Page 165 of Harnessed in Gold

Rime smirks at me over his shoulder. “‘Could younot?’”

I stick my tongue out at him.

Wham!

Metal crunches and the car rocks.

A dark figure blocks the moonlight shining through the windshield. I recognize that agile form. Juniper.

Rime fires, shattering the glass, but she’s already jumped onto the car roof, bending it with every stomp. He aims up and fires again. I throw my arms over my head as the shots reverberate and slam into my ears. There are shouts. Laughter. Leo! Where’s Leo?Hot, clammy, and panicked, I whip this way and that. Is it safer out or in?

The door flies open so violently it shakes the whole car. Before I can scream, bruising hands grab me and rip me from the backseat, scraping my skin on the seatbelt as it slides over my head. I’m dragged across the crumbling asphalt and yanked to my feet, my back against a hard chest and a cold blade aimed at my throat.

Behind me, Burdock threatens, “You shoot, I kill her.”

Rime, who’s out of the car now, lowers the gun—the gun that was aimed at Juniper on the car roof. She dismounts in one graceful leap and lands as lightly as a dancer.

“We don’t have it,” Rime says. “So let her go.”

I jerk back against Burdock’s shoulder as the tip of his dagger presses under my chin. He smells like mildew. “Search him,” he barks at Juniper.

She snatches the gun from Rime’s hand and points it at his head, gritting her teeth. “Let’s make this even. A life for a life.”

When I gasp, Burdock snorts.

“I know it was you.” She circles Rime as she studies him, feet crossing and stepping, crossing and stepping, while her eyes—and the gun—remain level with his head. “You’re the one who killed him.”

Rime stands straight and still, expression impassive.

Arrogance and impatience bleed into my back. Burdock’s arrogance and impatience. “We don’t have time for this,” he warns Juniper. “Just search him.”

She turns to him, a plea in her eyes. Burdock’s shaking head knocks into mine, and her plea morphs into a glare, a standoff that lasts for what feels like a thousand years. Finally, with a deep heave of her chest, she slips the gun behind her back and tucks it into the waistband of her pants.

Hands now free, she rips off Rime’s jacket and digs through the pockets. Finding nothing, she tosses it aside and pats him down, finishing with an inspectionof his fingers.

They still think it’s a ring.

Burdock pins me with one arm and searches me with the other. “Where is it?” he growls, letting my phone, the only item he found, fall to the ground.

Voice deceptively even, Rime answers, “I told you, we don’t have it.”

Juniper laughs, throwing open a car door. “We’ll see about that.”

“Come on out, Hawthorn,” Burdock calls. “We know you’re here!”

With my head locked in place, my eyes cut left, straining to get a view of the church steps.Stay away, Leo. Don’t come for me.

While Juniper ransacks the car interior like a cop hunting for drugs, Rime remains frozen, afraid to move and send Burdock’s dagger across my throat.

Rime asks, “How did you find us?”

Burdock’s voice drips with disdain, “You need to rethink your guards, Goshawk. Sparrows don’t attack squirrels.”

My stomach drops out. That squirrel at the top of Avery’s steps, was it?—

“Fuck,” Rime mouths.

“Cozy little place you’ve been hiding out in. But don’t worry, your friends are safe as long as you cooperate.”