Page 104 of Mr. Romantic (Mister 2)

I tap the door and it swings closed with a smart click.

“You don’t want to do this, Delaney,” the deputy says through the glass. “You don’t want us to come back with a warrant.”

He’s wrong. I do want to do this. And if they have to leave and come back with a warrant I can get a hold of the situation. Because everything happening right now is a little bit too familiar.

“Step away,” Pax says. “Get out of their line of sight.”

I turn the lock on the door first. Not that it will stop them. But if they break the glass, there will be a fantastic alarm and security companies will be notified. They are all yelling at me from outside now, but I don’t care. I back away.

“What the fuck?” I ask Pax once I’m in the hallway with him. “Why the fuck are they here?”

“What are they going to find, Nolan? What kind of shit went down tonight?”

He’s not asking me if I killed her or anything. He’s asking what kind of kink I was up to. “Her shoes are in the pool. Her clothes are outside, panties are ripped down the middle, out there as well. There’s lube on the stairs, which we can’t retrieve without the cops seeing, since it’s a straight-line view. There’s rope in one of the bedrooms. She’s… got some marks on her wrists. Maybe her face, but I think those are gone by now. I didn’t come inside her.”

“I tell you what, Romantic. You sure as fuck don’t make life easy.”

“It was planned, Pax.”

“I figured that out, asshole. I’m not accusing you. But we should wake her up and get her to come down and talk to them. Outside,” he stresses. “They cannot come in the house without a warrant. Otherwise we’re gonna be on the news tomorrow.”

“But who knew she was here?”

“Your sister?”

“No,” I say, as we walk to the other end of the house so we can take the back stairs instead of the main ones in the foyer. “I haven’t told her shit.”

“She has people following you, Nolan. I’ve been on your case for one day and I know this.”

I say nothing. Fucking Claudette has gone off the deep end.

The path back to the bedroom Ivy and I were sleeping in is complicated. This whole fucking house is complicated. More than twenty thousand square feet and filled with bedrooms, storerooms, garages, offices, and even two separate guest houses outside. By the time we reach the right hallway, I’m relieved. “Ivy?” I say, walking into the bedroom. “Ivy?” I call again, looking in the bathroom. “Where the fuck are you—”

And that’s when I see what’s on the bed.

Pax crossed the room and snatches it up just as I’m about to.

“What the fuck?” I ask him. “How the hell did that get in here?”

But Pax is stunned silent. And I can’t blame him. I know this little piece of history he’s holding. I know because the cops showed it to me once when I was being questioned.

I just didn’t know it was his. His little part in the whole Mister Browns rape case.

“What the fuck is going on?” Pax asks. “Is your little girlfriend part of this?”

“No, fuck that. She’s here—” But my words trail off as I step around the other side of the bed and see blood on the floor.

“Someone is here,” Pax says. “Someone who knows very intimate things about what we did that night.”

“They took Ivy,” I say.

“Nolan, they can’t get off this island. They can’t even get over to the main part of the island. There’s cops out front. No one is getting past them. I didn’t see a boat at the dock when I flew in. So she’s still here. In this house somewhere. Where would she be?”

“Fuck me. This place is huge, Pax. There’s so many places.”

“Choose two,” Pax says, pointing his gun at me and then himself. “And we’ll each take one.”

“The attic and… the basement, I guess. The fucking attic is six thousand square feet. The basement probably the same. But she could be anywhere. We have fifteen bedrooms. Hell, she could be in a bathroom. We have twenty of those.”