A BLADE BETWEEN OUR HEARTBEATS

Chapter 5

The staging room was a claustrophobic box compared to the main gallery. It was designed for examining art under harsh, bright fluorescent lights, lined with metal work tables and heavy foam padding. Right now, it held the remaining crates from the basement, leaving barely three feet of walking space between the heavy wooden boxes.

Kai walked in first, her boots heavy on the linoleum. She dropped her clipboard onto a metal table with a loud clatter, desperately needing to make some kind of noise.

The heavy door clicked shut behind her.

She spun around. Damien was standing just inside the doorway. She hadn't heard his shoes cross the threshold. The sudden silence in the room pressed against Kai’s eardrums until she felt a dull ache behind her eyes.

"You can breathe, Miss Ashford," Damien said. He hadn't moved from the door.

"I'm breathing fine," Kai snapped. It was a lie. Her chest was rising and falling in shallow, jagged jerks. She turned her back on him, needing something to do with her hands before she lost her mind.

She grabbed a heavy yellow pry bar off the tool cart.

"Right. Crate four," she muttered to herself, stepping up to the nearest wooden box.

She jammed the flat end of the pry bar under the iron latch and leaned into it. The latch was stuck. She grunted, putting her whole shoulder into the motion, her boots slipping slightly on the floor.

The bar slipped.

Kai lurched forward, her knuckles scraping hard against the rough wood of the crate. "s**t," she hissed, dropping the bar. It hit the floor with a loud clang. She brought her hand to her mouth, sucking a bead of blood off her scraped knuckle.

"Allow me."

The voice vibrated right next to her ear.

Kai gasped, lurching away so fast she slammed her hip hard into the edge of the metal work table. A sharp jolt of pain shot down her leg, but she ignored it, scrambling backward.

Damien was standing right beside the crate. He had crossed fifteen feet of the room without making a single sound. No footsteps. No rustle of fabric.

Before Kai could yell at him to back off, Damien picked up the pry bar. He didn't grunt. He didn't brace his feet. He just jammed it under the wood and twisted his wrist. The iron latch popped off with a violent, screeching snap.

He tossed the bar onto the padded table.

"The latch was stuck," Damien said. He wasn't looking at the crate. He was looking at her hand, specifically at the tiny smear of blood on her knuckle.

"Right," Kai rasped. She reached out and blindly grabbed her clipboard off the table, pulling it to her chest. "Just... stay on that side of the room. I’ll log the inventory."

Damien took a step back, folding his hands behind his back. "As you wish."

Kai turned her back to him, taking a deep, shuddering breath. She stepped up to the open crate and reached into the foam.

She worked in a suffocating silence for twenty minutes. She logged two rusted iron gauntlets, a stack of heavy, leather-bound ledgers that smelled like grave dirt, and a tarnished silver chalice. She forced herself to focus entirely on the clipboard, on the clicking of her pen.

But she could feel him.

Damien hadn't moved from his spot near the door. His gaze felt physical, like a hand pressing against the back of her neck.

"Item twelve," Kai muttered, just to break the silence. She reached deep into the bottom of the crate. Her fingers brushed against cold, smooth brass.

She hauled it out. It was a massive, intricate astrolabe, easily weighing twenty pounds. It was covered in jagged, illegible script.

"Used for celestial navigation," Damien said from across the room, making her jump slightly.

"It's heavy," Kai grunted, carrying it over to the padded metal work table. She set it down, reaching for her pen.

She misjudged the edge of the mat.

The heavy brass disc didn't sit flat. It tipped backward, the bulk of its weight sliding off the slick edge of the metal table, plummeting toward the linoleum floor.

Kai didn't gasp. She didn't think.

Her brain completely bypassed conscious thought. Her right hand dropped the pen. Her left foot slid backward, anchoring her center of gravity. Her right arm shot out, a blur of violent, perfectly controlled motion.

Her fingers snapped around the heavy brass ring of the astrolabe exactly two inches before it smashed into the floor.

The sudden, brutal stop of twenty pounds of falling metal wrenched her shoulder joint, sending a spike of hot pain up her neck. But she held it. She stayed frozen in a deep, rooted crouch, an icy, lethal calm washing through her veins.

The silence rushed back into the room.

Kai slowly opened her eyes, her knuckles white around the brass ring. Normal people didn't move like that.

She slowly stood up, hauling the heavy instrument back onto the table. She rubbed her throbbing shoulder, her hands starting to shake as the adrenaline receded.

She turned around.

Damien was no longer standing by the door. He was standing three feet away from her. He was staring at her hand, and then his eyes dragged slowly up her arm, fixing on her face. The muscle in his jaw was ticking.

"You move well, Miss Ashford," Damien said, his voice a low growl.

Kai backed up, her hip hitting the table. "I told you, I drop things a lot. You get fast at catching them."

"You move like someone who has spent a lifetime learning how to kill," Damien said slowly, taking a single, measured step toward her.

"I glue paper together," Kai snapped, her voice thin. She hated how weak she sounded. "And I don't know what kind of game you're playing, but I'm done. Back up."