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CHAPTERONE
Madelyn
There hadn’t been many times in my life when I’d completely frozen up, unable to act. But with the squeeze of a stranger’s bulging arms around me, his vicious threat ringing in my ears, and the view before me of my stepbrother and his two best friends crouched around a bloody corpse, my brain momentarily short-circuited.
What the hell was going on? What had I gotten myself into? What hadtheygotten into?
As the Vigil guys sprang to their feet, something inside me jolted back to alertness. The attacker who’d gripped me growled menacingly, his arms pressing tighter, and my martial arts training kicked into gear.
I was not going to become another victim like the man lying slumped on the floor.
My body reacted, my heel jamming down on his toes as hard as I could slam it, my body dropping to jerk free from his grasp. I kicked back and out, managing to glance my foot off his groin and propelling a pained grunt out of him.
I spun around, scrambling on the gritty concrete floor of the abandoned warehouse. The daylight spilling through the few windows that weren’t boarded up was dimming, leaving the vast room even more shadowed. The man lunged at me through the gloom. He yanked a pistol from a concealed holster at his hip, and my pulse stuttered.
I didn’t let fear slow me down. I kneed him in the gut and smacked my elbow into his wrist so his fingers snapped apart.
The gun tumbled from his grasp. I had just enough wherewithal to kick it as far as I could across the room before I spun to make a run for it.
My attacker didn’t want to let me go. He snatched at me again with a muttered curse. I swung out my arm and managed to crack him across the face hard enough that his nose spurted blood. As he clutched at it, I slammed my heel into his ankle with all the force I could give.
His leg buckled. I darted backward, ready to dash away—but right then the three Vigil guys rushed in.
My steps stalled as I gaped at them springing to action. Logan clocked the stranger in the temple with a swing of his fist, his substantial brawn sending the guy reeling right over on the ground. Slade jumped in, stomping on the guy’s ribs and then heaving him onto his stomach. Nimble even with his prosthetic leg, he knelt on the guy’s back, pinning one arm behind him. Dexter caught the other arm and pressed it to the ground, kicking away a flail of the guy’s legs.
Logan’s head jerked around, his chestnut hair ruffling with the movement. He spotted a dusty coil of rope lying partway across the vast warehouse room, sprinted over, and hustled back with it. With Slade’s and Dexter’s help, he secured the man’s hands behind his back and then used the other end of the rope to tie his ankles together.
It all happened in the span of a minute. I took a few steps backward, but something held me from racing right out the door of the warehouse and never looking back.
I still didn’t understand what was going on here. This place had something to do with my dad—its address had been in the secret compartment in his trinket box. Why had he been here before? And how could Logan or either of his friends have actuallykilledsomeone?
My gaze caught on the blood splattered on Logan’s tee, and my stomach lurched.
Could there be another explanation? Maybe they’d just found the man stabbed and Logan had gotten blood on him while trying to keep him alive?
The idea sounded crazy, but I knew this was my only chance to get answers. If I walked away, the guys would never admit to what I’d seen here. They might never speak to me again. My hand dropped to my pocket where my phone was, but I didn’t know yet if I was willing to bring the police into this situation either.
“What the hell is going on here?” I demanded, but my voice came out tinny to my own ears. I swallowed thickly.
The guys were too focused on the man they’d subdued to answer. Slade had gotten up now that the stranger was tied. Sweat had beaded on the bronze skin of his forehead. He brushed a few damp strands of his dark brown hair away from his eyes and prodded the man’s bruising temple with the toe of his sneaker. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
I’d never heard the playful flirt’s voice so firm and fierce before. It sent a chill through me.
The man simply spat at Slade, who chuckled without any humor. “That didn’t answer my question.”
Logan aimed a kick at the man’s side, the same place where Slade had struck his ribs earlier. “Want to rethink that answer? The faster you answer our questions, the less you’re going to get hurt.”
What was I watching? The man that I’d been intimate with less than two hours ago looked ready to torture a man, and the one I’d slept with two years ago was obviously on board as well. Even usually meek Dexter was stalking around the scene, snapping pictures of both the man and the room around us, his expression tightly intent.
“I’m not going to tell you idiots anything,” the man growled. He squirmed against his bindings but didn’t accomplish anything more than looking like a beached whale.
Slade braced the foot of his prosthetic against the man’s ankle, which was lying at an uncomfortable looking angle. He applied a little weight. “I think you should reconsider. We can keep doing this all day. Who do you work for? Who owns this building, and why are you guarding it?”
“None of your fucking business.”
As Logan leaned down to smack the guy across his already bloody nose, I finally managed to push more words from my throat. “What are youdoingto him? What did you do to that guy in the other room? You have to tell me what’s going on.”
Slade looked at me, and his expression softened with a flicker of concern and what might have been guilt. But before he could say anything, Dexter piped up, talking to his friends rather than me in his usual matter-of-fact tone.
