Page 166 of Joker

Dom’s fingers move over the keyboard. “Not confirmed yet. It was sent to a burner tied to one of Grinder’s backup lines about thirty minutes ago.”

That gets my attention off the screen. “What’d it say?”

Dom’s jaw tightens. Then he reads it flat.

Pretty thing. Shame if she ran out of places to hide.

The room goes dead fucking silent.

I don’t move. Don’t blink. Don’t breathe.

Because if I do, if I let myself fully react to those words right this second, there’s a good chance I’ll leave this room and start breaking every male body within a fifty-mile radius until I find the one that deserves it.

Blaze, to his credit, is the first one stupid enough to speak. “Well,” he says slowly, “that’s murder-y.”

Cain looks like he’s already mentally choosing a shovel.

Shadow doesn’t say a word, which is worse.

Logan’s gaze stays on me. Watching. Assessing. Probably measuring exactly how close I am to going feral.

Close.

Very fucking close.

“What else?” I ask.

Because there has to be more. There’s always more.

Logan nods once toward Shadow.

Shadow pushes off the wall and folds his arms. “One of our town eyes called in around dawn. Said a detective badge got flashed at a motel clerk near the interstate last night. Guy was asking about out-of-state women, one with a little girl. Not by name. Fishing.”

That makes the cold in my body settle deeper. More precise.

“Description?”

“Matches Cal close enough to piss me off,” Shadow says.

“Vehicle?”

“Rental. White SUV. Tennessee plates. Probably temporary.”

Dom cuts in before I can ask the next question. “And if that wasn’t enough, one of Cal’s family-linked names pinged a gas station card purchase in Bartsville just before midnight.”

I turn slowly toward him. “What?”

He nods once, jaw tight. “Brother-in-law or cousin, something adjacent. One of the names connected to his family’s local political donor network. Used a card at a station three miles out.”

That one lands harder than the rest. Because a picture and a threat are one thing. A detective sniffing around town is another. But one of Cal’s people physically being here?

That’s not pressure. That’s proximity. That’s feet on the ground. That’s the kind of thing that turns a situation from dangerous to active.

I look back at the picture of Raven on Dom’s screen.

At Lexi’s little legs wrapped around her mother’s waist. At the grocery bag in Raven’s hand. At the ordinary shape of the moment. And all I can think is that some motherfucker stood somewhere close enough to photograph them while they were just living.

Just breathing. Just existing in the smallest, most normal way. And he thought that was his right.