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Gentle hands on her shoulders dragged her to her feet. This time, she let it be. Cain’s arms went around her, sheltering her against his big chest.
“Security will be here any second,” Maya said.
Joss’s voice was tight. “What about the body?”
“Leave it here,” Cain said.
Alice looked up in shock, staring at Cain through her tears. “We can’t leave him.”
He fixed her with a piercing look. “He’s gone.”
She shook her head, too broken to make sense of anything. She tried to relax her jaw, but her teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. “W–what happened?”
Cain smoothed his hands over her hair and took her face between his palms. “Listen to me. Explanations later. You can’t break down. Not yet. Not here.” He searched her eyes. “Do you understand?”
She took a shaky breath and nodded, cutting off all emotions for the time being.
“Good.” Cain offered her a tense smile. “Where’s Godfrey?”
“I locked him in the room where he held me. I don’t know if he’s dead or just knocked out.”
“Can you take us there?”
Everything inside of her protested at going back down those hallways. She wanted to stay with Ivan. “Ivan—” She reached for him, but Cain held her back.
“Godfrey is responsible for this. The only thing you can do for Ivan is help me find Godfrey. Can you do that for me?”
Where she gathered strength from, she didn’t know, but she nodded again. “I can show you.”
Cain hugged her briefly. “We have little time.”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
It felt as if the walk to the storerooms took forever. When they approached the turn before the room, Alice slowed. “It’s around there.” She held the key to Cain.
He took it with an expression of pride. “You’ve done well.”
He passed her, Joss, and Maya, who followed with their weapons drawn, and Clelia at her back. They moved quickly but soundlessly, Joss studying a network of laser beams on his smart watch. Cain turned to Joss with a lifted brow. They didn’t need words to communicate. Joss shook his head. Cain nodded and advanced to where they had a visual on the door, and then he stopped abruptly.
Her heart pounded in her chest as Alice strained her neck to see past the people blocking her view. When Cain, Joss, and Maya moved forward, she sucked in a breath. The door was open. With their weapons aimed in front of them, Joss and Maya stalked to the room. From the hunch in Joss’s shoulders as he reached the door, Alice knew the room was empty even before she stood in the door. There was a red stain on the bed, and the chandelier lay on the floor, but other than that, there was no sign of Godfrey. Cold fear rushed through her veins, making the hair at the back of her neck stand erect. The wood around the lock was splintered. It looked as if someone had kicked down the door.
Cain acted fast. “Movement, Joss?”
Joss looked at his watch again. “Nothing here. There’s activity in the foyer moving toward the auditorium. Must be security.”
“He got away,” Maya said.
Cain looked around the room. His gaze fixed on the blood that marked the bed. Looking at Joss, he clamped his lips together and jerked his head in that direction.
Joss studied the spot where Godfrey had been lying and dragged a finger through a puddle of blood. Alice shuddered at the action. When he brought his finger to his mouth and licked it clean, she almost emptied whatever was left in her stomach. Joss moved his jaw from side to side, his head tilted up to the ceiling. He looked back at Cain, his grey eyes filled with a darkness that was frightening.
“He’s alive,” Joss said, spitting the words out as if they were venom.
Maya turned in a slow circle. “Someone must’ve rescued him.”
“It could’ve been a shifter,” Alice offered. “Daniel got through security when he attacked Ivan.”
“They can’t get out as long as the building is locked down,” Clelia said.
Cain turned to his team. “Search the building, every nook and cranny. I’ll deal with security.”
“What’s our story?” Maya asked.
“We came here to celebrate Alice’s first night on stage. We had a few drinks in one of the private lounges backstage. Is there a room no one would’ve looked, Alice?”
“The green room. Nobody goes there. It wouldn’t have been a celebration, though. I messed up and ran off.”
“We came to offer Alice support,” Cain corrected. “Let’s go.”
Maya, Joss, and Clelia went one way, while he and Alice turned back to where they’d come from. They didn’t speak as Cain rushed her to the stage. Before they hit the stairs, he stopped and turned her to him with his hands on her shoulders.
“You have to be brave now, Alice. This is going to be hard, but you have to act as if you don’t know, as if you haven’t seen his body before. Can you do that for me?”
