Page 41 of You Were Warned: Part One

Vesper kicks him in the shin, and he laughs. She does it again, and I find myself laughing this time. This whole thing is so fucking ridiculous. If I survive this and tell people, I don’t think they’d believe me.

The Jester looks at me, and his smile stays in place. Mine disappears, and he lifts his coffee toward me again.

“Careful, Lucky, you almost look comfortable.”

He is right. My hand slides into my jacket pocket and my fingers press against the inside seam.

It’s gone.

I stop breathing. No. It can’t be.

I move my hand slightly and find the edge, but still nothing. The world around me stops moving. Rue says something to Vesper, the Jester laughs, and she tells him to fuck off.

My stomach drops.

The stitching is broken, and the drive is gone.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I keep my fingers inside my pocket, and don’t react. Yet my heart slams so hard in my chest I can feel it in my throat.

The one thing keeping me safe is gone, and I have no idea where it is.

Vesper

I’m going to fucking kill him! Not because he has spent the last two days telling anyone who will listen that I marked him, as that would require him to explain what happened, and surprisingly he hasn’t. No, the stupid bastard has found a much more irritating way to show it off to the entire island: he has stopped wearing a shirt.

The first morning I could excuse it. His chest was freshly stitched, and Banks had already threatened to knock him unconscious if he didn’t stop touching the wound long enough for him to clean it properly. Apparently dragging a knife through your own chest comes with the risk of infection. Who would have fucking thought?

By yesterday, I suspected it was a deliberate choice, and today confirms it. Since there is absolutely no reason for him to be standing in the middle of the bar at nine in the morning, wearing black pants, boots, and his face paint—without a shirt. He looks ridiculous, more so than normal, and way too pleased with himself.

His back is to me while he talks to Brawley. Fuck my life.

“Are you going in?”

I glance over my shoulder at Jensen. He’s standing directly behind me, close enough that I nearly elbow him in the stomach when I turn.

“You need to stop doing that!”

“Doing what?” He stands there looking confused, as if he has zero idea what I’m talking about, his hands shoved deep into his pockets.

“Standing behind me.”

“You stopped in the doorway.”

Someone laughs inside the bar, followed by the sound of a stool scraping across the floor. I can smell whatever Rue is cooking, but I don’t move. “So you decided that the best option was to stand up my ass?”

His eyebrows lift, and he takes a step back, putting some space between us. “I wasn’t that close.”

“You were close enough that if I farted, you’d know what I had for breakfast.”

Jensen stares at me for a few seconds, his face completely blank. Somewhere from behind him, Pretty Boy lets out a squawk, and I really don’t have patience for a third inconvenience today.

I turn back toward the bar and see the Jester still talking to Brawley.

“Oh,” Jensen says.

“Oh, what?”