Without Mercy - Lisa Jackson [27]
Ethan didn’t bother hiding his smile, that heart-stopping flash of white against his dark skin. “Better than that. Credits. Toward using the Internet or phones.”
“They allow you to communicate with the outside world? Wow.” She widened her eyes as if awestruck. “Finally. A reason to live.”
Is that how Nona had her cell phone? If so, then why was she hiding it?
“Sure,” he said as they walked inside the building that smelled of horses, dung, and oiled leather. He grabbed a pitchfork from the wall and tossed it to her, tines pointed upward. She caught the fork on the fly.
He added, “You just have to play by the rules.”
“I have a little trouble with that.”
“You won’t,” he predicted, and there was an edge to his voice that she hadn’t noticed before. And the glint in his eyes hardened a bit.
Yeah, sure. The guy talks nice for a second and you think he’s into you?
Stabbing the pitchfork into a clump of hay, Shay wondered if there was a reason their team leader had picked Ethan to show her around. Maybe it was Ethan’s job to watch her a little more closely. He would probably report back to the pod leader or maybe Reverend Lynch.
He was probably a spy, faking that he liked her.
Shaylee shivered inside and didn’t let it show. But she suddenly felt more alone than she ever had in her life.
From the reading loft in the education hall, the Leader watched Trent’s group head to the stables.
Shaylee Stillman brought up the rear, and he couldn’t help but notice how she walked, the way her hips moved slightly. Her forced bravado—but he believed that her mask was slipping. All that sassy, dark attitude would give way.
It always did.
Except for Lauren, right? She’d managed to keep her sarcastic tongue and glint of daring in her eyes, no matter how she was put to the test.
A classic mistake.
And stupid.
A student of history, he’d known better than to trust any female completely. Cleopatra, Mata Hari, Wallis Simpson. Prime examples of seductresses who changed the course of the world. And yet, he had let down his guard.
Not that she’d been any woman, Lauren Conway. Oh, no.
And he’d fallen for her allure.
Completely.
Madly.
Stupidly.
He’d allowed her into his inner circle.
For all the wrong reasons.
Mainly because of his ego.
And his dick. His damned dick.
Just like all those screw-ups in history who’d lost wars, given up thrones, changed the course of civilization: all for a woman.
She was Eve with the apple.
Delilah with her shears.
Jezebel with her idolatry and witchcraft!
He’d been forced to deal with her, and it had been painful, a reminder from God that despite his intelligence and his honed body, he was, in fact, only human.
And he couldn’t make the same mistake again.
Not with Shaylee Stillman.
Not with any woman.
CHAPTER 8
Everything was distorted.
Colors off. Light shifting. A headache thundering behind her eyes.
Jules blinked. She was home…right?
In the house she shared with her parents and sister?
Or was she?
Things were a little off, the rooms so dark.
In the den, the French doors were ajar. Wind whispered through the crack, causing the gauzy curtain to flutter. It moved like a dancer, gracefully gliding over the wood floor, its hem stained a vibrant ragged scarlet as the sheer fabric swept over a dark, congealing pool of blood.
Jules’s heart pounded in fear.
She felt the knife in her hand, saw drops of blood sliding down the blade to fall and splatter around his body….
Brrriiinggg!
Jules awoke with a start. Her cell phone was jangling, her computer screen dark, as it had gone into hibernation mode. She must’ve dozed off searching for hits on the academy, Lauren Conway, and Maris Howell. Snagging the phone before it rang again, she said, “Hello?” and tried not to sound too groggy.
“Hey, it’s me.” Erin Crosby had been Jules’s friend since college. Although they had been education majors together, Erin had found that being a teacher wasn’t her thing. These days, she sold cell phones and service plans. Erin had also made the fateful mistake of introducing Jules to Cooper