and sultry smiles and interested looks from others.
Hartt focused and teleported, landing on one of the roofs of the tall dark grey stone buildings. The tight feeling in his breast loosened as he spotted the redhead again, and he didn’t try to decipher the reason why he had felt compelled to keep track of her, why he had felt a strange, almost desperate need to see her again.
He didn’t need to.
Every instinct he possessed told him there was something off about her.
Something wrong.
At first, he had thought she was simply looking for someone she knew, or perhaps she had lost her friends in the busy crowd.
Now, as he eased into a crouch at the edge of the pitched slate roof, he knew better.
His lips quirked into a half-smile.
She had been looking at everyone but him.
Diligently keeping those bright honey-coloured eyes away from him as she had scanned the crowd.
Eyes that now leaped to and locked onto the spot where he had been on the walkway.
A little frown creased her brow as she stared at it, and then her gaze was moving, roving over the crowd as that scowl intensified. Seeking him. He moved a foot to his right, pressed his side to the smoking chimney and peered around it, using it as cover as he observed her.
If he had to guess, he would say she was a fellow assassin.
He realised something else as she looked off to her right and her eyes remained fixed there, tracking something off to his left, at the opposite end of the square to the clock tower.
Hartt looked there too and cursed as he spotted what she had.
She was after the same mark as him.
His violet gaze leaped back to her, and something in the region of his stomach sank slowly towards his boots even as fire ignited in his veins. He had the terrible feeling that taking on this contract had been both a good and a terrible idea.
She was a beautiful distraction.
But he was going to have to kill her.
Chapter 2
Fuming wasn’t a strong enough word for how Mackenzie was feeling. Furious? Filled with rage? Liable to detonate at a moment’s notice? That one seemed to convey the fire that burned up her blood and ignited something dangerous inside her as she searched for the male she had spotted.
That fire only blazed hotter as she finally located him on a rooftop overlooking the square, felt his gaze light on her as a shiver that cascaded over her entire body.
And then he was gone.
She clenched her jaw and cursed him as he sprinted across the rooftops, leaping alleys with ease.
Closing in on her mark.
Another bloody assassin!
Worse, he was an elf.
That could only mean one thing—her client had some explaining to do.
She was sure he was the reason the most renowned assassin’s guild in Hell just tossed their hat into the ring and was following her mark.
Mackenzie was swift to move, slipped through the crowd and worked her way back to the raised walkway where she had been when she had first spotted the other assassin. Where the sight of him had completely arrested her, bewitching her as if he was a mage rather than an elf. Her blood chilled at that word. Mage. She shook it off, together with the unsettling effect the elf had on her, and bit out another ripe curse as she checked his position.
The black-haired bastard was above the target now, looming at the edge of the roof, peering down at them and looking for all the world as if he was contemplating leaping on them.
Maybe he was.
Damn him. He was forcing her hand. She hadn’t come here to take down her mark, wasn’t appropriately armed for a kill.
She had come here to follow up a lead, part of her not expecting the vampire to be here tonight. Her plan had been to study him if he was and see what she could learn about him, to gather intelligence she could use to form a plan of attack. She regretted not bringing her arsenal with her now, but she hadn’t known she would have competition.
She was going to have to improvise.
Another, fouler, curse rolled off her tongue as five demons formed a blockade ahead of her. She sprinted right at them, unwilling to let them slow her down, fear a potent motivator as her gaze flicked to the elf again and then to her target as the idiot stopped right below him.