Page 107

I slip the card from my back pocket and dial the number for Detective Lozano. I don’t even know who the guy is. Maybe it’s not even in service.

“Hello?” A woman with a thick Spanish accent answers the phone.

“Hi. Um … please don’t hang up. I know this is going to sound really weird, but bear with me. I found your number, and … can I speak to a Detective Lozano?”

A brief pause follows, and the woman makes a whimpering sound in her throat. “Who is this?”

“My father must’ve known him. Um. I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s kind of urgent that I speak with him.”

“My husband is dead. Who did you say you were?”

“What are you doing?”

The voice from behind sends a ripple of fear down my spine, and I click out of the call, hearing the woman ask one more time who I am before I silence it.

I spin around to find Thierry, fully dressed in a white button-down and slacks, standing in the doorway with strands of wet hair in disarray, as if he ran his fingers through it. A swell of lies clogs my throat, but not a single one pushes past my lips, as my mind scrambles for a good reason I’d be in his office.

Suspicious eyes watch my every move, as I drop the phone back into the bag. “Why are you in my office?”

“I, um. I came in here. I was just looking for my blade.”

“Your blade.” He rounds the desk with a slow and lethal fluidity to his gait, and crowds me against it. Reaching for something behind me, he keeps his eyes on me, his body pressed close, so close I can feel the heat radiating off of him. When he lowers his arm, he’s holding the blade that Russ gave to me, and he runs the steel tip over the thin strap of my tank. “Is this what you’re looking for, catin?”

Chin tipped up, I clench my jaw to keep my teeth from chattering together. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Now, why would you need this here? You plan to kill something?”

“You tell me first. You’ve … killed before. Haven’t you?”

A spark of amusement shines in his eyes. “Mais, oui.” Yes.

Blowing out a shaky breath through my nose, I swallow hard. “What happened … to your sister?”

The amusement in his eyes darkens, his jaw tightening. “What do you know of her?”

Oh, God. It’s true. The crazy old lady was right.

When I don’t answer, he slams his palm against my throat, trapping the air in my lungs. My hands fly up to pry his fingers from my neck, but he digs them in, tightening his grasp.

“Tell me!” Rage burns in his eyes, but I refuse to talk. Not after he already threatened to kill the woman. The fury blazing off of him seems to ignite the air around us, his grasp of my throat unrelenting. “If you don’t tell me how you know about her, I will take this ugly fucking knife and gut you open where you stand.”

Head dizzy with the lack of oxygen, I open my mouth, and he releases just enough for me to suck in a gulp of air. “Fuck. You,” I rasp.

I’m dead. I’m so fucking dead that whoever finds my body will be lucky if they can even identify me. A maddening violence stares back at me in the widening of his pupils and grinding of his teeth.

The sharp edge of his L-shaped desk slips beneath my thighs, as he drags me by my neck across the unyielding surface, and doesn’t bother to pause when I stumble over my feet the second they smack the floor. A scream dies in my throat, as he roughly straightens me and drags me farther through the office. Hands flailing out, I scramble to reach for something. Anything. Nails scraping against the walls, I lose my grip with his hard yanking. Circles float before my eyes, my field of view narrowing beneath the darkness that threatens to take me under. One hard thrust from him sends an explosion of light to the back of my eyelids, and my body flies up into the air.

The soft surface catches me when I land backward on the bed’s mattress. Gasping for breath, I turn to my side, taking in short and shallow inhalations.

“Tell me who the fuck told you about my sister, or I will make you suffer in unimaginable ways.”

Tears prickle my eyes, his form fading behind a watery shield. It’s not this that devastates me. I always had a sense that I would die in some crazy, unnatural way, because I don’t think you get to run from the devil for long. Eventually, he’ll come looking for payment, and it’s not going to be pretty when he does.

It’s that I trusted.

For the first time in a long time, I put my trust in another man.

And I was wrong.