Chapter 17 · Switch Seventeen

The phone buzzed again on the counting table, screen up, CADE spelled out in caps like she was daring somebody to answer. Marco didn't move. His hand was still flat on the steel sink where he'd had me pinned two minutes ago, and I could still feel the cold of it through my shirt, the shirt he'd half torn getting me there.

"That's four calls," I said.

"You gonna keep pretending your phone's decoration?"

"I'm thinking."

"Think out loud. I've got a fingerprint match happening at dawn and you just told me the tape can't clear either of us." He finally looked at me.

Not at my face — at my collar, where the fabric had given at the seam and left a line of skin, and where his own fingers had left four faint marks, a finger-bruise print already going purple at the edges like a signature he didn't ask permission to write. His eyes stayed there half a second too long.

"Don't," I said.

"Don't what."

"Look at me like you're deciding whether to finish what you started instead of answering me." Something moved in his jaw.