“Fair?” She lifted her hips a little higher, came down a little faster. “I have it on good authority that nothing’s fair. And no one is free,” she said.
His lips curved up in that deadly, sexy smile that always made her whole body turn to jelly. “Freedom’s overrated.”
Author’s Note
Thank you so much for reading The Taming! It means the world to have my work out there. If you feel moved to leave a review [link TBD], I would be so grateful. It helps spread the word.
KEEP READING FOR A GLIMPSE OF THE NEXT STORY IN THE TRIBE WARRIOR SERIES –
SANGER AND TESSA in THE CLAIMING.
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Thank you!
Immy
1
Can’t catch me.
SQUATTING ON THE ROOFTOP, Tessa stared down at the map in her hand.
It was a crude, sad thing, hand-drawn by a coca junkie, in wavering black lines on a piece of reused paper so filthy and wrinkled it had softened nearly to cloth.
The buildings were denoted by squares and rectangles. Junkie or not, the cartographer of this little scrap had missed his calling with the city’s re-planning division. It was well scaled, and labeled clearly, despite his tremors. He’d even included little jittery spikes for the tammin vines that grew on the sides of the southern facing buildings, and a dotted line for the sidewalks.
This building had been marked with a red star. A festering warehouse in a forgotten part of the city. She had traded the last of the yenna she’d pickpocketed from the crowds on Mebureille Street for this little map.
According to the junkie, he’d seen the Boss here three nights in a row. This was where she’d find him. She could practically feel it thrumming in her bones.
This was it.
She pocketed the map and pressed herself back against the scrap of shade along the edge of a skylight.
The day was glaringly bright, the sun bouncing off pale stucco walls. The buildings were pristine white in the Prime neighborhoods with characteristic golden domes for which Didgermmion was famous, but here the stucco was dingy, and the roofs were flat.
Not a cloud marred the perfect blue bowl of the sky overhead or offered a break from the beating rays, and only a few measly breezes came off the sea in the distance. The city in high summer was hotter than the Abyss.
Ducking under a powerline of thick black wires, she pulled sunglasses over her eyes.
She would wait as long as it took.
In a city of just over a million people, it shouldn’t have been easy for so infamous a man to hide. Half myth, half ghost, the Boss, Delsanthio, spread through the city’s underbelly like a vicious disease, corroding everything he touched, controlling every illicit activity in a city already saturated with crime. Drug-pusher. Slaver. Murderer. Asshole.
She’d been hunting him for so long, she’d started to doubt he even existed.
The sun had passed its zenith long ago, but night wouldn’t come for a couple hours yet, and according to the junkie, Delsanthio, never arrived before sundown.
She would kill him.
Closing her eyes, she envisioned it, lived it, so that it burned so bright in the neurons of her brain and the beating ventricles of her heart that loss of focus would be impossible. Plunging the knife into his chest, watching the blood spread like a blooming rose and the light fade from his eyes, his body going cold and still.
It would be so sweet.
Only then would this be over.
What she’d do after that… that was anybody’s guess. She’d take Cara away from here. Someplace safe. Maybe they could get to one of the softer countries. Tamminia maybe, where felana trade was forbidden.
The sun sank low, and the city moved on around her. But she stayed still, settling into the half-conscious lull of one accustomed to waiting.
Her mind drifted.
The skylight cracked beside her, loud enough to make her jump. The paint along the casing split, and the window lifted upward.
Rolling to her side, she pulled up to a crouch, one hand splayed on the roof, the other on the knife at her hip. She held her breath as the glass lifted skyward.
The pole that operated the skylight jostled the joist, pushing up until it caught. She relaxed. Most buildings in Didgermmion weren’t airconditioned, so they had skylights like this to release rising hot air. Someone was opening the window. That was all.
She was twenty feet above them, and the angle was off. They shouldn’t be able to see her, but just in case, she didn’t move a muscle. Barely breathing, she waited for the pole, and its operator, to move on.
It was too early for it to be the Boss. He shouldn’t be here for hours yet.
The open skylight was an unexpected boon. She might be able to hear them speaking.
She inhaled slowly against the smattering of nerves. No time to get excited. She was close, the closest she’d ever been. But she needed to stay calm. Objective. Figure out who he was, what he looked like.
Notorious as he was, nobody ever saw him in the flesh. Except the junkie, and all he’d said was big and dark and scary. That could be almost anyone on the whole of
