Shingle Hunter Descriptive Writing

Shingle Runners

The woman smiles from across the room, shadows and moonlight contorting her mouth into a cheshire grin, sly and bloodthirsty. God, she could kill me right now and I’d still love her, he thinks, What a fool; can’t even trust my own head around a pretty girl. Smooth sax and piano is marred by the skipping of a disk in the room across the hall and laughter and soft amber light spills under the heavy oak door; the telltale signs of yet another couple retiring from the celebration. Shh, the man mouths, raising a finger to his lips and winking at her with those dark eyelashes and a mischievous gleam in his eyes, bright in the dim library. They are past the witching hour and as the party rages on, the risk of discovery steadily grows and the conspiracy is in deeper peril by the minute.

Stepping closer to her, his competition and his prize, he watches as she toys with the pistol hidden in the folds of her elegant silk gown. The man is closing the distance at a leisurely pace, seemingly unperturbed by her intense aura of mystery and risk. Spicy and enticing, she can smell traces of his cologne now, if danger had a body, I’d be feet away from certain doom, she muses, smirking. A sharp inhale is the only sign of his nerves as he moves ever closer, but it is enough. With one simple breath, the man has lost control
Her curls slip through his fingers and before he knows it, he is the one trapped between a killer and a brick wall. There is a moment of silence in the grand library, all is still but the tick-tock of an intricate clock hanging above the mantle and the harsh cocking of a handgun. Slowly and gracefully, without taking her eyes or pistol off of the man, the woman picks up a small velvet bag from the shadows pooling on the hardwood