AFTER TWO days of nothing to do but have sex and worry about the cops knocking on our door, Jamie and I were both about to tear down the walls of the shabby motel room where Aaron had abandoned us on the night of Santori’s murder. He’d done little more than bark a few orders as he left: “Stay here until you hear otherwise. Do not leave. And don’t breathe a word of what happened tonight. Not ever. Do you hear me, Kage?”

I had nodded numbly, hoping I was understanding him through the drug haze of whatever my uncle Santori had injected into my system. Jamie’s face swam in my vision, wide-eyed and scared. He’d been joking in the car after throwing Santori over the balcony and watching him plummet to his death, but even in my incapacitated state, I had known he was in shock. Of course he was. He’d just killed a man.

I remembered making a mental correction. Devil, not man. Because Santori had been as devoid of humanity as a person could be.

Now that Jamie had obsessed over it for two days without much to distract him, he was different. There were no more jokes, and his smiles were looking more and more forced as the hours dragged by. I didn’t know what to do for him, and it was eating me up from the inside out.

“Come back to bed, baby.” I patted the sagging mattress and gave what was meant to be a come hither look. “The bed bugs are starting to get lonely without you.”

His forlorn sigh was like a desert wind, blowing tumbleweeds through my soul.

“You don’t have to try to cheer me up, Kage. I’m just hungry, that’s all.” As if to punctuate his statement, his stomach growled loudly enough to be heard from all the way across the room where he stood in the doorway of the tiny bathroom, wearing nothing but his three-days-dirty boxers. He wrapped his arms around his midsection. “I think my stomach is touching my backbone.”

On the way to the motel, Aaron had taken us through a drive-thru and ordered six burgers— just enough to keep us from dying. We’d eaten one apiece on the first night, then I’d gotten up in the middle of the night and had another. The next day, I discovered that apparently Jamie had done the same. That left two apiece, and we scarfed those down on day two. Now there was no food in the room.

I’d been trying my best to ignore the rumbling in my own gut, but knowing that Jamie was hungry did something to me. It made me angry.

I jumped up off the bed. “That’s it. Screw Aaron’s no leaving rule. It’s almost three in the afternoon, and we need food.”

“Are you sure?” Jamie asked, but it wasn’t much of a fight. “We could always order a pizza. A greasy slab of pepperoni with cheese dripping down the sides would really hit the spot right now.”

“We’ve already been over that, Jamie. I don’t want anyone coming to this room. No one gets near you.”

“I know,” he groaned, tightening the bear hug on his own belly. “It’s just—”

“No way,” I said, pulling my jeans on and sliding my credit card into the pocket. I jammed my feet into my shoes, the back of one bending inward and digging into my heel. “Fuck it,” I growled, more for my own benefit than Jamie’s. “I’m a worthless piece of shit if I can’t even feed my fucking boyfriend.”

I slammed out of the room without looking back and headed to the front office. When I pushed open the glass door, a rusty bell clanged just above my head to announce my arrival. A young female desk clerk with a pink streak in her dark-rooted blond hair stared like I’d come to arrest her. From the glaze of her bloodshot eyes and the reek of weed, I could easily guess why.

“Food,” I barked irritably, leaning in through the front door as I held it open behind me.

“There’s a diner just down there.” The girl pointed in the general leftward direction, as if it was just too much trouble to be specific. “They make the best blueberry pancakes, but there aren’t a whole lot of seats. It’s usually standing room only, so if you don’t mind waiting— ”

“That’s fine. I’ll be getting it to go.” I let the door swing shut, hearing the bell clanging again behind me, and headed across the parking lot.

There weren’t many vehicles at the motel, and that fact helped to lessen my apprehension. I wasn’t sure how dangerous it was for me to be seen in public, but I figured it was a good idea to avoid unnecessary exposure just in case. The fresh air felt good in my lungs, and the daylight began to work its magic on me within seconds. My step had just gotten lighter as I rounded the building and stopped dead in my tracks, my heart stuttering in my chest.

A black Escalade sat just inside the motel entrance, looking ominous and out of place among the smattering of late model economy cars and the sea of vacant parking spaces. Instinct warned me that the SUV was there for Jamie and me, though whether it was friend or foe, I had no idea. I wasn’t about to go anywhere near it.

I changed course and walked back toward the room, willing my feet to move slowly and my posture to remain neutral. I could not draw attention by doing what I really wanted to do. Every cell in my body was screaming at me to run. To get back to Jamie as fast as I could, because what the fuck had I been thinking? Apparently my brain had turned to mush with all of the stress and uncertainty.

How in God’s name had I ever thought it was a better idea to leave Jamie all alone rather than have a pizza delivered? At the time, it had made sense. Now I realized that anyone could have been watching, and the moment I left the room, they could have— Well, I shuddered to think what could have happened.

I slipped back into the room, trying to get my breathing under control. And my thoughts. I had to be strong for both of us.

“That was quick.” Jamie looked up at me from the bed where he’d settled in to watch Cartoon Network. He used the remote to mute the TV, then turned back to me with a devastated frown. “Where’s the food?”

“They said the restaurant is too far to walk.” The lie slipped easily from my lips. Too easily. “We’ll just have to wait. I’m sure it won’t be too much longer.”

Jamie regarded me with narrowed eyes. “Too far to walk, huh? This coming from a guy who runs three miles every morning?”

I shrugged and sat heavily on the edge of the bed, weighed down by the burden of my lie. “What can I say? I’m weak from lack of calories. Not to mention it was burgers, Jamie. I need real food. Clean food. It’ll take me two weeks to recover from eating nothing but burgers for three days.”

“Technically, you only ate burgers for a night and a day. Today you’re starving.”

“Starving?” I laughed, trying to cut the tension. “I’ve been through worse. Don’t forget I had to cut thirty pounds in eleven days while still keeping my strength up enough to win a fight. I’m tough, baby.”

That coaxed a little smile out of him. “Yeah, you are.”

“It’s you I’m worried about.”

Jamie’s frown was not lost on me.

I glanced over at the bathroom, a nasty box made of tiny pink tiles with grout lines that had blackened with age and lack of proper cleaning. No telling what myriad germs had made those dark crevices their home.

I had shuddered all the way through the one lukewarm shower I’d taken, groping around in virtual darkness behind a mildewed vinyl shower curtain that shut out the dim glow of the overhead light. A dark rust stain led the eye down into the drain hole, and I thought shower shoes had never seemed such a fine invention.

At one point during my shower in Hell, my fingers had sunk into something soft and gooey— eventually identified as a disintegrated bar of Ivory soap— and I’d gagged and slung the shower curtain aside to investigate.

It had been a nightmarish experience, and not one I wanted to repeat, but right now a shower was seeming like a really good idea. It would do away with the need for talk and lessen the chances that Jamie would find out about the black SUV that was stalking us. It was so hard to lie to him, especially when he looked at me with those eyes.

“I think I’ll take a shower,” I said, stretching my arms over my head. “My muscles are getting stiff from being so sedentary, and the hot water will help loosen them up.”

“Hot water is a nice fantasy, Kage. Too bad there’s none in that shower. It’ll be ice cold in five minutes, and then you’ll come out of there stiffer than when you went in.” Jamie cocked his head and grinned. A real grin. “Then again, stiffer sounds good.”

The shower was forgotten. How was it that he could get me going no matter what the circumstances were?

I climbed onto the bed beside him and ran a hand up his bare leg, the crisp hairs tickling my fingertips in the most delicious way. His boxers gaped open just enough to tempt, and I reached out to slip a hand inside.

“God, yeah,” Jamie breathed as I found his cock and felt it firming up within the circle of my grip.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of touching you, Jamie. Your body was made for my hands.”

I started stroking him, passion sizzling through me at the feel of his body responding to my touch. He sank his teeth into his bottom lip as he pushed up into my hand. I knew if I stopped now he would beg, and God did I ever get off on that. He needed me as much as I needed him. No one had ever craved my touch like he did.

When I had him squirming, and his breathing had picked up, I bent to take him into my mouth, dying to taste him. Who needed food when I had a feast like this laid out before me just begging to be eaten? I wrapped my lips around the head of his cock and sucked it gently, teasingly— something I never would have done before I met Jamie Atwood.

Then the phone rang, and I came up off of him like I’d been shot. Jamie had rolled away from me, and I knew his heart had to be hammering as hard as mine.

“Fuck!” I yelled before I could process the new development. All I knew in that instant was that something had interrupted me from my single-minded task of seducing my boyfriend and had scared the bejeezus out of both of us.

Then it dawned on me how odd it was for the hotel phone to be ringing at all. I knew that the only way to contact us was by landline, since both of our phones had already died despite our efforts to conserve battery life, but that knowledge had not lessened the shock of hearing it actually ring.

“You gonna get that?” Jamie asked after the third ring, tucking his junk back into his boxers as if the person on the other end of the line would be able to see us.

“Oh. Yeah.” I sprang into action and dove to get the phone before whoever was on the other end of the line gave up. The handset clattered as I clumsily worked it out of its cradle and up to my ear. “Hello?” I asked tentatively.

A man’s voice, deep and gravelly, sounded over the line. He wasted no time getting down to business. “There’s a black Escalade waiting for you out front. Check out of the hotel, put your boyfriend on a plane back to school, and go home. But I’m warning you… Keep your fucking mouths shut. You’re not out of the woods yet.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, hoping rather than expecting a straight answer.

Aaron’s tight-lipped secrecy had sent a message loud and clear— that in the aftermath of Santori’s death, Jamie and I had been reassigned. Now, instead of participants, we were spectators.

“That’s none of your concern. You and Jamie spent a couple of days at a hotel, that’s all. The registry shows you checking in just after five on the afternoon in question. Beyond that, you know nothing.”

“But why should we say we were here? Don’t we need a story that doesn’t include hiding out? I live in a hotel. A nice one. Why would I want to take Jamie to this dump?”

“Say whatever you want. That part isn’t important, because your alibi is airtight. There is a record of both you and Jamie checking into a hotel minutes before Santori was witnessed jumping to his death in an apparent suicide, and the authorities found no signs of foul play. Who cares why you were there? You were. That’s all that matters.”

“I don’t understand. Please, tell me something. How did they find no signs of foul play? What about the smashed coffee table? What about Aldo’s body?”

“All things you shouldn’t concern yourself with.”

I groaned, feeling like a child trying to butt into an adult conversation and getting shut down. “Why are we not out of the woods, then? Can you at least tell me that?”

The stranger on the other end of the line chuckled. “You’ll never be out of the woods, son. Not until the day you die.”

A chill skittered up my spine at his words. “Who are you?”

“A friend.”

“Well, I need a name,” I tried, sensing the futility of it. “So I know who to thank.”

“You want to thank me?” he growled. “Then try not to kill anyone else. Do you hear me? I don’t want to ever have to clean up your mess again.”

The line went dead.

Jamie sat on the bed staring at me with wide eyes, his throat working visibly to swallow. “What the heck was that?”

I took a deep breath, consciously slowing my heart rate, and gathered my strength. Then I hung up the phone and turned to him with a smile that was all muscle and no feeling. “Get your pants on, college boy. We’re free to go.”

“Just like that? Why did he say we’re not out of the woods?”

I didn’t want to worry Jamie after he’d already been through so much, and I certainly didn’t want to repeat what the man had said to me.

Not until the day you die.

The word die might remind Jamie that he’d killed someone, and I had just spent the last two days trying to fuck that memory right out of his head. Instead of answering the question, I grabbed Jamie’s jeans and walked them over to him, dropping to my knees and working the denim over his feet and up his legs.

“I hate covering up this body.” I said, grinning up at him. “I’ve had you naked and all to myself for days. Not sure if I even want to go back to civilization.”

When I got the pants as far up as they would go with Jamie still seated, he stood without prompting and let me slide them up his hips. As an afterthought, I pressed a quick kiss on the front of his boxers just before situating his waistband and zipping the jeans.

“There. All covered. Now get your shoes and shirt on.”

“Kage?” Jamie prodded, his pretty face contorting with poorly disguised worry. “Are you going to answer my question?”

I reached down to thumb through the complimentary Bible on the bedside table and said absently, “You just have to be careful in life, that’s all he meant. Like don’t be paranoid, but be aware that there’s always that one-percent chance things won’t go your way.”

Jamie’s shoulders relaxed a fraction. “So you’re saying we’re ninety-nine percent in the clear?”

I had to smile, charmed by the hopeful look on his face. He was so adorably naïve. “Yes, baby. That’s what I’m saying.”

I didn’t bother pointing out the fact that had my stomach twisted into knots. That I was already in the clear— that I was innocent in Santori’s murder. It was Jamie who needed clearing and protecting. My sweet, innocent Jamie. I’d made a murderer of him, and I would spend the rest of my life trying to make up for it.

At least that’s what I thought during those last few minutes in our shabby motel room, staring at the love of my life and wishing I’d just wake up and discover that the last three days were nothing more than a bad dream. But noble intentions had a pesky habit of falling by the wayside, especially when the person who had those intentions was bad at heart.

Bad no matter how hard he tried to be good.

Bad like me.