The Found (Crow City #2) - Cole McCade Page 0,1

between, where only one question mattered:

Keep him, or let him go.

I…I need…

I need you.

And that terrifies me.

“I can’t,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “I can’t, I don’t know what you want, please—”

“Tell me.”

She turned away, pressing her face into hands wet with crimson and filled with the coppery scent of a life taken, of blood spilled.

“I need you to say it,” he snarled. “I cannot do it for you. For once in your life…”

She closed her eyes. She couldn’t stand it but he wouldn’t stop, cutting her open in that way only he could, tearing into her deepest weaknesses and spitting acid in the bleeding wound.

“For once in your life, Willow…choose for yourself.”

CHAPTER ONE

WILLOW STARED DOWN AT THE phone, and told herself to make the call.

In the slanting golden bars of three p.m. sunlight, The Track was quiet: filled with nothing but a few day drinkers holding down their stools, and the stale scent of old smoke. The owner leaned behind the bar, staring off at nothing. Or…Willow thought he was staring at nothing. Maybe he was staring at her, and judging her for sitting here with her palms sweaty and her nerves prickling little sharp needles along her arms. The bar was hot as a suckling mouth, but still she was cold as a December morning—and something in that eerie false eye of his spoke to her as if he knew. She could never be sure where he was looking, with that glass eye that made her think of a green marbled fish bowl. She thought his name was Gary, but she’d never had the courage to ask. The few times she’d ever come here, he’d looked at her like she was missing something; something he hoped to find in every new face that came through the door.

It’s not in me, she thought. Whatever you’re looking for…it’s not in me.

There’s nothing in me. I’m too small.

I’m too small to hold anything at all.

She was too small to make this phone call. There wasn’t space enough inside her to fit both her courage and her pride, and her pride said making this call would make her even smaller still. A beggar. A pauper. This sad, pathetic epitome of failure to launch who couldn’t even get her feet off the ground, let alone reach for something above herself.

Maxi’s arm brushed hers, her thick, soft warmth shifting at Willow’s side. She swilled her beer straight from the bottle, propped her chin in a heavy hand, and eyed Willow with her gaze gleaming yellow as a canny old owl’s and the witch-marks along her face swirling into new patterns with every purse of her lips and arch of her brow. The pattern of dots corkscrewed into a spiral now as she twisted her mouth, and the tattooed lines sank into the dimple plunging deep into her dark brown skin.

“It ain’t gonna dial itself, you know,” Maxi said.

Willow winced. “Mn.”

“Want me to do it?”

“No. Yes? Maybe. No.”

She pressed her thumb over the listing for Devon West in her phone’s address book, but didn’t lift. As long as she didn’t lift, didn’t complete the gesture, the touchscreen wouldn’t actually click and she could avoid this for a little longer. Her breaths shook. She slid her thumb up and down the slick screen, making the rows of names and numbers scroll, but still didn’t lift.

“I think I need to be drunk for this.” She laughed; it hurt like swallowing scissors, this cold and cutting thing in her throat. “I can’t afford to get drunk for this. That’s the problem.”

Maxi snorted. “I’ll buy you a round of tequila if you’ll stop mooning and damned well do it.”

Maybe-Gary scowled, swiveling his head toward them. “Goddammit, Maxi, stop nagging the girl and let her do what she’s gonna do.”

Maxi thrust out both middle fingers. “Shove it up your hole, you crotchety old shit.”

“Love you too.”

“Love ain’t free, asshole. And you ain’t got the collateral.” Maxi eyed him, then pointedly twisted her stool to give Gary her back and Willow her ample, sagging front. “Don’t know why I put up with his shit, I swear. Talk to me, girl. Why you so scared? Sure it ain’t nothing tequila can’t fix?”

“That’s not…I mean…” Willow swallowed. She wanted to say I’m not scared, but it would be a lie. “No tequila. I’m calling. I’m calling.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I am.”

“Don’t see that finger moving.”

Willow wrinkled her nose at Maxi, expelled a heavy breath…and lifted her thumb off the touchscreen. That little pop-click of a button press