Crash and Burn (1)

we both want him dead

**HI. I KNOW.

♚ ♛

I TRIED TO TRACE THE WORDS FROM HIS LIPS, but I couldn't find where it tangled between a promise and a vow and tightened into an icy threat, where it began and ended. It felt infinite and volatile, surrendered in seconds to a stormy sky, as if he'd never said it.

His gaze fell away.

He sidestepped me, in a single... long, fluid motion, to circle the perimeter of the fire escape, and I twisted quickly, cautiously, a moth to a flame, an angel of death in the darkness.

"What..."

My head felt murky. Warnings I couldn't waste time on. His light, practiced footsteps, Quiet. Careful. His entire existence, reduced to minimum volume, attempting to reach a decibel below human hearing range. Lean, lithe, jerking at a low-hung ladder (a ghostly, barely there clank) reaching for iron rungs, hoisting himself up. Somehow, with unnerving ease, playing Night Stalker in New York.

Breathe.

Slowing.

He turned and peered down at me, almost curiously, from a single story above, a romantic retelling of a reverse Romeo. "I thought you had a plan," he called, and I jolted, gaze skittering, ducking for the ladder to follow him. His low voice, less cold, leaning towards a lukewarm amusement. I straightened beside him, and it flashed wildly between wet blinks, heavy, slanted shadows—a rueful smile.

My heart tripped. Instinct. Run.

No.

I could do this.

Breathe.

I trailed him up a swaying staircase, up another set of rusted, iron steps, and another, acutely aware of how easy it could be to kill him. He didn't look back. His reflection in a dark, broken window. His shadow, flitting against rotten plywood. There. Gone. He froze, half-way to the fifth story, before spinning on the staircase, and I went rigid, clenching my fingers around a wet railing, an inch round, below my thigh, acutely aware of how easy it would be to kill me.

"What's your name?"

"Which one?" I asked hesitantly.

His lips twitched. "Both."

"I was Raine before." The truth tumbled out, and I drew a sharp breath as I realized, backtracking clumsily. "Now, I'm Lacey."

He hummed. "Which would you like to be called?"

I arched an eyebrow at him. "Whatever. Call me Raine."

"You look more like a Lacey."

"Okay, you can call me Lacey," I said slowly, blinking, gauging his reaction. It was a cool, careless nod, a streak of indifference that unraveled my nerves again. I'd chosen a fake name for semantics and protection. No one had ever really called me Lacey. He tried to turn, but I reached for his shoulder, catching him. "What's yours?"

His gaze flickered to my hand. He shook it off.

"Soren Calloway."

I swallowed hard as I nodded. "Okay."

Breathe.

"Lacey."

It came out fiercely soft, a foreign identity, simmering, dying in the space between us.

"I..."

It broke. His attention shifted lower, to a window that spanned his height, boarded up with a bruised sheet of plywood, leaning awkwardly, marked with a black X. Condemned.