Page 34 of The Verdict

Merritt

Ineeded information, and I couldn’t wait any longer to find it.

Cold, rain-soaked air oozed from the seam in the garage door. I tucked my arms across my chest and took a slow turn around the empty space where Harmon’s deep-red Harley had been parked yesterday. On the other side, there were two more empty spaces where Rhys’s black motorcycle and Ty’s silver-blue one had been stationed. And opposite me was Darius’s gray Harley poised in the final space like a rhino about to charge—warning me not to make one wrong move just like its owner did every time he looked at me.

I inhaled deep, the air laced the faintest hint of paint and oil and something else mechanical that the purifier couldn’t scrub out. It reminded me of Mars. He’d always smelled like oil and came to the warehouse streaked with grease; he must’ve worked on cars when he wasn’t with us. It always bothered Saturn; we’d be in the middle of a chess game, and he’d make apoint to tell Mars to clean himself up. I blinked, and the memory of Mars’s face, red and bulging as he struggled with Rhys, assaulted me. And then his lifeless one.

Gone.

Just like Saturn. Just like Neptune. Now, only Mercury and Jupiter were left.And me.

I shuddered and moved toward Darius’s bike, the sound of the rain beating on the windows like an audible cocoon. My fingers traveled over the bow of the seat until I reached the wall and the red tool chest propped against it; all the tool chests were color-coordinated based on the type of job. Everything about this place was honest and raw. The garage. The business. The men.Their purpose.The last time I’d been sheltered in a place with a group of men, their purpose had been anything but.

After our walk in the woods two days ago, I’d been introduced to Harmon’s girlfriend, Daria. She was kind and had that refined elegance only French women managed to effortlessly pull off. She’d given me a tour of the garage. Told me about the projects they worked on.

Like me, she’d been born in the States and then spent most of her adolescent and teenage years in Europe. She’d come to California for law school, while I’d come as a criminal on the run.

I couldn’t tell if she’d been instructed to keep me busy while the guys met in Ty’s office, but if she had, I wouldn’t complain. I enjoyed her quick wit and brash honesty, but especially the way she laughed at herself every time she mistranslated an English idiom.

“How did you meet Harmon?”I’d asked her while she set up the pool table so we could play a game. The story of a put-together law student and a rough-and-tumble biker was sure to be a good one.

“Well, I guess there’s no reason to beat around the bust.”

It had taken a minute for both of us to realize she’d meantbushinstead ofbust,and I felt a twinge in my stomach when we broke out laughing. In another world, I could’ve seen us as friends. Similar upbringings by single mothers. Both of us drawn into a criminal world… except Daria had escaped it, and I… I was still fighting for my freedom.

Or trying to.

“I only want to help you.”

The butterflies in my stomach came to life, awakening on Rhys’s husky promise that I foolishly replayed in my mind. He was trying to protect me, and I liked the idea just as much as I needed to fight against it.

I could protect myself.I’d been trained to protect myself. To survive on my own. Be resourceful. Cunning. Strong.Sufficient.

In Spain, Merritt Vilaró was capable of all those things, but here… schoolteacher Merritt Manning didn’t know how to spy or fight or use a gun or kill. And that was the only Merritt that Rhys knew. The one he wanted to protect.The one I’d pretended to be for the last three days.

The air seemed to thicken. The crispness of it dulled into something heavier as the truth peeled apart in my chest; I wanted to be Merritt Manning for just a little longer.

I wanted to be the poor substitute Spanish teacher barely making ends meet in San Francisco. I wanted to be the woman Rhys had saved that night—the one who’d stay here, sheltered, secluded,invisible—and let him do it again.

But he had no idea what I needed protection from, how could he possibly save me? And if he did know the truth… would he still want to?

The questions gnawed at me. Kept me silent. I’d given him the truth that morning in the woods:I had nothing left to lose.To tell him everything about me—about my past—would make him something I was afraid to have.Someone.So, whilepart of me craved the insatiable bliss of being in his arms, the majority of me was glad he’d kept his distance.

Rhys risked everything to protect me, and he deserved more than a woman who could only repay him with lies.

“Looking for something?”

I halted and turned my head, meeting the lethal obsidian of Darius’s stare. On a scale of one to skeptical, Darius Keyes fell squarely at the deep end of skeptical, while the rest of the men who lived and worked here oscillated somewhere in the middle.

The tenuous familiarity I had with the compound mirrored what I knew about the men who worked here and who shared the same patched leather jackets. There was Harmon with his steady assertiveness, a clear leader among them. Tynan’s closed-off stoicism and love of cooking. Darius’s self-loathing disguised as distrust. And Rhys…

Like his name, Rhys was soft and simple at first syllable, but sharp and cutting if caught just right. He was protective and tender at moments, but prickly and distant if we got too close.I caught glimpses of the lighthearted twinkle in his gaze and that easy, half-cocked smile from that night at the hotel, but they were few;they were fake.He forced them out to hide the hunger in his gaze.

What we felt—what happened that nightwasn’t the result of some chemical catastrophe between danger and desire. It was pure passion. And it ticked between us with the subtle narcissism of a time bomb, confident in its capability of utter destruction in the span of a single second.

And that was why I needed to find some sort of lead and get out of here. I was no longer invisible, no matter how much I wanted to pretend. Not with Mercury and Jupiter hunting me.And I refused to bring any more ghosts from my past to Rhys’s doorstep.

“Just going for a walk,” I said and let my shoulders slump. “It’s a little too cold to go outside.”

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