“SHUT UP!” Michael hollers, throwing the car around another bend. Both Pip and I slam to the left, and my injured arm explodes with pain as I’m shoved up against the door. I haven’t had a chance to recover from the injury I sustained when Charlie wrote my car off, but it was getting slightly better each day. Now I’ve been shot, I’m back at square one. Worse than square one—this hurts so bad it makes my whole body burn. “Ahhh! Damnit!”

Pippa leans across me, drawing aside the torn, blood-soaked fabric of my shirt to reveal the deep gash at the top of my arm. “Oh, good lord, Sloane. Seriously? We need to take you to St. Peter’s.”

“We’re not going to St. Peter’s. We’re not going to any hospital, so you can just close your damn mouth.” She recoils like I’ve just turned on her unexpectedly. Like I’m a pet dog that’s been a beloved member of her family for years, always as soft as they come, and all of a sudden I’m baring my teeth. Well I am baring my teeth. And maybe I’ve been relatively easy going and easily controlled since she’s known me, but not any more. “Don’t say another word, Pippa, or I swear I’ll duct tape your mouth closed. I will deal with my injury. We’re not going to pull over and let you out, and I’m sure as hell not going to be telling Detective Lowell anything about my sister anytime soon. Are we clear?”

Pippa’s eyes are like reinforced steel. She’s not used to being spoken to like that, and the shock of it has turned to anger before I’m even done. She exhales out of her nose, flaring her nostrils.

“Perfectly. Perfectly, crystal clear.”

I recognize where we’re going as soon as we hit Seattle west. Michael pulls the car underneath the Spokane Street Swing Bridge and gets out of the car. Pippa looks like she’s weighing her options, deciding whether or not she wants to jump out of the car and make a bolt for it.

“I wouldn’t bother. He’s very polite most of the time, but Michael will have absolutely no qualms about tackling your ass to the ground.”

“And you’d let him do that?” she says, her voice cold and hard.

I just look at her. She called the cops on me, informed them where I was, wanted to hand me over, got me shot in the process…yeah, she can clearly see from my expression what I would let Michael do to her, I’m sure.

Michael hails a taxi, and then opens the car door for us. Cars rip by, the drivers leaning on their horns at the inconveniently abandoned Camaro on the side of the road, and Michael ushers us into the cab. We’re lucky it’s peak traffic hour, commuters headed to work, otherwise we wouldn’t have a chance of getting a ride.

We leave the Camaro behind.

By the time we’re out from underneath the cover of the swing bridge, we’re safely stowed in a sea of vehicles, a high percentage of which are taxis exactly like the one we are in. Michael wraps his suit jacket around me—three thousand dollars worth of Valentino, ruined—and glares formal but very serious daggers at Pippa. His message is clear: breathe one word inside this cab and you’re done for. Pip understands him just fine. She sits in stony silence. We all do, apart from the driver who hums along with the radio, oblivious to the fact that we’re all literally on the edge of our seats back here.

It takes twenty minutes in slow traffic to reach Kilpatrick, an oyster restaurant three blocks from Zeth’s other apartment. We get out, Michael pays the driver, slipping him an extra fifty, perhaps so he won’t mention the odd fare he just had, and then we’re walking through the blustery streets of Seattle.

“You can’t keep me with you forever, you realize,” Pip announces, walking close against Michael’s side. So close, the people we pass in the street can’t see he’s actually holding onto her arm, guiding her.

“We won’t need to keep you forever,” Michael replies. “Just long enough for Lowell to forget all about Sloane and her sister.”

Pippa snorts. “You haven’t heard this woman talk. She’s never going to forget about Sloane or her sister.”

Now it’s Michael’s turn to laugh under his breath. “Then perhaps you’d better get comfortable, after all.”

******

I’m shivering by the time we get inside; my body is going into mild shock, and it doesn’t help matters that the apartment is freezing cold. Michael immediately starts loading split logs into a real fireplace. I haven’t seen an apartment with a real fireplace in so long that the scene Michael creates banking the wood, shoving balled-up newspaper into the gaps and lighting it, is surreal. Pippa sits herself down on a white chaise longue—the last time I was here, a slim Asian woman was giving a handsome guy in a black leather mask a blowjob while some other guy screwed her from behind. Maybe I should warn Pip, but then again, maybe I shouldn’t. There’s no way Zeth would have kept ruined furniture, but even so…it serves her right if she sits in something unsavory.

Michael leads me to a hard-backed chair by the huge, polished wood table in the center of the room that looks like it’s new. He sits me down. “What do you need?” he asks.

“Boiling water.” I wince, the prospect already turning my stomach. “A knife. A sewing kit. Alcohol wipes if you have them. A bottle of vodka if you don’t.”

Thank crap for Michael. He nods then moves quickly through to the rear of the apartment, making very little noise as he locates what I need. When he comes back, he has a large first aid kit with him. Upon inspection, I find there’s a proper suture kit inside, along with a small ten blade, tweezers, and an anti-bacterial wash kit. After performing such a hack-job surgery on Alexis in Julio’s compound, this kit is very much a luxury.