Page 14 of Ricochet

Adelia shook the image of what her life had almost become from her mind. Shecould rack her brain for days, wondering where the next buy would be or which chapters they could skim money from. She could obsess over which Mayhem chapters had surges in business or pester her sorta-step mom, lawyer to the criminal underworld, Lenora, to see what she knew. But it would be a never-ending spiral.

Seven folded the corners of a piece of paper, and Adelia tapped her teeth, knowinghow quiet Seven was keeping her nerves.

Seven scrunched the paper as Adelia cleaned the browser history and closed tabs. Her ears pricked. “Did you hear something?”

Seven’s tongue ring froze on her lip, and her eyes darted toward the office door. “No?”

“No, period, or no, maybe, I’m not sure?” A tickle of sweat sprang under her hairline.

Seven’s pink hair fell over her forehead, and she slappedit out of the way. “Just hurry up, or Ethan will walk in and shoot us both in the face.”

Adelia glared at the screen. She needed to confirm that their activity history was wiped away. Ethan might be a messy bookkeeper for the club treasurer, but she wasn’t about to leave clues for him to stumble upon. “What do they have? Dial-up?”

Seven picked a piece of cardstock from her purse and folded itinto a tiny shape. A complete confirmation popped on screen.

“That took long enough.” Seven popped the origami into her purse. “I want a drink the color of my hair.”

“Me too.” Adelia took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

The office door swung open before they took another step, and panic froze her mid-step while her mind flailed.

Lenora swept in, her insidious smile showing far too much pleasureas she caught both Adelia and Seven stuck in place. She click-clacked into Mayhem’s small office. “I’d say to work on your poker faces, but nothing will save you in here. Should I even guess what you’re up to?”

They’d been caught. They should be dead.

“We’re just leaving,” Seven finally managed.

Lenora lifted her eyebrow but trained her legal-eagle-dagger stare on Adelia. “How many more luckybreaks in life do you think you have?”

“I don’t,” she stumbled. “None, I mean.”

“Get out of here.” Lenora shooed them out. “You keep making rookie mistakes like this, you need to be good with what you’ve done so far.”

“What does that mean?” Seven snipped.

“She won’t live long enough to do anything else.” Lenora put her hands on her hips. “Have you done everything you need to? You’ve givenyour greatest good? Nothing left to strive for?”

Adelia quietly shook her head.

“Don’t talk like that,” Seven said.

“Someone needs to.” Lenora’s lips flattened. “You both are bigger than this.”

Bigger than helping save people? Adelia’s lips parted, but nothing came out as her step-mom turned on a heel far higher than she’d ever try and walked away, disgusted.

“Don’t listen to her,” Sevenwhispered.

How much more could Adelia do? Actually sacrifice her life?

It wasn’t enough to track down truckloads from distributors or save girls from small timers, offloading two or three people?

“She’s nuts.” Seven walked to the office door and peeked out, confirming Lenora was gone. “We can’t get too much bigger.”

Short of pimp killing, Seven was right. Though Tex had taught her to havea handy trigger finger. Maybe that had been the reason all along and Adelia had misunderstood everything?

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