Gavin thrust the knife at him again and watched as his eyes widened. He let the man’s imagination do the rest of the work, and he smiled to himself.
“I wasn’t following you,” the man said again.
“Who are you following?”
“I wasn’t following anyone. I was looking at…”
Gavin leaned back, slipping the knife back into his sheath. “Who?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters. Who are you looking at?”
“She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“That’s what this is about? A spurned lover?”
Gavin felt like an ass. Not because he had punched the man and dragged him off to the side of the street, but because he had misjudged the situation entirely. The man had indeed been looking at him, but maybe it was because he was trying to hide what he was doing.
Gavin shook his head. “If she doesn’t want anything to do with you, then you need to leave her alone.”
“I’m trying to leave her alone, but I just can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Not that it mattered to him. He didn’t really care if this man stalked some woman he had a crush on, but there was something about all of this that troubled him.
The timing. What if he had been right all along? What if this man had been following him? He had the look of a soldier. The closely cropped hair. The scar above his brow. Even the build. All of it suggested he was trained—the kind of person that Gavin had fought before and that he would expect to follow him.
The man leaned against the building and breathed, as if he was trying to gather himself and control his breathing. Another sign of training.
“Who are you?” Gavin asked.
“I’m no one. I told you. I was just looking along the street because—”
“Because you have a crush on somebody. That’s what you’re telling me, and I’m telling you that I’m not sure I can believe you. So what I’m asking is for you to give me a good reason I should believe you.”
“What more do you need me to say?”
“I think you need to show me who you were looking at.”
“Please. Don’t make me do it.”
He shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’m just being cautious.”
The man stared at him and frowned. Gavin simply waited.
After a moment, the man got up and dusted his hands on his pants. “If it’s going to convince you to let me go, I’ll show you. But don’t make me take you inside her shop.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s asked me not to go in.”
Gavin almost chuckled. The story was completely believable. Were it a different time and were he not already on edge, he might have believed the man instead of pushing and pressuring him.
He forced the man forward and held onto the back of his jacket, keeping the fabric twisted in his fist. He walked close behind, ready for any suspicious movement.
What he wasn’t ready for was someone to slam into his back.
The man in front of him spun and kicked, forcing Gavin to let go of his jacket and step back. He glanced over at another attacker, who was small, lithe, and compact with longer hair. She reminded him of Imogen.
He raised an eyebrow. “Not a spurned lover.”
The man darted forward. Gavin blocked by lifting his leg and thrusting it so that he could throw off the attack. He twisted and spun his fist, driving it outward.
The woman blocked him. She was quick. Almost impossibly quick.
Could she have an enchantment?
Gavin hadn’t fought against anybody who used them in quite some time. It was dangerous going against someone like that without enchantments of his own. Some of the ones he’d encountered in the past enabled people to be faster or stronger, while some helped with healing. But he didn’t need an enchantment for fighting. That was one area where his training gave him the advantage.
He twisted around and kicked, connecting with the man’s midsection. The attacker grunted and dropped to the ground. Gavin tried to dart forward, wanting to deal an incapacitating blow to the man’s head, but the woman slid between them.
The people on the street had given them space. In fact, Gavin suspected that the crowd had disappeared altogether long before the fight broke out. Maybe they were all part of this.
Interesting.
The woman’s hands darted rapidly in several quick thrusts. If Gavin hadn’t trained the way that he had or experienced what it was like to fight somebody faster than him, he might not have been able to parry each blow. But he deflected one, then another, and each time he sent her attacks glancing off, he prepared himself to handle the next.
Gavin used her defense against her. She was backing away, and he summoned a hint of power from his core, nothing more than that. With that, he jumped, flipping in the air.
The suddenness of the movement surprised her. As he twisted, he brought his leg around and kicked toward her. He expected to catch her on the shoulder, but she maneuvered far more rapidly than he expected.
As he landed, she was already moving forward. She blocked his punch, and he swept his leg down. His kick connected, and she stumbled. Gavin kicked again, and she grunted as the blow landed on her side.
Something moved behind him, and he spun, driving out with his heel, and he connected again with the man’s stomach.
Gavin cocked his head to the side. “You shouldn’t lead like that,” he muttered.
The man went stumbling down, and Gavin turned back to the woman.
She was gone.
He darted toward the man and unsheathed his dagger. He glanced at the blade. No glow. No magic.
Gavin jabbed the dagger toward the man. “Either answers, or you’ll give me a reason to use it against you.”
“No answers. We were just hired to trail you.”
“Hired by whom?”
“I don’t know. That’s not how it works.”
“Really?”
Gavin pushed the dagger into the man’s side. He didn’t press too hard or too deep, but just enough to draw blood. Just enough to make him believe that Gavin would push even
