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The house was completely dark when we pulled up, and I couldn’t tell if that was a good sign or not. Blue still wasn’t saying shit, and I stopped asking, since it was clear I wasn’t going to get an answer. I followed him up the driveway and into her house, which he had a key for, closing and locking the door behind him.
The security system wasn’t armed.
I pulled the gun from my waist and moved in front of Blue, ready and willing to put a hole or six in anybody who wasn’t supposed to be there.
“Tati?” he called out, and my head whipped around, trying to glare his ass into silence. I had to remember though; he wasn’t trained for shit like this the way I was.
Still, when there wasn’t an answer, it concerned me too. I rounded the corner into her kitchen first since that was the most open space of her home. It had only taken a few minutes in her space on my first visit to understand that she thrived on cleanliness and wasn’t anI’ll get to it laterkinda person.
The nearly empty wine glass on her counter, illuminated by the moonlight coming in through the windows made my stomach flip.
When I glanced back at Blue, he was looking at the same thing, and his expression let me know my reaction to it wasn’t off the mark. It was clear that Tati wasn’t here or in the great room area though, so I shifted my focus back to finding her.
Ominous energy permeated the air as we headed out of the kitchen and up the hall. I stopped cold when a dark spot on the floor got my attention. With my foot, I poked at it, tightness blooming in my chest when it streaked into a familiar substance.
Blood.
I could tell, even in the dark.
Splattered across the sleek hardwood floors, probably seeping in to create a stain leading to one of the doors. Blue and I exchanged a look before we headed there, to the room I knew was Tati’s bedroom.
At the door, I stopped and listened, finally finding a sound in the bleak silence that saturated the house.
Running water.
The shower.
Fuck.
“Wait here,” Brandon told me, as he pushed the door open into the room. It was dark there too, but dim light spilled from a doorway across the room.
I nodded, agreeing to his instruction, but my stomach was turning in knots as he disappeared into the adjoining bathroom. Anxiety kept me from staying still, driving me to pace the blood-streaked floor for several moments before I couldn’t take it anymore.
I took my ass right back to her front door, to the security panel that was there. After a few taps on the screen, I was looking at the previous footage from the security camera pointed at her front door, going back hours.
Rage flooded my nerves when I saw Kev stumbling up to the door.
I played the first clip, taking in the whole conversation, disgusted at how fucking pathetic this dude was. She’d only let him in because of the damn storm.
Because she wasn’t heartless.
She couldn’t send him out into that rain with a clear conscience, and that compassion was what his bitch ass had preyed on.
I hated the length of time between the clip of her telling him to come inside and wait for a ride – one he’d probably never even ordered – and the next one. Nearly an hour later, it caught him on the way out—limping as he made his way down the front steps. When he glanced back, there was a full shot of his face that gave me a tiny bit of satisfaction. He was scratched and bloodied up, which meant that, at the very least, Tati had managed to get some licks in too.
But he’d walked out of here.
I’d much rather have had to rush over here to help Blue get rid of a body.
Instead… I knew exactly what that running shower meant.
I stopped what I was doing, swallowing hard to fortify my nerves before I switched to the other front door camera, the internal camera, which would show me a view of the entryway and hall.
The one I’d counted on her not checking whenI’dbroken in to scare her just about twenty-four hours before. I watched, just getting angrier and angrier as the screen showed their initial interaction, then him following her into the kitchen.
Not even ten minutes later, they were back on the screen, with her fighting against him as he dragged her down the hall to the bedroom.
The blood splatter hadn’t happened until he came back out.
