life for? Or mine?”
“They’re using it to build a portal. Once that’s done, they’ll bring more of their own kind here. Right now there are only a few of them, and you’ve seen the devastation they’ve caused. What do you think will happen if untold numbers of their kind can simply walk through a portal and end up in our own backyard?”
Since the night she’d escaped, Simone had made it a point to spend as little time thinking about those creatures as possible. It had been an act of willpower to keep her mind away from the evil puzzle they created. Like a tongue going to a newly chipped tooth, her thoughts always strayed back to them and why they might be here, over and over again until she was filled with helpless anger and debilitating fear.
“You can’t tell me that you don’t want to stop that from happening,” said Brighton.
“It falls firmly into the column of things labeled Not My Problem.”
“And that’s good enough for you?” he asked. “They kill someone you love and you don’t give a damn?”
A flurry of rage took over her limbs, giving them a burst of power. Before she even recognized what she was doing, she had Brighton pinned against a tiny strip of wall near the doorway to the bathroom. Her forearm was against his throat, and the single, perfect knife a fraction of an inch away from his eye.
“They took everything from me. Everything. When they were done with me, there wasn’t enough left of me to fight.”
He wasn’t scared of the knife. He didn’t try to push her away. He didn’t even blink. “You seem fine now.”
“Yeah? Well, looks can be deceiving.”