Steele—it was signed only with an “S”, like he was Superman or something—wanted her to meet him at the address provided tonight to give her the money.
“It was real?” She gasped at the question and then looked down to see she was naked.
Ravyn never went to bed naked. What if something happened in the middle of the night and she had to be ready quickly? Naked wasn’t conducive to being ready, unless she was going to be ready for Ste...
Shaking her head, she stared at the piece of paper again. So he had been here and she had agreed to have sex with him, so he could pay her a half million dollars for a dagger that may or may not be cursed. Or was there some other reason she’d ended her self-imposed celibacy with that guy? Of course there was, and denying the obvious wasn’t her thing. She’d wanted him and he’d wanted her, simple as that.
“Losing your mind, girl. You’re losing your damn mind.”
But those words and that piece of paper got her out of bed and into the bathroom. Once finished, she dressed, made her bed, touched the dagger and contemplated whether or not she could leave it under the pillow. She wouldn’t need it until tonight when she went to meet Steele. Today she had some things to do around Safeside so it didn’t make sense to carry around a dagger while doing those things. But as she walked toward the door and reached out to touch the knob, she couldn’t help but look back and stare at the pillow. Something felt odd. Like it was missing. It couldn’t be that dagger.
When the phone she’d clipped to her hip began to buzz Ravyn shook her head and opened the door to head out. She had a lot to get done before she planned to go out tonight.
“Hey?” she answered the phone to Cree on the other end.
“Hey. Need you down in Sec7 right away.”
Sec7 was the entrance to Safeside. “Coming now,” she said and cursed the second she hung up the phone.
She’d asked Steele how he’d gotten in here and he’d never actually told her. Of course, their Q&A session had gotten derailed with other things, but dammit, if he’d destroyed something of theirs or compromised their hideout, she was charging him another half a million for the dagger.
Ravyn moved through the narrow pathways that broke off into separate rooms they’d made with drywall and other items stolen from various construction sites. Cree’s father had worked in construction before drinking himself to death when Cree was nine years old, so Cree had a little bit of knowledge about the industry. Ravyn didn’t have any but she’d been a quick study after hanging out at construction sites for weeks before she actually began taking their stuff.
That last thought sat heavily on her as she passed the cafeteria area and walked up a set of five steps to get to the pathway which led to Sec7. Steele had commented on her stealing, asking why she thought that was the only way to do what she was doing here and she hadn’t given him an answer. Or rather, she had but thinking about the response now, it sounded more like an excuse. Was everything she did because of the way the enforcers had treated her and so many others around the city? Would her entire life revolve around that cause forever?
“There you are,” Jorge Meg said the moment she turned the last corner to the small area that was known as Sec7.
Jorge was a former wrestler, but he’d lost some of his bulk in the years since his last match. Becoming addicted to pain medications would do that. Losing everything he’d worked for as a result of his addiction and his inability to get a decent paying job with health benefits to support his family had only been the icing on the very depressing cake of his life.
“Tell this young’un that you were the last one in last night and that you secured everything.”
Ravyn stepped up to the crowd of three—Jorge, Cree and Maurio, Jorge’s younger brother—and looked around to see if anything was out of place. The area only consisted of about ten by ten square feet of space. Above them was the last rung of the ladder which stretched up to the surface. Along the underside of the manhole that covered their entrance was a silent security strip that sent a flashing red light to their control center whenever it was moved. As that rideshare driver had mentioned last week, there was nothing in this part of the city—no businesses, no houses, nothing but old buildings. Enforcers rarely came here because there was no one to get money from and criminals only frequented the area for as long as it took to do what shady thing they were concocting. Nobody stayed but them.
“I came in a little after nine last night,” she said, running her hands along the beam and steel walls here. There used to be tile on these walls when it was the subway station. This had been the spot where people either came out of the elevator or took the last step from aboveground to the turnstile and ticket booths before going down one more level to wait for the trains. “I secured everything here and then stopped by the control room before going to my suite to go over the daily log. Everything was in order.”
“But when I came around this morning checking the perimeter it felt like there was something off,” Cree spoke up. “I checked the locks and looked around just like you’re doing and there was nothing.”
“Right.” She nodded. “Nothing.”
The something off Cree had just commented on was Steele’s presence, but she wasn’t about
