I dipped my chin toward the spread she’d laid out. “That’s fine,” I said, like my heart actually factored into the equation—as though it had factored into any equation during the last thirty-four years. I agreed to what she said as though I gave a fuck about what a set of cards might tell me.

Despite my initial reaction to her reading last night, I firmly believed that free will triumphed over destiny or the fates or whatever the hell people were calling it nowadays. My actions had direct consequences, and on the flip of a dime, I could find myself in a very different situation than I had ten minutes earlier.

The cards weren’t why I was here tonight.

No, I was here because of her, this unnamed woman who lived in one of the largest homes in the Quarter, though its (alleged) tortured past meant that no one gave a shit that the stories of murdered sultans and flayed human body parts were nothing more than rumored fabrications regurgitated for every tourist who wandered past on a tour.

This woman intrigued me, with the way she’d hugged the shadows last night, as though unnerved that somebody might be watching.

I’d watched, but like I’d told her, I’d done so to ensure she made it home safe.

Because you suddenly have a heart?

Yeah, not quite. Or rather, not at all. I’d left that son of a bitch behind in my first foster-home stint. I had no use for it, not then and not now either, which was further proof that this hazel-eyed girl had somehow ground herself under my skin.

There was no tangible reason for my sudden fascination with her, but here I was, ready to pay her to tell me my fortune . . . simply because I’d wanted another chance to talk with her.

Silently, I watched as she flipped over the first card—my “heart’s innermost desires,” she’d said—and sat back in her chair, a little frown tugging down her lips. She adjusted her jacket again, drawing it closed over her chest even though two buttons were missing.

“Odd,” she murmured.

I leaned in, chair creaking beneath me, and stole a glance at the card half-hidden under her hand. Red fiery flames peaked out from behind what looked like arrows. “How so?”

“Oppression.” With a slight shake of her head, she smoothed her fingers over the card. “It’s the Ten of Wands, and—”

“What?”

“Nothing, it’s just that I get this card frequently. Always in this exact spot, too.”

“Coincidence.” Dropping my elbows to the table, I nodded to the cards laid out before us. “It’s like Murphy’s Law. If you really think that everything that can go wrong will go wrong, it probably will. You’re looking for those idiosyncrasies that indicate you’ve called it all out correctly—that your life is in the shitter.” I tapped the card, just to the side of her hand. “Same goes here. If you’re looking for similarities, they’ll appear.”

Hazel eyes blinked up at me, and in that moment, I could have sworn she’d taken a read on my rotten soul.

“In the cards, oppression represents a separation from the spirit.” Again, she drew the jacket tighter, like the bite of the night wind sank deep into her bones. “It’s as though your moral compass has disappeared in favor of cruel force. You don’t recognize yourself anymore, your needs or your desires—you’re blinded to whatever drives you, a slave to an ulterior motive that destroys everything else in its path.”

Jesus.

This time it was my turn to tug on the sleeves of my jacket—for a different reason entirely. She hid from the cold, and I hid from the chance that she might notice the blood stains on the cuffs of my shirt.

The familiar grip of guilt weighted my limbs. All of it—every death, every fight—all led to one goal. So I guess she was right; I had become oppressed by my own motives, no matter how dirty and vengeful they were.

My phone vibrated in my pocket, and with a raised finger to ask her to wait, I slipped it out from my pants and checked the incoming message from an unknown 504 area code number: Is it done?

The blood had been washed from my hands, if not from my clothes, so yeah, it’d been finished. 10-4, I typed back and then hit SEND.

A second later, a single word greeted me on the screen: Good.

My dead heart gave a rare, pitiful thump, which I ignored. Emotion could get you killed in my line of work. It could end you in a heartbeat, strip away your life in a second.

“Something important?” she asked, drawing my attention back to her face.

I shook my head. “Just work.”

Her hazel eyes never left my face. “You like working for the NOPD, then?”

My life would be easier if I’d only ever clocked in for the police department. But the NOPD wasn’t responsible for the scars on my face, the split in my lip, the blood on my clothes. I cleared my throat. “I like putting the bad guys in jail.”

The look she leveled on me spoke volumes. “I’ll be honest, and I might be wrong here, but crime seems just as rampant as it’s always been.”

Her words only piqued my curiosity. “How old are you?”

“Do you want me to read your cards or not?”

I didn’t give a damn about the cards, especially when her selection seemed to only reflect gloom and doom. Ruin. Death. Oppression. Not a hint of rainbows or unicorns in sight. “Do you get a kick out of telling tourists that their lives are about to take a morbid turn?”

Her shoulders lifted with a casual shrug. “It’s life. I’m not telling anyone anything they don’t already know.”

“Tell me your name.”

At my abrupt switch in topic, her eyes narrowed and her teeth sank into her bottom lip with a sharp indrawn breath. “Why do you want to know it?”

Because I . . . well, fuck, what could I say? That from the moment I’d walked up to her, I’d felt some sort of unexplainable pull, like we were tethered to the same string . . . just at opposite ends? That beyond the random need I had to strip her of her clothes and to see her eyes darken with lust, I recognized a little of myself in her?

I’d made a life out of lying and thieving.

I’d dug myself out of hell only to realize that I’d never be able to shake off the embers.

That the darkness which ran through my blood, as cliché as the saying goes, never calmed or fled, but for a reason I couldn’t pinpoint, I felt as though this girl could take it. She could handle my shadows, if not the pure darkness.

Never had I craved someone more.

“It’s Avery.” My gaze jerked up to her face, and she tilted her chin up defiantly, daring me to question her. “My name is Avery Washington.”

I rolled her name over my tongue silently; imagined whispering it against her neck as I plunged into her body; recited it two more times with the fantasy of her on her knees, her lips closing around my cock.

She was a shit liar.

To anyone else, her defiantly raised chin and the challenge in her eyes would have left them feeling as though she’d uttered the truth. But I read liars for a living—hell, I was a liar, and I recognized the twitches in her façade for what they were.

I settled back, observing the way she pressed her feminine fingers to the base of her neck and swallowed. “You from N’Orleans?” I asked, wondering if she’d lie about that too.

She met my gaze head-on. “Born and raised.”

“Same here.”

She didn’t roll her eyes but I had the feeling that she wanted to. “I figured.”

“Yeah?”

With a short nod, Avery flipped the cards over on the table. “You may meet a lot of different people, Sergeant, but so do I. Everything about you screams this city, starting with the jaded twinkle in your eye.”

I laughed hard at that, the sound entirely foreign and rusty to my ears. I never smiled. I never laughed. But, damn it if she didn’t make me want to start practicing. “A jaded twinkle?”

Shifting in her chair, Avery muttered something beneath her breath. Then, louder, “It’s the color blue of your eyes.”

Heat spiked south of my belt at her admission. When I spoke, there was no mistaking the husk in my voice. “Did you spend last night thinking about the color of my eyes, Avery?”

“What? Absolutely not.”

I stretched out one arm, making no effort to conceal the way I set my hand next to hers. Tan to pale, large against small. She was tiny compared to me, and even that was enticing. My thumb crossed over her pinky, and I stifled a satisfied purr when she flexed her hand . . . and kept her hand right next to mine. “I’d be all too happy—”

“Avery.” Jerking toward the sound of the unknown voice, I noticed that the reader one table over had stood up and crossed over to stand beside Avery. The stranger’s eyes zeroed in on me, unwavering. “I’m going to pack everything up for the night and I suggest that you do the same.”

Her hand slipped away.

“You’re right,” Avery said, her tone more tepid than I’d heard from her yet. She spared me a quick glance. “It’s late, Sergeant Asher, and it’s obvious that you haven’t come back tonight to learn about your future.”

Apparently, she’d sussed me out just as I’d done to her.

I rose from my chair and folded it. “It’s obvious,” I drawled, using her words, “that you don’t care for the bullshit.”

“I don’t.”

Succinct as her tone was, I spotted a blush crest her cheeks. “Then, no bullshit.” When she set her backpack on the table to unzip, I closed in, stepping up close so that she was forced to look up at me. Only when we locked eyes did I speak in a tone low enough that the words were clearly intended only for her and not for her friend. “I spent last night wondering about that smart mouth of yours—how you’ll taste or what noises you might make when I drive you to come on my tongue.”

I waited, not moving, for her to reply.

She didn’t disappoint.

Her tongue swiped out along her plush lower lip. “I don’t date.”

“No one said anything about dating.”

White teeth bit her lip, and those hazel eyes of hers flashed fire and unmistakable want. “I don’t fuck.”

That word coming off her lips was like a calling card to my dick. She might not fuck now but she would, dirty and raw and so damn good that she’d carve her territory into my back with her nails. “If you don’t,” I drawled, “that just means you haven’t done it right.”

Her jaw snapped shut, molars cracking together. Her cheeks burned red. “I wouldn’t . . .” She swallowed, then ducked her head to continue packing up. “You couldn’t handle someone like me, Sergeant—”

“Lincoln.”

“What?”

“Call me Lincoln,” I repeated, fully aware of the fact that I wanted Avery Washington like nothing I’d ever wanted in my life—outside of one thing. “Lincoln,” I said again, “not sergeant.”

“As I was saying, Asher”—the challenge in her eyes lit my own to see her flat on her back with that same damn fire goading me on—“you couldn’t handle me. You think you could, but you can’t. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have places to be.” She shrugged into her backpack and then bundled up the chairs under one arm. The table, she glared at, and then stepped away. “Don’t follow me tonight or I’ll call the cops on you.”

Her threat stole more rusty laughter from me. “I’m sure my guys will enjoy the chance to cuff me.”

“Someone has to,” she said, “and it will never be me.”

With that, she turned away and ducked down Pirate’s Alley. The shadows of St. Louis Cathedral enclosed her within their depths like a physical door being clamped shut behind her.

Locking me out.

“Stay away from her, Sergeant Asher.”

I glanced over at Avery’s friend, refusing to show her even an ounce of the desire Avery sparked within me. Inclining my head in a short nod, I stepped back. “Have a good night, ma’am.”

“I’ve heard about you, you know—we all have.”

“My condolences.”

She approached, and it was in that moment that I spotted the tattoo on her right temple. It was small and round, like a stamp made for deceit. She’d been marked by the devil himself. “You kill without guilt, destroy lives without impunity. You act”—she dropped her voice to a rough pitch—“like you are the executioner and the jury, all in the name of what? Money? Conceit?”

If money were a motivator, I would have moved far from New Orleans years ago. But I didn’t owe this woman a damn thing, and so I gave her a small salute and then turned on my heel.

She could hate me for what I’d done—I didn’t care one way or the other—but the tattoo on her face was a direct indication that she was no better than me—even if she’d left that life behind. She’d fucked; I’d killed. At the end of the day, when the result was exactly the same, we were equals.

I knew that for a fact; I’d been marked with that same tattoo the day I’d turned sixteen.