Sinners & Spies

“Alright, that’s enough of that.”

A warm hand gripped the back of my neck, halting my frantic movements. It pulled me up from the pool of blood I was crouching in and spun me around so I was face to face with a set of cold hazel eyes.

They were too pretty to belong to someone who was standing over a corpse.

“Messy night,” the man murmured, a hint of amusement in his drawl. He had the kind of calm you’d use to sooth a skittish animal—the kind of calm instinctual to predators.

I swallowed as my eyes dropped to the butterfly knife in his hand. It was slick with the same blood that covered the body of the man in the orange jumpsuit on the floor, that same blood that seeped into the carpet fibers beneath my feet.

I’d done my best to sop up the mess, ripping my vintage denim jacket from my shoulders and raking it through the muck. The embroidered daisies had turned sinisterly from white to red, but I couldn’t stop scrubbing.

I hadn’t noticed Hazel Eyes when I’d stumbled into the room, or the two other men behind him, a pistol still casually slung in one of their hands. I’d just seen blood, and my knee-jerk reaction had kicked in.

The man’s grasp held me firmly in place, and my body obeyed instinctively, eyes going wide and knees threatening to buckle like a collared pup.

“Fletcher,” came a voice from behind me. One of the henchmen was crouched near my jacket, flipping open the wallet I’d tucked in the pocket. “Lyra Fletcher.”

He passed my ID to Hazel Eyes, who let out a low whistle and turned the card between two fingers. He studied it, then me.

A mischievous smile peeled across his mouth, exposing one dimple. He was beautiful in the cruelest kind of way.

“I d-didn’t see anything,” I stuttered. “I’ll just tell my friends I was in the bathroom and…”

I trailed off, the words dying in my throat as I ran out of explanation.

Friends? What friends? Tonight was my mother’s desperate attempt at setting me up, and I’d run before the blind date could even start. All I’d wanted was to find the exit, and instead I’d ended up here.

The man clocked my attempt at deception immediately and tightened his grip on my neck, the lean muscles of his forearm flexing. “Pretty little liar.”

Heat flooded my cheeks. “I’m n-not…”

He smirked, leaning in close enough for me to see the flecks in his eyes, green catching at the edges of brown. Dizzying.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he murmured, breath hot in my ear. “You’re covered in him.”

I followed his gaze down the length of my body, where the blood had dried tacky on my hands, stained into the fabric at my knees.

There was no denying it. I was part of this now.

For a moment, I burned with rage. What kind of mob bosses murdered someone in the back room of a bar and didn’t even think to lock the door?

But Hazel Eyes didn’t look surprised to find me here in the middle of his homicide. He just studied me with an unsettling curiosity.

And for the second time tonight, I felt like prey.

“Are you serious?” one of the others cut in. “She’s obviously not right in the head.”

Hazel Eyes didn’t look away from me. His smile turned absolutely wicked. “I prefer them crazy.”

A shiver shot through me. Wrong reaction, I could tell he was amused by my terror.

“So I’ll tell you what,” he said, grin blooming wider. “Since we’ve had a recent opening…you’ve just got yourself a new job.”

“And you either take it,” he said, “or you end up like my friend here.” He tipped his head toward the corpse at our feet, where the man’s orange jumpsuit was now stained a deep rust. Blood still creeped out from the body in every direction, reaching toward me like an omen.

“Don’t worry,” Hazel Eyes murmured directly into my ear. His breath was hot against my neck. “Not all of my employees meet the pointy end.” He twirled the knife between his fingers. “Just the ones who don’t know how to keep their mouths shut.”

I could only nod my head, slow and small, like I had any choice in the matter.

The man smiled wide.

“Congratulations, gentlemen,” he said, waving my ID through the air with his free hand like a trophy.

“Looks like we just found ourselves a new Orange.”