Page 246 of The Villain We Tempt

My heart drops.

My lungs stop working as my gaze lands on the table I set, now knocked to the side with the dishes and glasses smashed across the ground.

But then I see it: a hand-sized rock from the walls of the fire pit, lying wet and glistening on the ground.

…Blood.

My chest tightens like it has an iron band around it as I stare at the rock.

There are more spatters nearby. Another splash across the stone fire ring. More on the toppled chairs, with a bloody hand-print smeared on the knocked over table .

My pulse pounds as my gaze spots more glistening wet red a few feet away.

…And more, past it.

It’s atrail of blood.

The mask falls from my shaking hand as I hurtle across the clearing and out through the other stone arch, my eyes darting ahead to find the next splatter. The next drip. The next red smear against a clawed branch or on a cluster of leaves.

This forest trail empties out onto the main path that winds along the cliffs at the edge of campus, looming over the jagged rocks and crashing surf of the Connecticut Sound below. A light fog is rolling in, turning everything vaguely opaque and hazy white in the moonlight.

I glance left and right, panic whining like an air raid siren in my ears before I spot another streak of red to the left, across the top of the wooden railing that runs along the cliff’s edge.

My chest clenches tight. My heart drops.

And Irun.

Ragged, choked breaths burst from my throat as I bolt down the path, through the fog?—

I stumble to a skidding stop when I see her. She’s on her knees by the fence, shaking as she hugs herself, slowly rocking back and forth.

She’s alone.

“Galina...”

She jolts when I put my hand on her shoulder and whisper her name. She whirls, her eyes wide, her face ashen as her haggard gaze stabs up into my face.

“I—! I didn’t?—!”

I drop to my knees in front of her.

“Baby—”

A wracking sob wrenches her body as she throws herself into my arms.

“I hit him, Lochlan! He had the gun, and he wanted…he wanted me to…and there was a rock, and I justhit him with it…”

Another sob hitches violently in her chest as I hold her tighter and she clings to me like I’m the last floating debris in the aftermath of a flood.

“He chased me….he…Lochlan, he…”

“Shhh, baby,” I whisper hoarsely into her ear, holding her in my arms and rocking us quietly. “It’s okay. Whatever happened, it’s going to be?—”

“He fell, Lochlan.” She pulls back from me, a haunted look etched into her beautiful face. “He fell over the cliff.”

I hold her tight as I slowly twist and crane my head forward, looking past the streak of blood on the wooden railing and down the edge of the cliff.

A body with its back bent at a sickening angle lies sixty feet below, sprawled on a chunk of rock as the waves gently splash pink and crimson over it.