“Thirty-nine minutes?”Raven’s voice sharpens.“While we were at the courthouse.”
I don’t realize I’ve started shaking until I see the tremor in my knuckles.I press the hand flat to the desk again, hard enough to feel bone.“Belinda’s room,” I say.
Then I run.
Out of Vinnie’s office, down the hallway, up the staircase.
Belinda’s door is ajar.I push it open with two fingers.
Everything looks exactly as we left it last night because it is exactly as we left it last night.
Except—
On her monitor, a new document sits open.I know it’s new because the cursor still blinks in the last blank space like a heartbeat.
If you want your starter back, give me dessert.
My mouth goes desert dry.“Starter,” I whisper, the word sticking like grit.
Raven’s beside me now.“Starter?”
“It’s her,” I say, and it comes out strangled.“Belinda.She’s the starter.The appetizer.Because… Because she’s so young.”My stomach lurches.
Raven goes pale.“What?”
I shake my head.“What I mean is… He used to say I was dessert.After he gave me a cooking lesson, he’d ask for dessert.”Shame burns my cheeks.“He thinks he’s being clever.”
“I’ll fucking kill him.”Vinnie’s voice is low and menacing.I’d be frightened if I didn’t know him.
“He wants a trade,” I say.“Me for her.”
“Dani, we don’t know that,” Raven says, her voice shaking.
I shiver despite the heat.I know it as well as I know my own name, as well as I know how his disgusting cock tasted in my mouth.Some things you can’t forget, no matter how much you want to.
“Trust me,” I say, trembling.“That’s what he wants.He’s asking for a trade.”A chill runs over my neck.“No.Not asking.Tellingus.Me for her.Or he’ll…” I can’t finish.
“No.”Vinnie’s voice is iron.“No trades.”
“He’s not bluffing,” I say.“He means it.He always means it.”
Raven takes a breath that looks like it hurts.“Even if he does, we don’t know where to bring anything.We have nothing that tells us where he is.”
“We have the pattern,” I say.“He leaves clues.He always leaves clues for me.He likes the theater of it.He wants me to know it’s him.”
Vinnie scrubs a hand over his face.“What clues?We already bagged the card.The chocolate was obvious—Colombia.That was your ‘it’s me.’The roses were their own sick poem.The teddy bear had a live grenade tucked inside it, for Christ’s sake.There’s not a riddle left that doesn’t blow our hands off.”
I flinch at the memory of the bear.We were inches from an obituary.We’re still inches from one.
The thought chills me.
He was willing to let me die if he couldn’t have me.
Which means he’s willing to let Belinda die.She’s nothing to him.
“The note,” Raven says quietly.“The one that came with the roses.”
“It’s in the kitchen,” I say.“We got it back from the lab.They didn’t find DNA.Vinnie left it on the counter in the evidence bag.”I look at him.
