And not just any friend—one who also made her skin heat with a touch and who could probably make her weak in the knees with a single kiss.
Ridiculous. Jorge would toss her to the wolves before he’d kiss her. Not that she could blame him. Her actions had killed his former feelings for her.
No, the best thing for her to do was to finish the job and send him on his way.
Sabrina moved to another stall and was about to buy some chopped fruit when she felt something slither around her bare ankle. She’d changed into the more civilian-looking clothes Jorge had provided before coming to the market—shorts, sandals, and a t-shirt—but when she glanced down, there was nothing. Yet it felt like a whisper of silk was brushing against her skin.
Careful to keep her face neutral, she tried to take a step, but something tugged at her ankle before changing directions. There was another tug, and Sabrina was forced to move her legs in the direction of the tugging or fall over. Another brush of silk on her other leg and she was soon being forced down the row of stands to the street. She tried not to look around, not wanting to draw attention to herself.
No, she only needed to get the attention of one person. She clenched her fingers into a fist and pointed her thumb downward—the signal that something was wrong.
She only hoped Jorge saw it.
Chapter Seven
While Jorge had been a prisoner under the Collector, his life had depended upon him learning to blend in, and today that skill was coming in handy at the crowded marketplace. His clothes were nondescript, and since he’d grown up near Merida during his childhood, even his accent wasn’t noteworthy.
Still, it took some effort to keep an eye on Sabrina without deliberately staring at her. It had been a long time since he’d seen that much of her smooth, tan skin.
He’d been an idiot to choose jean shorts and a tight-fitting purple t-shirt from her apartment while she’d been unconscious. He should’ve gone with the jeans or one of her long flowing skirts. Then maybe he could concentrate on more than how the denim hugged her fine ass or how her shorts displayed almost every inch of her long, golden tan legs.
His thoughts had started to venture into more dangerous territory—such as how it’d feel to grab that soft, bare ass with his hands—when Sabrina finally approached the clothing stand she’d described as the meeting place.
This was it. Time to watch for this Juan guy and see what happened.
As she pretended to browse, a man with light brown skin and short black hair approached the same stall. Once Sabrina lifted up a shirt over her head as if to inspect it, he could see her lips moving. He didn’t have supersensitive hearing or the ability to read lips, but from their interactions, he could tell they were at least somewhat familiar with each other. An average person wouldn’t notice, but their mutual shared glances told him that they’d done this before.
He did a sweep of the surrounding market stalls to check for anything suspicious. He started to wonder just how well Sabrina knew this Juan guy when Jorge’s eyes locked onto a face he’d seen once before. He didn’t know the woman’s name, but the long, red hair curling around her shoulders was unmistakable—the redhead was part of the Collector’s army of Feiru with latent abilities.
Fuck. He wished he knew what sort of power she had, but he’d only glimpsed her once inside the Collector’s facility. For good reason, the coerced soldiers hadn’t been allowed to socialize.
He didn’t want to break eye contact with the redhead, but he needed to check to see if Sabrina’s meeting was over. Then he could start thinking of how to get her out of here, and preferably without the other woman following them.
He glanced back to the clothing stall and saw that Juan was already gone. Sabrina had just paid the woman running the stand when he noticed her foot move off to the side in an unnatural fashion.
He frowned when it happened again. Sabrina was hiding it well, but there was definitely something off about the way she walked—she lacked the slight sway of the hips and confidence to her strut. Instead, she was barely managing an uneven stroll. He glanced back to the redhead and saw her lips whispering something. He also noticed the motion of her thumb rubbing against her forefinger and middle finger. Those two actions told him what latent abilities the woman controlled.
The redhead was a Night-Weaver.
No matter how tight the Collector’s security, people tended to talk with one a
nother during missions. Most of his assignments had been solo kidnapping attempts, but during one multi-person kidnapping stint, he’d been forced to work with a man who’d been a Night-Weaver. He’d learned that they could weave strands as strong as steel yet they felt as soft as silk and the Night-Weaver could direct the strands to whatever target they chose. The bitch of it was that you could only see the strands at nighttime, when they’d glow a faint white from the moonlight. During the day, they were invisible to the naked eye.
If that weren’t bad enough, there were probably other Feiru with latent abilities hiding in the market, waiting to take him down. If they managed to trap him and Sabrina in the midst of the crowded market, it could be game over. Even if he safely made it away from the prying eyes of humans, all the Collector’s people needed to do was shoot him with some kind of tranquilizer and he wouldn’t be able to use any of his shadow-shifting tricks to escape.
The Collector’s soldiers had to be here, targeting Sabrina, because of him. He’d been careful, but someone had seen him, and he needed to do something. He wasn’t about to let someone else be used against him again. Just the thought of Sabrina being tortured made him sick to his stomach. She might still be hiding some truths from him, but no one deserved the sort of abuse the Collector’s people would inflict on her.
First things first, he needed to break the Night-Weaver’s concentration long enough to get Sabrina to some of the nearby shadows. Once there, he could use one of his tricks to escape. But the question was: How?
He scanned the surroundings and saw a fruit stand off to his left. He quickly purchased a pineapple and moved closer toward Sabrina, careful to keep to the crowded edges of the vendor stands. By now, Sabrina was nearly to the street. If she reached it, a car could squeal up, snatch her, and take her anywhere. He needed to make his move before that could happen.
When Sabrina was less than five feet away from the sidewalk and the street, he lobbed the pineapple toward the Night-Weaver. A few people near him made some noise, but he ignored them. He watched closely because the second she stopped whispering and moving her fingers, he would make his move.
The Night-Weaver finally saw the incoming pineapple and stepped back right before it would’ve hit her.
With the redhead’s concentration broken, Jorge grabbed Sabrina’s upper arm and whispered, “We have to run. Come with me.”
He didn’t even wait for her to nod before he pulled her down one of the rows that split from the main walkway. He needed to reach the edge of the nearest building, preferably out of sight, where he could use the shadows to his advantage.