Page 128 of Brutal
Her gaze snaps back to mine. “No?”
“No.”
“If they know where I am?—”
“They don’t know enough.”
“That isn’t comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
Her pulse beats harder beneath my fingers.
“This place is mine,” I say. “Every entrance. Every camera. Every room. Every way out.”
“And if they come here?”
“Then they come somewhere I understand.”
Her lips part, but no sound emerges.
The memory settles deeper.
The dock access.
The loose chain.
The wrong man.
The moment that wasn’t mine until it was already over.
No.
Not this time.
This time I see the door.
This time I feel the trap.
This time, I won’t make the same mistake.
“Will it work?” she asks. “For them, I mean.”
I lean in just enough that she feels it.
“No.”
34
DELANEY
He doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
The space between us is barely there now. I feel the heat of him, the shift in his breathing, the way something in him is holding on only by a thread.
My pulse is still racing under his fingers.
