Steel Rush (In the Shadows#5)

This is the second book in the BLACK SHADOWS duet, Cass and Calder’s story. You must read GOLD SHIMMER before reading STEEL RUSH.

Cass has spent years trying to forget her past. But the thing about pasts…they always come back around, sometimes in the most unexpected ways. When Celeste goes missing, Cass discovers how intricately entangled her past and present are with Celeste’s, making it impossible to walk away.

In an effort to ignore his own painful history, Calder challenges a corrupt, underground organization, but his mission gets sidelined when Cass’s life becomes endangered.

The passion simmering between Calder and Cass tempts them to share their darkest secrets, but can their trust in each other help them unravel the mystery surrounding Celeste? Can they eliminate the threat to Cass before the past overshadows the present and destroys their intense connection?

Note: STEEL RUSH is meant for readers 18+ due to mature content. This is the second book in the BLACK SHADOWS duet, Cass and Calder’s love story. The first book, GOLD SHIMMER, must be read before STEEL RUSH. The BLACK SHADOWS duet (books 4 and 5) can be read as a standalone story or as part of the IN THE SHADOWS series.

Copyright 2016 by P.T. Michelle

All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook cannot be re-sold or given away to others. No parts of this ebook may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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The Past - Six Years Ago

T
he small needle pierces the soft inside of my forearm, its sharp point moving so fast I can’t track it. As hundreds of stings flood my body at once, pushing black ink into the script on my skin, the discomfort feels necessary, cathartic even. I focus on the distracting buzzing of the tattoo machine, my lips twisting at the irony that I can’t seem to escape one last infliction of pain.

“Finished,” Noah announces as he pats at the excess ink on my new tattoo. He glances down at the tree branch he’d painstakingly inked to cover the scars on both my wrists a year before, then eyes the detailed raven he’d inked on the branch on my left wrist. Raising a pierced eyebrow as he lifts the cloth away from my new tattoo, he says, “This one is so simple compared to the others.”

The marred skin hidden under both wrists’ branch tattoos tingles and itches like it always does when my emotions are especially revved. Getting this tattoo certainly qualifies as a heightened moment. I skim my gaze over the single word
Never
he just completed, loving the fancy script with trailing lines before and after the word.

Noah is the first person I called once the deep cut I’d inflicted on my wrist during a frantic relapse had fully healed.

My cutting days are over. And I will never allow Jake Hemming to touch me ever again
. The first is a promise to my big sister, Sophie, who left this world way before her time, and the second is to myself. Both are vows I never plan to break.

I meet the curious sympathy in Noah’s crystal blue gaze. From that first day I laid eyes on his nude form in Freshman Art 101, I saw past the twenty-two-year-old model’s floppy pitch black hair and gorgeous tattooed body and knew he modeled in the buff for more than money and potential dates. This guy ran deeper than his teasing smile; he appreciated art’s simplest form, which meant he’d get my answer. “Sometimes a single word can carry the most meaning, Noah. So…
thanks
.”

Barking out a laugh, he kisses my forehead as he rises from his stool. “Anytime, sweet Cass.”

Present Day

I
just lied my ass off. To the police.
I bite my lip and watch the detectives drive away from the Carver’s estate, my heart racing.
What have I done?

The Carver’s family lawyer and neighbor, Phillip Hemming, talks to Celeste’s father in a low tone for a minute, then walks home. My fingers twitch with the need to scratch my itching wrists as I follow Celeste’s younger sister, Beth, and her father into their home.

I’m torn on what I should do. When I agreed to switch places with Celeste for an evening, I never could have anticipated that she wouldn’t return on time. I certainly didn’t know enough yet to admit to the police that I’m
not
Celeste. Right now, saying anything could cause a scandal that might potentially destroy her father’s run for Senate. Considering protecting Gregory Carver’s career was the whole reason she asked me to do this, I held my silence when the police asked why they found Celeste’s ID in a bloody abandoned car.

For all I knew the blood and ID had nothing to do with her. Before she left, Celeste gave me her real ID, so the ID the police discovered in that car must’ve been a fake, which makes me question who the car and blood belong to. Not that any of this craziness answers why I still haven’t heard from Celeste. The only explanation that makes sense is that she realized she’d arrive home too late to try to slip back into her life without being noticed, so she decided to wait until tomorrow. It
is
almost two in the morning. I just wish I knew why she didn’t text me her change in plans. Her lack of communication is making my stomach burn with conflict.

“This is the last thing I need right now, Celeste.” Gregory rounds on me in the foyer the moment he closes the door behind us, his terse tone interrupting the tug-of-war going on in my head.