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They just had none of the brains to pull it off.

“But I do, don’t I, James?” I murmured to the baby. “While they’re distracted searching for you, I’ll make my move. I want that stake on American soil more than either of those two idiots did. And having your ma bouncing on my cock while I get it will just be a bonus.”

29

LYNX

Dear Diary,

Today Dax gave a cop his very first tattoo. Customer satisfaction was…mixed.

Liam was already seated in a back corner booth of his brother’s restaurant when we arrived. He waved us over, and I led our group, nerves bouncing around my stomach, as they had been ever since I’d woken up that morning in a tangle of arms and legs, only to discover my lawyer wanted a meeting with us before he went to work that day.

Liam stood to shake my hand, then Dax’s and Luca’s. He kissed Nyah on the cheek, and she squeezed his arm.

He waved for us all to sit and motioned at the pile of toast and condiments in the middle of the table. “Eat something. It’s still warm. Hayden doesn’t do breakfast here at Sinners, they have more of a nighttime sort of clientele. Toast is my best offering when given free range of a closed restaurant.”

I chuckled. “You mean people don’t want to play in Hayden’s not-so-secret sex maze before 10:00 a.m. on a weekday?”

Liam sniggered. “They probably do, but I don’t think my brother wants to get out of bed that early.”

Luca yawned. “Do any of us?” He glanced at Liam. “What’s up?”

Liam took a sip of his coffee and grimaced at the taste. Apparently, Liam didn’t do coffee all that well either. Or at least not with whatever he’d found in the Sinners’ kitchen. He focused on me. “First, this isn’t about James. And I don’t want you to worry too much. I haven’t heard anything major…”

The butterflies in my stomach intensified. “But you have heard something…”

Liam nodded.

I felt sick. At the same time, I knew I didn’t deserve to feel good about all the things I’d done that could be coming back to bite me in the ass. I’d killed people. People whose names I couldn’t even remember because I’d blacked out most of them.

I wasn’t like Reaper and the other guys in the Murder Squad who could all channel their darkness into killing from an approved list of targets. My urges didn’t run along the same rivers theirs did.

I didn’t eat, sleep, and breathe murder.

But when someone I loved was in danger, whether that be Nyah or Reaper or the people who had come before them, something in my brain just switched modes, and there was very little I could do to control it.

That left me vulnerable in a way I didn’t like.

It made me messy.

A killer who could be linked back to his crimes at any time because I didn’t even remember half of them, or if I’d cleaned them up well. “Rip the Band-Aid off. Just tell us.”

Liam tore open a little package of sugar and poured it into his coffee. “I don’t like what happened with you and the cops. I’m no stranger to how dirty they are. The fact you were held without charges, and then released—”

I choked on a laugh. “Released isn’t exactly the word I’d use for it. More like handed over for Jeremiah Matish to throw in a hole.”

Liam made a face. “That only makes it worse for me. He and the cops know you’re still alive. The stuff with James made you too public to touch, but now that’s all dying down, I think they’re just going to come after you again.”

Luca broke the crust on a piece of toast and crumbled it into smithereens. He didn’t look at Liam, but his question was definitely directed at him. “And if we told you Jeremiah Matish was no longer a problem…”

Liam stared at him. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Nope,” all four of us replied in unison.

“We definitely don’t know anything about that,” Luca added dryly.

Liam’s expression said he clearly didn’t believe any of us. “I really miss the days where the hardest thing I had to do was get drunk high school kids out on bail.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Okay, so let’s just say Jeremiah Matish has taken a vacation and you don’t have to worry about him. But that cop who arrested you, he clearly knows things. What they did might not have been on the up and up because of whatever deal he had going on with Matish, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have enough to pin it on you. Legally. At the end of the day, they have a dead body with lynx marks on her back, and you were in the vicinity of where her body was found, with no alibi we can prove since the only alibi we actually do have is the Slayers’ gate footage, which actually shows you leaving.”