Savage Vandal (82 Street Vandals Book 1)

by Heather Long

  He glanced over his shoulder at me.

  “Go on.”

  Okay.

  I went to the next door that I thought went into Rome’s room, but I guess it was Liam’s? Maybe that was why he slept here? Then again…

  Whatever, I went into my room and found shoes, they were in the very bottom of the dresser under some jeans. I put on some warmer leggings and then the shoes. It felt weird to tie on the sneakers, and it took a minute with my arm still in the splint. I couldn’t find a jacket I could get over it, and when Rome appeared in the doorway, I held up the wrist.

  He grunted, then disappeared again.

  I managed to run a brush through my hair and brushed my teeth by the time he came back, this time holding a larger hoodie, darker colored than his. He zipped me into it, then pulled the hood up.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Do you really care?” He shot me a faint grin. “Or would you rather get out of this place and see some sunshine?”

  Fuck it.

  “Sold.”

  “Then come on.”

  Chapter 14

  Emersyn

  When Rome said we were going to see sunlight, he hadn’t been kidding. The air was brisk, but I savored the cold wash of it against my cheeks, even as I had to squint against the too bright light of the sun. I hesitated just outside the main doors. We’d passed the room where I’d seen Eric without slowing, and instead of the big rolling doors, Rome pushed open a smaller one I hadn’t seen and it let us out into a dingy little alley.

  The smell of exhaust tangled with dampness, oil, trash—my nose wrinkled at the last—then a breeze pushed chillier air down the street from where cars thrummed as they drove past. It was almost sensory overload after weeks of being inside. I tipped my head back to look at the building I’d been in. It definitely had the look of an old, well-used warehouse. The wood was dark and stained, the roof stretched higher easily two, maybe three stories.

  Did they use that space?

  “Come on, princess.”

  I clenched my teeth at that nickname. “Don’t call me that.” I loathed it with every fiber of my being. He called me that, and I didn’t want to hear it from anyone.

  Rome shot me a curious look, then shrugged. “Starling then, come along.”

  Irritation scraped under my skin. Now was my chance, I had on shoes and clothes. I could make a run for it. Rome wasn’t even looking at me, he’d headed down the alley with a backpack over his shoulder. I could run.

  But where would I go? I needed the lay of the land. I didn’t know anything about the area. Following Rome, however, wasn’t the right answer if I wanted to get away. I knew it, and when he glanced at me over his shoulder, I recognized that he knew it too. The corner of his mouth curved, and then he looked away again.

  Stuffing my hands in the pockets of my borrowed hoodie, I hurried to keep up with him. Honestly, I was a little breathless after three blocks. Holy crap, a month of not working out was going to be the death of me. Focusing on my breath control, I refused to pant. Panting could flood the body with a quick fusion of oxygen, but deeper breaths worked better for longer, sustained performance.

  The morning streets were crowded.

  And it was morning because a local bank ahead had a digital clock that flashed nine-thirty in the morning, temperature forty-two degrees, and the date was…

  I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and waited for the date to flash up there again.

  Time.

  Temperature.

  Date.

  Someone bumped into me and jostled me. Then another person did.

  “Move,” a woman snapped when I stepped into her path, and I shifted to get closer to the curb. A car horn blasted at me, and then a hand gripped my upper arm and pulled me back from the road. I swung my head to find Rome staring at me. Unlike when I stood still on the sidewalk, no one bounced into him or me. They took a wide step around us both.

  “You okay, Starling?”

  “Has it really been almost six weeks?”

  How many days had I lost? I knew it had been a month. But holy shit.

  It was deep into winter now. No wonder it was so damn cold.

  Rome glanced from me, then across the street and back. The blue of his eyes was like ice, gleaming and yet opaque. No emotion reflected in his expression as he looked me over. “Yeah.”

  That was it.

  Nothing else.

  Just ‘yeah.’

  “Come on,” he said, and this time, he held onto my arm as he started walking again. All of the guys were tall, but right here on the street while he was holding my arm, he seemed even bigger. Lean where Vaughn was thicker in the shoulders and the chest, but I’d seen the ripple of muscle Rome sported. He might be skinnier than the other guys, but he was still wiry. Jasper and Kestrel were built similarly, tall, broad shoulders and thick arms, but narrower at the waist.

  Vaughn was just big.

  Weirdly, he was also the one I felt the most relaxed with.

  Arguably, he was the most dangerous.

  I tried to match Rome’s pace, but his legs were a lot longer and I had to take two steps for every one of his. The thoughts pinged off each other. Six weeks. The guys—my kidnappers, arguably the men keeping me hostage—had become more familiar over the last few weeks, and I’d gotten comfortable. We even had routines. It was deep into winter. The show was probably in Florida now? There was a European leg coming for January and February, and then I was done.

  I was free.

  Except, I wasn’t with the show and I was far from free.

  It wasn’t until Rome came to a stop that I glanced around. We’d walked a few blocks. It was busier here. There were shops up and down the street. A lot of them had holiday decorations in the windows. Christmas had to be coming. I guess it didn’t snow here that much.

  One window display showed a toy train chugging through the snow-capped ‘mountains’ with toys in the back. It was kind of cute. I hadn’t spent a Christmas at home in a few years. They probably had the big tree up in the main hall, and they’d be getting ready for the winter formal they hosted each year for their friends.

  “Starling, you want anything?” Rome nudged me again, and I blinked. We were standing in front of a really pretty black lady with gorgeous gold piercing through her left eyebrow and a second glittering diamond in the corner of her nose. Her full lips were shiny with gloss, but she had the most perfect complexion. Her hair was dyed a rich shade of purple, and she had it all piled up on her head like a crown.

  “It’s coffee, sugar. You look like you could use some. You tie one on with these assholes last night?” She thumped Rome, and I blinked again. “Don’t ever try to keep up with them.” She filled a huge cup with black coffee. The smell of it had my mouth watering. It was a dark roast, but I would swear it had to be like an expensive bean.

  “I’m just…distracted. Thank you,” I told her as she held out the cup.

  “You want anything in it? I got some of those fancier creamers,” she told me with a wink. “Flavored if you prefer. Even got peppermint mocha, but it’s my own stash.” A real smile lit her up and transformed her from pretty to downright beautiful.

  I didn’t even try to swallow my smile this time. “No, thank you for the offer though. Just black is fine.”

  “I got you, girl. You want something to eat? Rome here is buying. Get one of everything.”

  “Nikki,” Rome said with a sigh, and she laughed, flicking her fingers at him dismissively.

  “You dragging this poor child out with you for one of your days, she needs all the calories she can get. Besides, she’s so tiny. I could put you in my pocket and keep you.”

  I burst out laughing at that. “I might be tiny, but I’m also mean.”

  “Oh I like you.”

  Rome stared at me like I’d grown a second head, and some of my humor dried up.

  “I like you too, and the coffee is great. I’m not
really hungry.”

  “All right then,” Nikki responded with an aggrieved sigh. “If you gotta be that way. You bring her back to see me, Rome Cleary, you got it?”

  “I hear you,” he replied in a noncommittal tone. He stuffed a twenty-dollar bill into the jar on her counter and then lifted his own coffee before jerking his chin for me to walk. He didn’t go as fast this time, and I kept up. The coffee helped.

  Six weeks.

  It seemed impossible that it had been that long. The world had just gone on without me. Insignificant to the end. My ankle ached, and more than half my coffee was gone before Rome turned a corner and led me along a narrow alleyway that angled downhill. The sunshine was absent from the alley, though a damp trickle of brackish water filled the center.

  I wrinkled my nose at the smell and followed Rome as he reached the end, and when he hopped down, I paused. It was a broken basketball court, the tarmac that made up the center had cracked and fissured, buckling in places. There were metal poles leaning on opposite ends with no hoop baskets, and the white paint marking the zones was so faded, I didn’t think I’d have noticed it if not for the rest of the layout. The alley we were in dead-ended at the upper lip of a crumbling cement wall.

  Rome set his backpack down and turned to me. “Jump.”

  I stared at him as he held out his arms, then down at the wall and the six-foot drop.

  The stubborn part of me wanted to just jump and land on my own. But the combination of uneven pavement and newly healed ankle coupled with the splint still on my arm, and I risked further injury. I had to heal up if I was supposed to get away. I moved to sit on the wall, then handed him my coffee cup. He put it to the side, then reached for me.

  Pushing off the moment his hands touched my hips, I braced my good hand against his shoulder, and it was hard to miss how tense he was as I slid down the length of him until he put me on my feet. Heat penetrated the hoodie and seemed to roll off him in waves. Suddenly, I wasn’t chilled anymore. He lingered for longer than a moment, and his gaze seemed riveted on me.

  “Get your coffee,” he said, releasing me and breaking the spell. I swayed as he turned away and grabbed his bag and his own coffee cup. As I picked up mine, I tried to regather my composure, but I seemed to have left it, along with my common sense, back up on the wall.

  I was not attracted to the surly, silent twin with his penetrating stares and curt words.

  I wasn’t.

  Kidnapper, I reminded myself. He was one of my kidnappers. Maybe he wasn’t there that night, but he’d been one of my keepers since then.

  “You coming?” He was halfway across the broken basketball court and heading to the far wall. Like the wall we’d climbed down, it was also cracked and crumbling. There was old and fading graffiti along different parts of the wall. Numbers. Names. But the section he was heading for was a lot different.

  It was painted like a beach, right down to the way the water rippled in. It looked real.

  Like really real.

  He dropped his backpack and drained his coffee. Then he tugged off his hoodie and his shirt came next. I blinked. We were in the sun and it was great on my back, but the air was still freezing. He stuffed the shirt into his hoodie and then unzipped the bag. There were cans upon cans of paint in it, and he shot me a grin.

  Then turned away. Two cans in hand, he moved to the next section of the wall next to the beach that looked so real, you could step out on it and so utterly incongruous to where we were. The dilapidated play-court with the broken pavement, listing poles, and surrounded by sad buildings with their broken windows covered over by cardboard and tape.

  It was almost eerie. It was even harder to believe that there was a busy street just up that alley we’d walked down. We might as well have disappeared into some other place. At the first spray of the nozzle, I turned to find Rome focused on the wall. He was moving the can of spray paint in waves, and it wasn’t long before the beach had been extended.

  With not much else to do, I sat slowly, riveted by the almost hypnotic motions as he worked from can to can. Beach. Shells. Ocean. Foam. Then sky. The sun moved overhead, and my coffee was gone and I had my arms crossed as I huddled in my hoodie. As long as the sun was on me, I wasn’t too cold. A couple of times, I’d gotten up and moved around. Then I’d stretched, but I stayed where I could see Rome work.

  I kind of thought he’d forgotten about me. The beach had covered maybe ten feet of wall, and he added another ten feet of it. Though he kept going back and forth. At first, I couldn’t figure out why. Then there were seashells on the beach. An abandoned pail. A ball buried in the sand. It was…exquisite.

  Rome had to have painted that picture on my wall, the one that didn’t even have a frame and yet had the feeling of being three-dimensional.

  He went through can after can of spray paint. His torso and fingers were splattered with it. I suddenly understood why he’d taken off his shirt. It also let me watch him move, the way his muscles rippled. He was wiry, built like a dancer in some ways—all long lines and lean strength. I’d say he moved like one, but his focus was too specific, all the grace was in his hands, everything else an afterthought.

  I was on my third set of stretches when he finally took a step back and cocked his head to the side as he stared at the wall. The water had foamy caps where it rolled in. The sand was golden, a burnished shade that would be a little coarse under your feet and not as soft as say the white sands in some places, but it would still be sweet.

  Everything about the painting that now took up about twenty-five feet of broken and crumbling concrete wall was an invitation to escape. He’d even incorporated some of the graffiti that had been present by making it shadows in the sand or in one place, a word that looked like it had been etched with a stick.

  I had to step closer, but it said starling.

  “You do really good work,” I told him, and he jerked a little before turning to look at me. He blinked like he had to refocus his eyes, and I almost laughed.

  “You’re still here,” he said, then gave me an almost heartbreaking smile. “But it’s cold.” The smile vanished, and he was packing up his stuff. The sun was already edging down in the west. We’d been here all day, and my stomach had started rumbling earlier, but I ignored it. Watching Rome work had been fascinating. “You should have told me it was getting colder.”

  “You were the one without a shirt,” I reminded him. “Even your nipples are on point.”

  He paused to glance down at himself, then shrugged before he pulled the shirt on over his paint splattered chest. The hoodie was next, and he scooped up the bag with the mostly empty paint cans. They had to be mostly empty after what he’d done.

  “I’ve survived worse,” he told me.

  “So have I.”

  Since we were done, I pivoted and headed for the wall we’d come down before, and I didn’t wait for him to help. I just gripped the edge with my good hand and pulled, even as I used the broken bits in the wall to climb. At the top, I glanced back to find him staring at me.

  “You coming?” I repeated his phrase from earlier, and the corners of his mouth curved. A bottle smashed behind me, and I turned in time to see three guys I didn’t know heading toward me.

  “Well, well, well, what have we here?”

  Chapter 15

  Emersyn

  The crash of the bottle and the splintered glass scattering wasn’t my concern. The way the three moved, swaggering and spreading out like they wanted to cut me off from any avenues of escape worried me. I didn’t recognize them, and in the half-light of the alley, I couldn’t make out much of their features. Of the three, one moved with a faint limp, a second one had his jacket tied around his waist, and the third one wore his baseball cap backwards.

  “Hey, pretty girl, you lost?” Backwards Baseball Cap asked, his lips curling into a less than friendly smile.

  “She looks lost,” Faint Limp suggested as he moved sideways with a shuffle step. He wasn’t quite bending h
is left knee.

  He’d be the way to go if I had to get past them.

  “Nah, she’s not lost,” Jacket Around His Waist threw into the conversation as he strolled right up toward me. “We’ve got you. Don’t we, pretty girl?”

  They were all medium build to tall, most of them were skinny though. Not muscular. Didn’t matter. Most guys started off stronger than girls. Biological bullshit rules. Mother Nature had a really vicious sense of humor if you asked me.

  I shifted my weight to the balls of my feet. The splint would protect my wrist, but one thing weeks of inactivity had done for me—my bruises had healed. I could breathe better. My chest no longer constricted. My ankle was solid, tired and a little achy, but solid. Even the headache from the concussion no longer plagued me.

  If I had been working out, I’d be more confident, but I had stretched and I was warmed up. I knew the distance between the top of the wall where I stood and the uneven ground below. If I jumped, I’d make it. Rome was down there too. I didn’t turn to check. I didn’t dare give these guys my back, and I sure as fuck didn’t want to warn them I wasn’t alone.

  The smell wafting off Jacket Around His Waist hit me with eye watering force. Sweaty body odor, alcohol, and something like day old garbage rolled into me. I swore it had to be coming off him in waves.

  He was within arm’s reach when he grinned this vicious little smile, but a hand clamped down on his arm before he reached me. Rome had come up from behind me. One minute, he wasn’t there, and the next, he just surged up next to and then in front of me. He moved like a wraith. No words. No warnings. No sound.

  Well, the sound of Jacket Around His Waist’s arm breaking echoed through the sudden plummet of silence. The man let out a shriek and there was a flash of a knife, but Rome was already moving, twisting the guy around and shoving him forward. A paint can flashed up in his hand, and he sprayed it at Backwards Baseball Cap, leaving the man clawing at his eyes, and then he grappled with the third one as he swung a knife.