She kissed her mom on the cheek, slipped on her jacket and ankle boots, and was outside on the patio when Aidan turned up, dark and sinister in his leather jacket and cut. He was carrying the spare helmet and leaned in to kiss her, lingeringly, as he passed it into her hands.
“You okay?” he asked as he pulled back.
“Uh-huh. You?”
“Maybe.”
He rode like a demon, the bike seeming to outrun the headlamp, the black road sliding away beneath them. House lights and business signs flashed past in bright pulses, too quick for her to make any sense of the town she’d grown up in. She knew these roads backwards and forwards, but it was different on the back of the bike. The only real thing was Aidan’s muscled torso between her arms, the warmth of his body she felt through all his leather. It was bitterly cold, and the night air found pathways up her sleeves, down into her collar. Her teeth were chattering by the time they pulled over.
“Where are we?” Sam asked when the engine cut off.
There was no light save the moon’s cool glow across the frosted grass. The shadowed bulk of a half-wall gave her pause; the pale light struck a patch of shine on what must be a window; where a roof should have been, jagged beams thrust toward the sky.
“It was a shooting range,” Aidan explained. “Dad brought me here before I was even old enough, let me fire his old .22 for the first time. It burned down about a year ago.” He twisted around so she could see the fast glimmer of his eyes. “Creepy, isn’t it?”
She shivered. “A little. But I’m not a wimp, Teague.” She elbowed him lightly in the back and he chuckled.
“Nah, I knew you weren’t.” He swung off and extended a hand toward her. “Come take a walk with me, baby.”
He pulled her up off the bike and tucked her against his side, a solid, comforting arm around her waist. Sam put her arm around his waist, and they walked in the shuffling, awkward gait of two people who didn’t want to be even an inch apart.
The ground underfoot crunched – gravel. In the distance, a small pack of coyotes started up a chorus of yips and yodels.
“Did you come here a lot to shoot?” Sam asked as they stepped over a fragment of charred plywood.
“Dad was like a drill sergeant. He wouldn’t let me have my own piece until I wasproficient.”
“Not to agree with him, but that’s probably not a bad idea when it comes to firearms.”
He snorted.
“We’re not here to shoot, are we?” she asked, only half-teasing, squeezing him. “I’m not averse to learning, but I think I might need a little bit of light.”
She’d meant it as a joke, but Aidan squeezed her back, hand pressed tight in the innermost curve of her waist. “I do wanna teach you, but not tonight.”
Okay, she was starting to worry. “What is it?” she asked softly, and the coyotes answered her, screaming at the moon over whatever poor animal they’d killed.
He stopped walking and turned her in his arms so they faced one another. She could just make out his face, the brightness of his eyes, the high shine on his cheekbones and shadow of his stubble.
“I need to tell you something,” he said, voice heavy and official. “Ask you something, really. And I don’t want you to answer until you’ve thought about it. I mean,thought about it.”
“Sounds serious.”
“Yeah.” His fingertips pressed hard into the small of her back. “And, for what it’s worth, I hope your answer is gonna be ‘no.’”
“Just tell me.”
“We found Kev.”
A jolt moved through her, a sharp tightening of muscles and skin. “Where?”
“In a house. A big house, that belongs to areallybad guy.”
If that didn’t sound patronizing, she didn’t know what did, but she let it slide. “And?”
“Fox scouted it out today. Tight as a drum. But we got some intel that we think could get us in. The problem is…” He winced. “Shit, I hate this.” And then proceeded to tell her about Fox’s proposed plan of infiltration.
“They know Mags, and Ava, and all the old ladies. And we can’t trust a stranger.” His hands were now fists against her back, shaking with nerves and dread.
