Page 49 of Lady Killer

All of the Blackwells were disgustingly good looking, but Everest’s beauty was almost unearthly.

His cheek and jawbones were sharp enough to cut diamonds, and he wore his white-blond hair long enough on top that it fell carelessly over his pale blue eyes. I always questioned how people could wear their hair like that and not be driven mad. Everest had me wondering if they were all high-functioning sociopaths.

“I was—‍”

“Breaking into Locke’s office?” He cut me off, his head tilted to the side while his eyes remained focused on me. “Yes, I know.”

I swallowed.

“It’s a trap, you know. You can see that, right?” His tone was earnest, void of the usual mania I had come to associate with the self-proclaimed serial killer.

“What’s a trap?” I said, straightening my spine, admitting to nothing.

He took a step closer and lifted his chin toward the door. “The lock is simple enough. But the alarm that gets triggered when you enter and fail to immediately swipe a magnetized pass is much harder to disarm. Not to mention the security cameras he keeps in there.”

Blood rushed through my head, and I began to deflate, mortified. I hadn’t considered a trap, but I should have.

Once again, I let my emotions get the better of me with Locke.

“Oh, no. Don’t look so sad, Starbright.” Everest stepped in to lift my chin with his fingers.

His eyes were big with concern, an expression that looked wholly unnatural on him. Before I could stop myself, a strangled giggle slipped from between my lips.

I want to kiss his worries away. The self-proclaimed serial killer extraordinaire.

Everest’s expression shifted in an instant, a wide-set smile engulfing his face, showcasing his perfectly straight, white teeth.

“Lucky for us, I have the key,” he said, stepping around me and pulling a key ring from his pocket with a flourish.

He whistled a catchy riff as he unlocked the door with a practiced ease before swiping the passkey against a small black box on the wall. The blinking red light on it turned green.

That hadn’t been there the last time I was in Locke’s office.

“Woo-hoo,” he said, turning to face me, looking pleased as pie. Holding the door open with one arm, he bowed theatrically. “Ladies first.”

Locke occupied a spacious corner office that looked more like it belonged at a Fortune 500 company’s headquarters.

“So,” Everest said as he hoisted himself onto the modern blackwood desk, pulling up his legs and then crossing them to sit in the middle of it. “What’s the plan now?”

“What about the cameras?”

“Only activated when you don’t swipe the passkey. Locke wouldn’t want cameras recording when he was in here. That would be an invasion of his privacy.”

“All that for an economics professor?”

Everest leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and I found myself taking one . . . two . . . three steps closer to him.

There was something magnetic about his madness.

“For the inquisitor of the Blackwell family, love,” he said, peering deep inside me with those ice-blue eyes. “Locke doesn’t bring family business here, but that hasn’t stopped the occasional idiot with a death wish from breaking in looking for something.”

“And you have a key because?”

“I go where I need to be.”

He reached forward to stroke my jaw before pulling his hand back.

Not long ago, I flinched at this man’s touch. Now, I wished he would do more.

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