Page 1055 of One More Kiss

Jett shook his head. “We don’t know why he attacked you, if you were the target or he was using you to get to Clara. Either way, he knows what he’s up against now. He’s not going anywhere.”

I knew exactly who Fin was after, and why. I should probably share, but there might be more than one enemy. I was keeping them safe.

Yeah right. Still, I didn’t want them asking more questions about me. Time to deflect.

“Are you sure you weren’t the target?” I took a bite of the toast and swallowed before continuing. “He might have been using me to get to you.”

“Nope. If I was the target he’d have been shooting to kill, not tranquilize.” He tapped something on his laptop and the footage we’d looked at yesterday popped up on the television screen. “It was you or Clara.”

He looked up and met my eyes. “And from what I saw last night, I think it was you.”

I glanced away towards Clara, not able to hold his gaze. Clara gave me a meaningful look. I knew what she was saying, no words needed. This was my chance to come clean about my sister and ask Jett for his help.

But he wouldn’t give me the gem. He’d said it was under his protection which meant he knew exactly what it did. He wouldn’t let me use it to get into Faerie Land. No matter how nicely I asked.

Jett hit play on his computer and we watched the security footage he’d spliced together. There were shots of the buildings surrounding the cafe.

“Look, there.” Jett tapped the computer monitor with his cursor, the image appearing huge on the overhead screen. “And there.” He tapped a different spot.

“What are we looking at?”

“See those flashes?” He rewound the footage so we could watch it again. Sure enough, up on the roof there was a flash of light. The same thing happened on the other roof. “Sunlight on metal. Most likely the shooters guns.”

He rewound so we could watch it again. “Which means there was more than one shooter. And if the Fae was working alone, that means more than one enemy.”

Shark’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket and frowned at the screen. “We’ve got to go, Boss.” He handed the phone to Jett.

Jett’s eyes scanned the device before he handed it back.

“Here.” He spun the laptop towards me. “Keep watching and see if you notice anything else. We won’t be gone long.”

He pushed back from the table and stood. “When I get back, you and I are going to have a good, long talk about who the target was.”

They left the room, leaving Clara and I alone with the remnants of breakfast. I stacked the plates and took them into the kitchen. Clara joined me with an armful of mugs and started filling the sink with hot water and dish soap. “I’ll do this,” she said. “You go and do the computer thing.”

“Actually, there’s something else I need to do.” I emptied the scraps into the bin and put the plates on the counter. “I might be gone a while.

Clara put her hand on my arm. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

“I’m going after Jett,” I said. It was a lie, but it was the only thing I could come up with on short notice that let me get out of there without any more questions.

The truth was that I’d made a decision.

I had two choices. I could ask Jett for help and convince him to let me use the gem to get into Faerie Land. That meant he’d want to tag along, assuming he actually agreed in the first place.

Or I could stop making things hard for myself and go with Fin. He wanted to take me to Faerie Land. Sure, he had his own reasons. But I was confident that I could get away from him once he got me through the Midnight Gate. All I needed to do was get in.

I’d lost focus of my goal somewhere along the line, which was to rescue Alyssia. Step one was getting to Faerie Land, and I’d let my focus on the gem distract me from the facts. It didn’t matter how I got there, and I didn’t need the gem when I had Fin, a Fae who wanted to take me there.

I’d made my decision.

I was going to hand myself over to a pissed off Fae and hope he didn’t hold it against me that he’d been struck down by an iron tipped arrow and I was the reason.

“Good luck,” said Clara. She looked hopeful and I felt bad about the lie.

“Thanks,” I said. I was going to need it.

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