Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 52447 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52447 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 262(@200wpm)___ 210(@250wpm)___ 175(@300wpm)
My ex did. Rich knew because he was there when I found out I had this issue.
I’m transported back there now, to LA, not long after I’d left Kane in Long Island. And yes, I’d been running. From him. From me. I squeeze my eyes shut reliving that day.
Detective Smith greets me with a command. “Hood and mask on. And good luck.” He steps aside and clears a path that leads me to a tarp walling off an investigative area and another apartment. I start moving again, and there is a clawing sense of dread in my belly that is always there just before I see a body, those moments before death whispers my name. And it does. Every day and every night. Blood rushes in my ears. Adrenaline pours through me. I pause and pull my hood and mask into place. Another few steps and I barely register the moment I pass through the opening in the tarp or the moment when I see the plastic sheets on the floor covered in bloody footsteps that warn of what is waiting on me at the actual murder scene. Or even the cop by the door who mouths, “Good luck,” before motioning me forward.
I step into the room, liquid sloshing at my feet. Everything slows down then, and my tunnel vision forms. My feet are plopping into a pool of red, so much red. My gaze swims past my feet to search for the body that isn’t there, catching on another person in a suit that points upward. I look to the ceiling, and my throat goes dry. There is a body anchored there, and it’s not in one piece. The limbs are detached and reconnected in odd places—the legs where the arms should be. The hands where the feet should be. The arms where the legs should be.
My gaze jerks back down to the blood that has started to congeal around my boots, and suddenly the room is spinning and my stomach is knotted. I rush for the door and exit, walking as fast as the tarp allows, and then turning and leaning against the walled area behind it. My knees go weak and I sink low, pulling away the face mask I’m wearing and gasping for air, my lashes lowering.
“You okay?”
I blink and open my eyes to find a man squatting in front of me. “Fine,” I say. “I’m fine. I’m going back in.”
“Everyone who’s gone in has come out just like this,” he promises. “Take a minute to catch your breath.”
“I will. Thank you.”
“I’m Rich,” he says, giving me this Ken-doll smile that reaches his pretty-boy blue eyes. “I’m here if you need me.” He’s coddling me. I do not need to be coddled.
“Yeah, well, fuck you,” I say, pushing to my feet. “I don’t need to breathe, and I don’t need you.” I pull my mask back into place and charge for the door.
“Lilah,” Kane says softly, and I blink him into view, aware that I’m swimming in the bowels of hell and there is no way Kane doesn’t know it.
And yet, I still deflect, not from the truth of my struggle, not with him, but with an audience. “Do we know what’s happening with my father?” I ask.
“He’s home and secure,” Kane informs me. “Enrique got him home and will remain his acting bodyguard until I say otherwise.”
“And Pocher?”
“Staying with him out of professed concern.”
“More like his own fear of becoming irrelevant,” I say. “Tell me they didn’t speak to the press about the murder.”
“Enrique said he made him aware of the murder but left his press contact to statements about his attempted assassination.”
“Well, one thing about my father—he’s not about to take the attention off himself. He’ll ride his attempted murder like a campaign statement and proof someone wants to stand between him and the good he intends to do for the state.”
This time Jay twists around in his seat. “The city will be more worried about their safety than his after they find out what happened tonight.”
Not if I catch him before he kills again, I think. And that’s the only option. The problem is we don’t know when that will be. What we do know, or at least, I believe I know, is that my father triggered him. And so did I. Maybe, just maybe, that’s how to catch him. I shoot a text message to my father: I’ll brief you on tonight’s events. Don’t make a statement until I do. But I’m going to make you and your campaign happy. I have a plan to catch the killer that involves you.
Kit pulls to the front of our building and halts for our exit.
I decide then that I need to think about the dangers of such a trigger, so for now, I’ll focus on triggering my husband, a task I’m an expert at achieving.