Thief: The Scarab Beetle Series: #1 (The Academy) by C. L. Stone

mouth was dry. He leaned forward, the silver sand dollar dangled from his neck.
    He cupped his hand at my jawline. Rough skin of his thumb traced over the bruise. He massaged slowly as if doing so could erase what he was seeing. He tilted my head, gazing at it from a different angle.
    His mismatched eyes never left my face.
    “You’ve got a scar,” he said. He traced over a spot on the underside of my chin. It was an old one, at least a couple of years. “Did he do that, too?”
    “No,” I said.
    He narrowed his eyes at me, studying. He frowned. “Liar.”
    I yanked my face from his grasp, shoving his arm away. I hated that he was right. I couldn’t answer him, and glared at the dashboard like I wanted to glare at him, only I couldn’t. Those eyes made me feel too weak. I pinched hard at my thigh, trying to tell myself to calm down. This was way too close. Been down that path one too many times, too. When someone discovered too much about me it always ended in disaster.
    “Can we go?” I asked.
    The silence lingered. I sensed his stare. He hovered like he wanted to move closer but wasn’t sure. He’d already started probing, asking the questions most of my old boyfriends never dared, but I always worried they would eventually. If I thought they were catching on to who I really was, the life I had, I usually ended it. No one could understand me.
    Now here was Marc, who already knew the details of my life I tried to keep in the shadows. He didn’t seem angry. He wanted to know more. I had no idea how to respond. This was the worst place I’d ever been and even that didn’t scare him. I didn’t know what to do with that. My first instinct was to bail; run home and avoid him. Only I couldn’t now.
    Or could I? I supposed if I really wanted to, I could have opened the door, walked out, run off, disappeared forever.
    What stopped me? Outside of knowing I’d possibly never see Wil again, and even that may have been a good thing, for all the trouble that I was in.
    Marc grunted and leaned back in the driver’s seat. “I know you don’t know me, and you don’t have a reason to trust me, but I swear if you give me a chance, you’ll never have to see that old man or that hotel room again.” He jerked the gear shift and pounded on the gas, racing to get back onto the road.
    Why did my heart have to surge at that promise, even as I didn’t believe a word of it?
    We rode in silence, which I almost hated as much as him talking. Marc pulled up to the curb at the mall. I stared at the glass swinging doors nervously, knowing that if what they said was true, I was probably safest never showing up at a mall again. Even being outside the doors made my spine tingle, itching to run. I didn’t want the cops to see me and arrest me. I sunk into the seat.
    Marc wedged his cell phone out of his back pocket, punched in a text message and planted the phone on the console between us. “He’ll be here in a second.”
    “Who?”
    “Raven.”
    I raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
    “His last name is Ravenstahl. Everyone calls him Raven.”
    “What’s his first name?”
    Marc smiled, and his eyes lit up. “He’d kill me if I told you.”
    I gazed out the front window as we waited. I started watching people coming and going from the mall. It’d been a while since I’d visited the place when I wasn’t having to rush to find a target. I watched kids with their parents, teenage boys rushing to get inside, a group of girls giggling as they shadowed the boys and whispered to each other.
    When I was stealing, I avoided contact with everyone. Attention was the last thing a thief really wants. Now that I wasn’t targeting anyone, the people seemed so oblivious to me. I spotted purses exposed and bulging pockets in places I could pull from without having to touch someone at all. Easy marks, but they were the wrong marks. Women. Kids. I wanted to chase them down and tell them to do better. Don’t let someone worse than me steal