“Good to know,” he says.
“It’s time to get ready for the gates to open. Nixie hates it when we are late.”
He looks once more in Kayla’s direction. “I better get going, good talk.”
He walks away, and I watch him until he rounds the corner, heading in the opposite direction from where Kayla and Vero are standing.
I need to find Clay when I get a chance and warn him that we need to keep an eye on Luca.
Something moves in my gut, and I catalog it the way I do everything else.
It’s not jealousy—I know that much.
But Luca is a variable I haven’t accounted for, and I don’t like unaccounted variables.
Luca and I being alike raised my hackles, but there are key differences between us. Charm as a personality trait versus charm as a tactic. His actions are determined by his underlying goal, and since I do not know his goal yet, I don’t like that.
I’m now aware he has Kayla in his sights, but I just need to figure out why. Though he wasn’t surprised when I warned him away from her. It could be as simple as someone else has already done it.
I walk toward them, and Kayla looks over at me. “I was starting to think Nixie would never let you leave.”
“It felt that way.”
“I escaped easily,” Vero announces. “Shit, I have to go, but I will come and find you soon. Have fun.”
He leans in and presses a kiss on her lips. This is something that has been happening since the other day when Clay showed PDA, which was so unlike him, and now Vero has followed suit.
Kayla falls into step with me as we walk along the path.
“Where are we going?” she asks.
“I want to show you something. But it’s going to be dark.”
Kayla glances at me. “Is this where I find out you’re really the most dangerous one and are luring me somewhere to kill me?”
“That depends on your definition of dangerous.”
She smiles at that and holds out her arm. “Lead the way then.”
Strolling off the main path, I lead her along the side of the circus tent and down past the cemetery to where a low stone wall had been built when the cemetery was first laid out. Here you can see almost the entire island at once.
I lean against it and watch as she climbs on top.
“I didn’t know this was here,” she calls down.
“Most of the workers don’t either. No one really comes back here.”
“How did you find it?”
“I built the tracking systems, so I needed to do a full scope of the island. I found this along the way.”
She jumps down beside me and leans her back against the wall. “Do you come here a lot?”
“Only when I need to think.”
She turns to face me. “And what do you think about?”
I pause. She is waiting for something real, and I know exactly how much I need to give her. Enough that it feels like honesty, but not enough to matter. “Nothing in particular.”