The Collectors' Society 01 (26 page)

A different door creaks and then slams. “ASSHOLES!”

Make that muted, cramped darkness cut by slivers of light from the broken doors. The armoire we’re in is minute, with barely enough room for the two of us outside of the (surprisingly clean smelling) garments squished onto a bar. I feel a hand on top of my head gently pushing downward, and then another hand on my back urging forward. We duck under the shirts and dresses and squeeze up against the back wall, our bodies smooshed together like sardines in a can. My hands have nowhere to go except settle on his hard chest; his fall on my hips.

“Hello?”

Neither of us move. Breathe. My heart decides to run another caucus race; his does, too, just not for the same reason.

I am a foolish, foolish girl. I should not even think of such things right now. Or, hell, care—we could be caught. We’ve just broken into a heavily alarmed residence after circumventing the existing system and we could get caught and I’m thinking about how bloody attracted I am to this man.

For God’s sake.
Priorities
, Alice.

“Today’s been a bitch of a day.”

Finn’s breath, all minty and tantalizing, whispers against my ear. “She’s on the phone.”

That silly muscle in my chest now decides it must win the race. I need to get out of this closet, out of such close proximity to this man.

“Get the fuck out!”

When an involuntary jerk spasms through me, my nose crashes into Finn’s. Both of us hiss in pain, but miraculously manage to keep it to just that. She’s not talking to us, though, because the next shout has her saying, “I say, let’s burn them all. Fuck, I need some E or something. Got any? I’m desperate for a hit. I’ll take coke, too.”

It’s my turn to put my mouth up against his ear. “Sorry.”

I feel, rather than see, his slight intake of breath.

I don’t know how long this still nameless woman talks on the phone. It feels like forever, with each second warmer in the small closet than the last. I’m pressed up against the wall, so is Finn. The only thing that separates us is the width of my hands on his chest.

It’s torture, plain and simple.

She’s not talking about anything we’d care to know. Her words tell us nothing but her love of drugs. I lose interest in her lengthy complaints and find myself focusing instead on the man I’m pressed up against. His heart is thumping just as hard as mine. I focus on my breathing, but every time I pull a drag in, all I smell is Finn: clean soap and man and a hint of mint and spice. Sweat trickles down the back on my neck, and my knees ache from the weird angle we’re forced into. And yet, the woman keeps talking.

I lean my head back and stare into the gray darkness above. Finn shifts, his head ducking awkwardly beneath the low ceiling, but the brush of his body against mine scorches already overheated skin.

It’s my turn to shift when the ache in my shoulder turns unbearable. Another tiny intake of breath on his behalf sends my pulse skittering once more. Underneath my fingers, the beat in his chest drums harder.

I remind myself:
He’s my partner
.

I put on repeat in my head:
Love—lust—has only ever brought you heartache.

Another crash sounds beyond the armoire doors. I tell myself:
Nothing but trouble can come from feeling this way.

When Finn shifts again, his fingers tightening around my waist, I’m resolute:
Get your head on straight, Alice.

The longer the woman bemoans her ails (lack of drugs and a stupid paramour, from the little I can tell), the stronger the heartbeat underneath my hands resonates within my ears. And I’m left wondering if this Timeline is addictive, too, because everything is turning upside down in this warm dungeon we’ve found ourselves in.

My head drops back down until our noses are mere inches apart. He’d been staring at the door, but the moment he notices I’ve moved, his eyes find mine in the graying darkness. I can’t match their color, but it doesn’t matter. In my mind, I see them: clear blue-gray and oh-so-beautifully expressive.

The nerves that run between my brain and hands cease functioning, because my fingers curl into the softness of his dark shirt. Another sharp intake of breath fills the space between us, and I’m no longer overheating.

I’ve burst straight into flames.

It would be so easy in this moment to close my eyes. Just pretend that nothing is happening, that his touch does nothing to me. I’ve closed my heart off before. It was difficult, but I did it. I walked away from the only person who consumed my everything for years and still does in many ways, and I did it with one foot in front of the other. What I said was true. Love isn’t always enough. Sometimes, a person must let go and mean it.

Any second, we could be discovered. And yet . . . when his head lowers toward mine, I keep my eyes wide open.

We share the same air for many seconds as the woman outside the door lowers her voice to where her words are barely distinguishable. Those I do catch continue to be meaningless, just snatches of irreverent talk that tells us nothing about the wall of book pages. Our lips are precariously close; all it would take would be the most minute of shifts for skin to touch skin. And then my name falls out between us, a barely voiced set of syllables that hold so much more than simple identification.

My fingers tighten in his shirt. Tug ever so gently, when there really isn’t space to lead him into. He reaches up and gently slides the screen from my headset back and then does the same to his. I know nobody can see us; an active transmission has to be triggered by the user. Even still, a thrill shoots through me at his purposeful action.

Something else crashes in the next room; maniacal giggles follow. But none of that matters any longer, because the moment she yells out, “Holy shit, I think I cut my toe,” my lips meet Finn’s.

Live wires explode throughout my body. Logical thought disappears like a magician’s trick.

Hands curl tighter around my waist, pulling me into him. My own drift higher until they loop around his neck. His mouth is soft and hard and warm and addictive, and when his tongue touches the seam that holds the last of my restraints in, I lose the battle.

It was a good fight, but this is better.

Our tongues trace one another, and I’m tasting mint and Finn and it’s just as drugging as anything in Wonderland. The situation is less than ideal, risky as all hell, even, but stupidly, none of that matters. His body leans farther into mine, pressing me up against a wall I’d already been trapped against, and yet he isn’t close enough. I want—no,
need
—him closer. He instinctively must sense this from me, because the next thing I know, our legs overlap in the tiny space and he’s erased the separation. I’m aching and desperate and we kiss until we consume all the air in the closet and then continue to do so long after dizziness sets in.

This isn’t my first kiss, nor even my hundredth. I am no inexperienced girl. And yet, as my knees go weak and my heart beats in a wild symphony and my nerve endings become painfully aware of every inch of his body pressed up against mine, I marvel at how it all feels so new.

Time blurs together until it’s meaningless, until the closet and clothes disappear around us. Everything in this moment is touch and sensation, and I’m drunk on it. Finn whispers, just barely, my name again, his mouth traveling down the length of my chin to the sensitive skin just below my ear, and it sounds like a benediction coming from him.

“ROSEMARY, GET THE FUCK DOWN HERE!”

We startle apart at the male voice. It’s Jenkins. Reality slaps us both straight across the face, but at least now we have a name.
Rosemary
.

“GO FUCK YOURSELF!”

Feet clomp on stairs and another rip of a creak fills the room. “What crawled up your ass and died today? Are you on the rag?”

I know that voice. My fingers curl tighter into Finn’s shirt. I whisper, right up against his ear, “That’s Todd.”

He’s breathing heavily when he nods his confirmation. A small sound beeps in our ears, letting us know our window for escape has passed. Have twenty minutes truly passed so quickly? He slides both our eye screens back into place right as Wendy’s voice says, “AF, do you copy?”

“This is bullshit!” she yells. “He thinks I’m his fucking sex slave or something!” Pounding sounds against the floor. “GO TAKE AN ACID BATH, YOU SICK FUCKING PERVERT!”

Apparently, I’m not the only one who sees the bookstore owner as such.

Finn presses a button on his earpiece, alerting the team to the fact that we are in no position to orally copy.

Something is kicked and sent skittering across the room. It bounces against the armoire, sending Finn’s hand to his holster.

“Until we get what we want, you are his fucking slave and everything else if that’s what it takes,” Todd growls. “Which means you need to get your ass downstairs and deal with the matter at hand.”

Her voice lowers. “We don’t need him.”

“Do you not remember that some bitch from the Society showed up? Took what was ours?”

My fingers tighten on Finn’s shoulders, but not in a good way. Wendy says, “JD, I’m sending a new virus packet to recode the system.”

“You should have taken the damn shot last night, Rose,” Todd’s saying. “If you had, we wouldn’t be in this mess right now.”

The A.D. says, “Copy that, WD1.”

“You think I didn’t want to?” Rosemary’s voice raises significantly. “I had a bead on her. I was ready to go!”

“VVB, do you have a visual on AF?” Wendy asks.

I suck in a breath. Another object in the room crashes to the floor, and I have to grab Finn to stop him from throwing the doors wide open. It isn’t my first assassination attempt, after all. It isn’t even my second, or, hell, my third. This Rosemary better step up her game if she wants to compete with the big girls.

Okay. Just the thought of her going up against the Queen of Hearts and her wicked battle ax brings an inappropriate grin to my face.

Finn touches my face. His brows are furrowed, and it takes me a moment to realize he’s wondering what’s got me mimicking the Cheshire-Cat. I shake my head and wave my hand.
Later
.

“Negative, WD1,” Victor is saying. “Current view is Jenkins.”

“You’ll have another chance,” Todd tells Rosemary. “Little Alice from Wonderland can’t be too charmed, can she? We’ll blitz her world next, and then she won’t think too highly of herself any longer. I’m just waiting for the go ahead.”

He knows who I am.
They
know who I am. And they’ve threatened those and what I love.

I have to yank Finn’s arm back once more. He’s shaking in anger, and in the dim, filtered light from the poorly hung doors, I can see cold determination fill his eyes. I want to reassure him that I’ve faced worse than these two, that, after all I’ve been through, I am still standing. I am still breathing. But I can’t do that right now, not with two murderers arguing just feet away from where we’re hiding.

They’re mine now, though. They just don’t know it yet.

I press a kiss against the corner of his mouth. Whisper, “Hold your ground.” Just as I pull back, green letters race across my field of vision, telling me that an extraction will be executed within fifteen minutes if we do not make it outside on our own.

My partner leans forward and whispers softly in my ear, “Get ready.”

I’m always ready, unfortunately.

Jenkins bellows once more, demanding that the “two shitheads get downstairs right now.” I expect them to refuse, or at least Rosemary to do so, but a door creaks and footsteps and voices recede.

We give silence sixty seconds before we pry open the armoire doors. The moment we’re out, Finn grabs my face. He mouths:
Are you okay?

Warmth spreads in my belly. I nod, and then he tugs me forward for a tiny hug.

I melt.

When he pulls away, all the parts of me that had been touching him protest. I never learn.

Just before we dart toward the window, a door creaks open. And there, her mouth and eyes wide in shock, is Rosemary.

My daggers are out immediately. So are both of Finn’s handguns, and they’re trained right on her. God, he’s alluring when he’s serious like this.

“What. The. FUCK?” she screeches. “HOW DID YOU TWO GET IN HERE?!”

I let one of my blades fly, but she’s quicker (and far more limber) than I gave her credit for. Her body nearly folds backward as she skids to the ground, and then she rolls over and snatches a bō staff hidden along the baseboards I hadn’t noticed before.

“Move another inch,” Finn says, cold as ice, “and I’ll blow your head off.”

She moves. Of course she moves. He shoots and strikes her shoulder just like he’d meant to. And yet, she doesn’t even falter. Doesn’t flinch, doesn’t cry, doesn’t do anything except continue to scream at us. Is she even human? I don’t have time to investigate, because feet are slapping up the stairs. Todd has come to join the party.

“Gunshots heard,” the A.D. is saying. “VVB, status on Jenkins?”

As Todd whips out a pair of his switchblades, spinning them in an overly dramatic circle that has me rolling my eyes, another gunshot explodes through the building. Only this one isn’t from Finn, because glass shatters and a roar from a floor below nearly shakes everyone to their feet.

“Bleeding,” Victor replies grimly.

Todd charges Finn; my partner fires yet another bullet. Society protocol dictates we disable suspects in consideration for future questioning, but I can’t help but notice Finn’s mark is perilously close to the barber’s heart. Another roar fills the attic, but just as shockingly as with Rosemary, Todd does not go down.

I do, though. Right when Rosemary slams her staff across my belly while I wasn’t paying attention to her. I roll to the side as Finn fires again. He’s clipped Todd’s right shoulder. And then I throw my dagger out as Rosemary swings once more.

I connect with her leg. It’s her turn to finally scream. They’re a loud bunch, aren’t they? And extremely high on drugs, from the looks of it. Both fiends’ eyes are glazed and crazed.

It’s not a good combination. No wonder Finn’s shot didn’t slow her down.