beautiful thieves | ✓

twenty-seven

Danielle places three images on the coffee table in front of us. She's sat on the sofa opposite me, while Adam is beside her and Zavier is beside me. We've been trying to figure out who could've been in the garden a few nights ago since no body was found, and why she would've tried to kill me if she claims she was just 'passing by'. The three images are of three different women, all with inky black hair and dark bronze skin, and all incredibly beautiful.

The only problem is that the sun was setting when I walked into the woodland and I barely got a good look at her face in the blur of darkness. Not to mention that I was so caught up in trying to protect myself that I wasn't focusing on what she looked like. So, inspecting the three photos in front of me, I feel like I recognise all of them yet have no clue who any of them could be.

Zavier, Adam and Danielle watch me as my eyes flit between the images, really trying to spot any similarities to that woman in the forest. I stare into each of their eyes as if they were really standing in front of me, trying to match them to the memory branded into my mind of when the two of us stared each other down, daring one another to pounce again. But there's nothing.

"None of them?" Danielle asks gently.

I rest my elbows on my knees and cup my face in my hands. "I don't know," I groan. "I mean, she looks kind of familiar," I say, pointing to the photo in the middle. "But that freckle on her cheek... I remember her having, like, weirdly flawless skin."

"Do you remember what she was wearing?" Zavier asks.

"Um..." I think for a moment. "I think it was just all black. Like a vest top, leggings and boots."

"Any jewellery?"

I shake my head. "Not that I remember."

"Who goes for an innocent walk with nothing else, not even a bag or jacket?" Adam asks, encouraging us all to think.

"It was hot that day," Danielle shrugs. "She wouldn't have needed a jacket."

Zavier shifts next to me. "And she might've brought a bag and just put it down for the fight."

"She could've been there all day," I mumble, staring at nothing in particular. "Watching us."

"Okay, we don't know that for certain," Adam says. "Yes, she might've been there all day, or she could've been honest and just got lost on a walk and saw Aurora as a threat."

"Then why was she carrying a knife?" Danielle asks.

"Let's just be thankful it wasn't a gun," Zavier mutters. "We were all out there that day, she could've had us all shot in seconds."

I think about that for a moment. Deserted fields of nothing until you stumble upon eleven dead bodies laying in a pool of their own blood. Maeve dead. Danielle dead. Blake dead. Chelsea and Posie dead. I sink further into the cushions of the sofa, ridding those images from my head as fast as possible.

"Okay," Danielle starts, fiddling with her engagement ring. "So I think that, as of now, we move on from this. There was no body found, Aurora wasn't badly injured, we have no idea who could've done this, so maybe we should just let the case go cold for now."

"Until something else happens?" Zavier asks.

Danielle nods. "Right."

Only a few hours later, something else happens.

Maeve, Chelsea, Jayden and Colby are on a raid while the rest of us sit together in the living room, watching some bad action movie on the cinema screen that no one is really interested it. It's only when Blake curses, shoots up from his chair and sprints out of the door, that the real action starts.