Being face to face with this small, thin girl, I almost couldn’t believe she was what we were all about to go to war over. I also recognized her as the girl Jax had been trying to pick up on the way into town from when we’d been heading back from my meet with Charon. In the heat of the moment at the house, I hadn’t even thought about it, but back then, all I had on my mind was Anna.

Not that she wasn’t right with what she said. For a second, with the barrel pressed against my head, I had lost to her. She used my guilt as a knife to bury in my chest in penance for letting Anna get hurt. She read me like a book and used it against me. She probably shot me for the same reason.

“Shooting him because you were jealous was childish,” Anna remarked as she stood looking down at Ash tied to one of the metal chairs with crossed arms.

She shot me because she was jealous?

Ash didn’t reply; she just looked up at the dim buzzing light of one of our interrogation rooms and grumbled. “The lights are too bright,” said the girl with sunglasses on.

“Get over it,” Anna growled.

Her head lolled against her shoulders, purposely avoiding the corner of the room where Lamb stood, watching her with narrowed eyes and tightly folded arms.

“So,” Anna said, luring Ash’s attention back to her. “You wanna tell me where you’ve been?”

“A little bit of here and a little bit of there.” She shrugged, looking in Anna’s general direction.

Anna went quiet then, her eyes flashing with a bit of everything, the usual bullheaded woman carefully thinking over her words as she regarded her supposed best friend. The same best friend that ended up getting her stabbed with this shit—which I realized would have been a good comeback to her in the house.

“You know these aren’t necessary, right?” Ash grumbled, tugging on the bindings holding her onto the chair. “I’m not going to run.”

“Your history says otherwise,” Anna grumbled. “Remember Madrid?”

“Oh, come on,” Ash groaned. “That was ages ago, and the bellhop untied you later.”

“You chained me to a fucking radiator in the middle of July!” Anna snapped.

Ash let out a soft whine. “Come on, untie me.” She lifted her foot, nudging it against Anna’s shoe. “I’m sure your big, bad, and uglies will stop me from leaving. Unless you don’t trust them to keep a hold on me?” She said the last comment while turning her head in my direction, a small smirk on her lips, challenging me.

I couldn’t stop the growl.

“Stop provoking him,” Anna said, kicking Ash in the shin.

“Bitch,” Ash hissed, and Anna shrugged, walking over to me and holding out her hand.

I didn’t want to hand it over. I really didn’t. But I did anyway, giving her the blade and watching her maneuver around the back of the chair, cutting through the ties as the bitch I was seeming to dislike more and more was set free in my compound.

She stood tall, her dusty boots wrinkling as she stretched up onto her toes in a long, lithe pose. Dropping down onto her heels, she looked to Anna. “Where can I get a drink in here?”

“From him.” Anna jabbed her thumb in Lamb’s direction, causing Ash to instantly frown. “But not yet.”

Ash cocked her head to the side, studying Anna’s gaze as it wandered toward me.

I saw the moment she understood what Anna wanted. It was the moment when the carefree attitude dropped and I got a good look at the fortified stone walls at her core.

Her expression sobered, her jaw tensing, as she looked down at the blonde she was ready to kill a man for.

“They want the story,” Ash stated, biting down on her lip, not looking pleased in the slightest bit. Her eyes didn’t leave Anna’s, but if they had, I was sure she’d be glaring daggers at me.

“The whole story, Ash,” Anna said softly, her eyes locked on Ash’s until whatever message passed between them.

Ash nodded, her eyes glaring holes into the floor. “Fine,” she conceded, chewing on her bottom lip. Then she turned to me, looking over Anna’s head, and despite not being able to see through her glasses, I could tell her eyes were meeting mine. “What do you know?”

“The Black Jacks,” Lamb answered instead. Ash’s jaw ticked, but otherwise, she didn’t acknowledge him.

“That’s it?” Ash snapped, head turning to Anna, forcing Anna’s back to straighten.

“Don’t look at me like that, Ash,” Anna growled. “I also showed Wolf the file.”

I saw Ash straighten her spine like a rod had been shoved up her ass. “You did what?” she hissed, pissed, as a snarl broke through her teeth, not looking at me but directing her aggression toward Anna. It was the first intense emotion I had seen from her that wasn’t immediately shut down.

I was aware of Lamb shooting a questioning look in my direction, but I ignored him. When I’d seen the file, I had wanted to show him it, but that was before Anna burned it, and from what I could read from her at the time, I wouldn’t be able to convince her to let Lamb have a peek. From Ash’s reaction, I could see how deadly protective they were of it, only solidifying my thoughts. I’d just have to deal with Lamb later.

“Ash,” Anna said, her voice softening slightly, shaking her head. “They’re involved now. There was nothing I could do.”

Ash clicked her tongue but otherwise didn’t argue with Anna as she dropped down onto the metal chair, lips flattening into a straight line as her head turned ever so slightly in my direction.

“What’s your connection to Rothwell?” I asked, fed up that this interrogation wasn’t making any progress. My arms, wrapped so tightly around my chest, were beginning to ache.

The sunglasses may have been shielding her face, but they couldn’t hide the soft, genuinely happy smile that pulled on her lips. “I shoved a knife into his wife’s chest.”

The way she said the words—so casual, calm—unnerved the very deepest part of me. I’d seen a killer in the past, hell, I’d met a serial one or two, but this girl... I hadn’t met anybody like her.

At my silence, Ash must have seen my reaction, and I saw her walls shut back down, story time over. “That’s all you need to know,” she said, looking over to Anna. The disappointment was clear in Anna’s eyes as she shook her head at her, but Ash shrugged it off, pushing herself up from the chair and moving past Anna without a second glance. “Time for my drink.”

Ash reached for the door, her body moving forward with the wide motion, only to find herself staggering to a stop as a figure blocked her path.

Lamb looked down at her, forcing the brunette to lift her head up to face him. The carefree attitude around this girl turned guarded the second her eyes met his. Lamb’s previous stare had evolved quickly into a bone-chilling glare, his silver-brown eyes locking onto her with an absolute focus that forced her to stop in her tracks.

Ash turned her head away, her eyes boring into his chest. “Move,” she growled, her sharp British tone ice cold.

What felt like a lifetime passed before Lamb stepped aside, and Ash didn’t waste a second as she grabbed the door and lunged out of it.

I sent Lamb a questioning look, but whatever had taken over him had passed, and he just gave me a shrug before following her out the door. I stared at the metal door leading to the stairway to the upper floors, wondering what exactly I had just witnessed.

“Don’t think too much about it,” Anna said softly, causing me to turn to look at her. She was staring at the door, too, her eyes slowly moving away from it before she looked at me, offering me a tired smile. “She has that effect on some people.”

“I don’t like her,” I grumbled, unsure what it was exactly that I didn’t like. “There’s just something that doesn’t quite fit with her.”

“Despite the fact she just point-blank told you she murdered someone?”

“I’m not blind. I know she said it that way because she’s defensive. And I’ve lived enough years to know that that isn’t the whole story,” I grumbled, trying to work my head around it. “But she also helped out Mallory. I get the feeling there are more sides to this girl.”

“I suppose it would appear that way to you.” Anna chuckled, reaching up to touch her ear, fiddling with the earring. I recognized it as a comforting gesture, and the foreign sight of it on Anna made me frown. Ash wasn’t the only unusual thing since her appearance. Even though it had only been a few hours, there was this side of Anna peeping to the surface, an Anna I didn’t know.

“Why? What do you see?” I asked, despite being unsure if I really wanted to know Ash’s true nature or not. I had a feeling getting to know this girl wouldn’t be quite the ride I would expect.

“A girl who’s led a life spinning lie after lie to protect herself. She’s got one face but many masks, to put it eloquently.” Anna’s voice was soft, softer than I’d ever heard it, and despite the part in me that resonated with the gentleness of the sound, it didn’t last long enough for me to figure out for what reason. Instead, it turned into a harsh grumble. “Although half the lies the bitch pulls are utter bullshit.”

I looked down at her, at the force she was glaring at the door with, and was reminded of what Anna had said earlier. “Madrid?”

“Don’t,” Anna hissed, “ask about Madrid. Ever.”

With that, the sassy blonde turned on her red boots and marched out of the room with an echoing force, leaving me helplessly wondering about it.