Jennifer Estep: Wasted

“Don’t do it,” I warned. “Crooked as you are, I’d hate to blow that pretty face of yours all to pieces.”

Clarissa smiled and started to crouch down like she was going to put the knife on the floor. But there was no warmth in her eyes, no give, no surrender. Her hand tightened a little more around the knife, and she launched herself at me, the stiletto blade slashing through the air—

I snapped up my gun and shot her three times in the face.

Clarissa’s head—what was left of it—whipped back, and the force of the bullets punching through her skull threw her whole body against one of the walls. She hung there a moment, suspended in mid-air before her limbs crumpled, and she slid to the floor.

I waited a few seconds to make sure that Clarissa was dead, then walked over and crouched down next to her. Despite the blood and brain matter splattered all around her, I could still smell her perfume—that subtle honeysuckle scent, now horribly, irrevocably tinged with copper.

Even in death, despite the fact that part of her head was missing, she was still one of the most beautiful creatures that I’d ever seen. Five feet four inches of soft, curvy perfection, growing cold and stiff with every passing second.

“What a waste,” I murmured. “What a fucking waste of a beautiful woman.”

Then, I stepped over her body and headed out of the vault to call Sophia Deveraux to come and clean up the mess.