Page 37 of Fractured Hearts

I book it down the stairs to the first floor. Harrison always insists on first-floor rooms, so it’s easier to bug out.

We’ve been watching a lot of MASH reruns. Old-timey military is now part of my vocabulary.

“Where’s the reason?” I ask, bursting through my hotel room door. It’s also Harrison’s. We’ve been sharing, and since it’s a guarantee that no one will be getting naked and freaky in our room, it’s also always the room we meet up in.

“The what?” Declan asks, turning away from the game of poker they’re all playing. This hotel has rooms with a small kitchen, so they’re able to play at an actual table and not on a bed like usual.

“I think he means me.”

I turn to see Anderson Sinclair so close to me that my chest brushes his. I do a half scream, half yelp and fall back onto the bed behind me.

“Now is not the time for a nap, Maverick,” Harrison says, squeezing in behind Anderson and taking the last seat at the table. I sit up and wait for someone to tell me what the hell is going on before I embarrass myself again. I know Anderson is definitely the reason Gavin gave in, but unless he has Ezra and Jo’s exact latitude and longitude, I really don’t care what he has to say.

“Eva has been taken care of,” he says, then winks at me.

Alright, maybe I do care what he has to say.

“I’ve made sure her assets were unfrozen and left to you. I thought it fair to tell you in person.”

“And Patrick?” Willa asks at the same time Kai says, “So we can go home now?”

“Patrick is still unaccounted for, and—Harrison can attest to this—we believe he is no longer a threat to most of you now that Eva isn’t pulling his leash.”

I look between Harrison, who is nodding, and Anderson, who is patiently waiting for us to digest what he just said.

“What do you mean, most of us? Is he still after me? I don’t know what good I’d be to him now with both my parents gone,” I say, shrugging like it’s no big deal to be an orphan now. It honestly should feel like a bigger deal than it does. I mourned those relationships years ago.

“Not you,” Anderson says. He pulls out a file that I didn’t see tucked under his arm and hands it to me. What I see stops my breath.

“What is it?” Belle asks. I hand her the file and pull out the phone, hitting dial on the only number in there.

“You tell me where the fuck she is right now, Gavin!” I yell the moment he answers.

“Why do you have a phone?” Harrison asks, sounding both annoyed and exhausted.

“Call me when you get to the intersection of Tree Farm Road and Golf Course Lane,” Gavin says and hangs up. This fucking prick is always doing that to me.

“Is he fucking with me?” I ask Anderson, since he seems to be the only one clued into what’s going on right now. “Those are actual street names, and I’m supposed to know where they are?”

“I have a car waiting for you with the address of that intersection programmed. Gavin will give you specific directions once you get there,” Anderson says, handing me a set of keys. “It’s the black one.”

I watch the back of his perfectly tailored gray suit as he leaves, shutting the door behind him.

“Thank you?” I say, confused and annoyed that no one knows how to say goodbye anymore. Then I hear a gasp as everyone else sees what I saw in the folder.

A bag is suddenly shoved into my arms. “Go,” Belle says.

I take the bag and run out of the room, hitting all the buttons on the key fob to find the car. It doesn’t take long, considering the sleek black sports car in the first parking spot in front of the hotel is the one responding. I’d be a lot more excited about this if I wasn’t in a panic over Jo.

That folder contained pictures of what must have been Patrick’s apartment. There were pictures of her everywhere, but that’s not what freaked me out the most. He had a sex doll that looked exactly like her that he had stripped naked and cut apart. I needed to get to her. I needed to see that she was safe and in one piece. Gavin says she is, but I don’t trust him. I won’t trust anything except my own eyes.

Starting the car, I wait for the GPS to turn on and pull out of the parking lot the minute it connects, tires squealing.

Maine, here I come.

thirty-four

EZRA