“If it’s abandoned what did ya’ll save it from?”
He came up behind me and clamped his hands on either side of my waist, peering out the window. I tensed only a little, swallowing quietly. I wasn’t expecting him to take his time with us, but this would still take getting used to.
“You see how old they are. All they’re trying to do is live in comfort. They were being killed off, bodies left to rot in the open. Romero solved the problem.”
I turned all the way around at that.
“The Savages care about the elderly?”
“The Savages want peace. Only, our version of it is more like anarchy. The elderly in Rivermouth don’t give a shit. They just want to be left alone. Think of it as a retirement community. Those men are taking the crates of perishables and passing them out to others, courtesy of that man you know as the devil,” he said with a smirk.
Now I was full on curious, but he had other ideas than me askin questions. He pulled my body into his, bringin us flush together and dropping his mouth to mine. This kiss was different to the first one. I could damn near taste his own desire on the tip of his tongue.
He slid his hands around to my ass and squeezed the cheeks. The second a groan left my mouth and I pressed further against him, he was pulling away.
“What was all that?” I breathlessly asked.
“I wanted to see something,” he replied with a straight face.
Well, that was ominous. “What—”
A door slammed from somewhere, making my stomach jump.
Grimm’s whole demeanor changed. One second he was right in front of me, and the next he was pushing his gun into my hand and movin away. The gun I’d forgotten about and didn’t know how to use.
“Stay here,” he commanded.
“You can’t…leave me,” I wound up sayin to myself as he disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Like hell I was stayin behind in this rinky- dink room. I slipped out into the hall, the sun allowing me to see everything but Grimm, and I couldn’t hear him, either.
Damn, he was fast.
Chargin ahead, I jogged down the hall through a pair of double doors barely hanging on their hinges.
I popped out on somethin on an arched bridge, overlooking the floor below on either side. Straight ahead was another set of doors leading to another wing.
Voices below weren’t what had drawn my full attention. The fact I was seeing Grimm in front of two men with that unmistakable V and snake tattoo was.
I saw only the men from that room, and I saw Grimm. They didn’t know I was there, but I reckoned Grimm did.
One of the men moved too fast for my liking, and I didn’t even think about what I was doing—I aimed the gun and pulled the trigger.
The pop was louder than I’d expected, and I missed. Both looked up like idiots. I’d barely blinked, and Grimm had one of their throats slit.
Blood went everywhere. I watched the man clutch at his neck, as if that could make it better. An odd sound came flying from his mouth.
A light thump from the opposite end of the hall had me looking away. Another man had just pulled open the doors, pausing when he saw me. He had hair as long as mine and had clearly ran to get this to point, as he was out of breath.
I wasn’t a hundred percent certain he was with the men below, but he damn well wasn’t with me, so I shot at him too. I felt the bullet leave the chamber this time and was prepared, expected the sound it made.
“For real?” I asked aloud when red spread across his chest, staining clean through his brown jacket. I’d been aimin for his head.
“Little bitch,” I heard him gasp, crystal clear. When he ducked back through the door, I caught a glimpse of the V on his neck.
It all happened rather quickly—I’m talking in a span of three minutes or less. So where the fuck had Grimm vanished? There was no sign of him below, and there was only one body.
The man whose throat he’d slit was lying on the floor twitching. I wanted to yell out his name but had no idea how many of these men were in the building. I was too shit of a shot to take on multiple people, and I didn’t know how many bullets I had left to try. If one of them had a gun of their own, I was screwed.