Page 54 of The SongBird's Love

Eden glanced up at Loir, smiling again while staring at her, his head tilted to the side.

“What?”

“I didn’t think the Italian would have let you go like that.”

“He didn’t! Didn’t you listen? There was a gunfight and I ran away!”

“So easily?”

“Y-yeah...”

“Hm...”

Loir’s smile made Eden uncomfortable. She had felt something was wrong with her escape too, but she just couldn’t figure it out. The more the young woman thought about it, the more nervous she became. Her SIN was still deactivated and she was pretty sure she hadn’t been followed here. So what was wrong?

“It can’t be,” she whispered. “De Luca said he’d let me... go...”

“He said that?”

Eden swallowed her saliva, her heart beating scary fast all of a sudden. That wasn’t the only thing Dante had said. However, the second half of the sentence was too scary for her to say out loud. She kept thinking about it, feeling nervous. Was he hunting her? Was it all a game? Loir was right. It had been too easy and he had no reason to let her go in the first place!

Unless...

Eden suddenly glanced up at Loir.

“...He wanted me to get back to you,” she whispered, “to my partner.”

“Oh! Big Kitty wants me too?” suddenly exclaimed Loir, slapping his hands against his cheeks, pretending to be surprised. “Oh my, is it the start of something?”

“Loir, enough! How...? How could he find me?”

“Well, it’s not just your SIN that can track you,” chuckled the hacker, visibly not nearly as scared as she was.

Eden frowned trying to think. Then, she suddenly raised her top, glancing at her skin.

“The gunshots,” she said. “They healed me from those stupid gunshots! What the fuck did they do to me?”

Loir rolled his chair over to a little pile of weird instruments on the left, technology of which half of it was completely unknown to Eden, although she had seen Loir work on it many times. Finally, he rolled back to her carrying what looked like a gun, with a screen instead of a barrel. After pushing some button on it, he pointed it at her body.

“Oh, found it! Little tracking device in your abdomen... Can you give it to me? I don’t have one like these!”

“Loir, it means they know where we are, for fuck’s sake!”

“Oopsie-doopsie!”

He turned to his screens and after pianoing on his keyboard, camera surveillance videos appeared from the streets nearby. Eden’s blood went cold. They were almost here: the Italians’ cars, three of them.

Loir cackled, looking at the cars coming toward them.

“Someone wants their pretty kitty back!”

“Loir, we have to go. They are going to find you too!”

“Really? It would be nice... Do you think they will feed me pizza? I love pizza with artichoke... and pineapples...”

“What the hell is wrong with you!” yelled Eden, grabbing Bullet. “If they find us, we will have to work for them!”

“...So?” asked Loir with a smile. “Are you going to run again, Eden?”