Page 43 of Obey

“Nah, my girl isn’t like that,” the first voice answers. “She’s special. Loves the road as much as any of us, and she knows bikes, too.”

The second speaker isn’t impressed when he responds, but after a while of this inane conversation, it’s clear there are only two people in the shack—at least, only two who are awake and speaking.

Knives peers inside briefly, and I catch him grimacing.

I give him a pointed look and he mimes the letter P in the air.

It takes me a second to catch on. P.

Pyre.

Of course he has to be here. He’s probably the one talking about his girl, too—Nevaeh. Great.

I nod when I understand, signaling a thumbs-up.

Knives silently walks back to the front of the shack, and I follow. He glances at me, nods when he sees my gun out, then kicks the door in.

It flies open immediately. I don’t think it was even locked. The two men inside startle and stand up, but Knives and I have our guns aimed at them.

“The weapons shipment you stole,” Knives says in a low growl. “Hand it over and I won’t blow your brains out.”

Pyre is easy to pick out; even if she hadn’t shown us a photo, we’d have known him by seeing him. His eyes are wide with shock as he looks between us. “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I snort, my gun trained on his companion. “We know you haven’t offloaded it yet,” I tell him.

“Don’t know what we’re talking about? So what were you waiting to sell? Not cocaine, since you can offload that at any club in NewVa,” Knives says. He gets closer to the two men, but not close enough that they can disarm him. “Get on the floor. Both of you. Hands on your heads. You don’t want to test out how good my partner’s aim is.”

Partner.

I know he doesn’t mean it romantically, but even having him call me his partner on a work level is more than I’ve been able to get…

Until the night before.

The blood runs hot in my veins as I think about him calling me his partner to the woman on the stage, and the implications of it make me wish it was real.

That we were real.

I’m reading too far into it, though, and I need to focus instead of getting so distracted by schoolboy thoughts that have no place between me and Knives.

I keep my gun trained squarely on the man who isn’t Pyre.

The two men fidget, clearly wondering if they have time to reach for their own guns. In the end, they get onto the floor. We use the zip ties we’d brought to cuff their hands behind their backs, and when they’re subdued, I breathe easier.

“What was your plan, anyway?” Knives asks as he starts checking the various crates in the room. “Steal from the fucking mafia and hope they don’t notice?”

“Like you stole those weapons and hoped their original owners didn’t notice?” not-Pyre scoffs. “Finders fucking keepers. You know Boar is going to eat you alive once he finds out about this?”

Boar—their leader, who’s got a record a mile long.

Knives shakes his head, unimpressed.

I open a crate near me and sigh in relief when I see the weapons inside. “Knives, over here.”

Knives walks over and lets out a low whistle. “Would you look at that. Our entire shipment, all neatly boxed up for us to take home.” He claps my shoulder. “Good job.”

The warmth that radiates through me is fucking ridiculous, but I nod to him. “Thanks. Now let’s figure out how to get this shit back home.” I grimace. “Do you know how to drive a boat?”

“It can’t be that hard, if these idiots can do it,” Knives answers.

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