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“Don’t be silly, I would never.”
“So Nix and Echo are there with you?”
“Um… it’s just me and my good friend Cobee here inside the greenhouse, trying to figure out this flower situation. He’s an expert though, so I’m positive this man is going to give me all the answers I need.”
“Okay, I hear you. They’re probably right outside, so if you need them, just scream and they’ll be with you in seconds. I’m less than ten minutes away, so until then stay calm, yeah? Whatever you do, don’t lose your temper.”
That made me flash a smile over at Cobee, who seemed to be inching away toward the back of the greenhouse. “Why would I do something like that?”
“Because when you get scared, you kick into a berserker rage, and your brain stops functioning. You run straight at the thing that’s scaring you, and that’s when you become the biggest danger to your own safety. We’ve talked about this, so tell me you understand what I’m saying.”
It was a struggle not to show how irked this made me—mainly because he was right. “Mm-hm.”
“I mean it, genius. Try to remember that when you feel rage, it’s actually fear. That’s when you need to hide and count to ten before doing any other action. Understand me? By the way, I’m six minutes away now.”
He had to be going a hundred, easy. “You make me sound like the Hul—”
A sharp clang and a thump of something heavy hitting the floor made me gasp and snap around to where Cobee stood.
Only he wasn’t standing anymore.
Cobee Bruno lay in a crumpled mess on the concrete floor, a small pool of blood spreading from his head, his John Deere cap now lying several feet away. A bigger man with broad shoulders, short black hair, dark eyes and a sloping Neanderthal-like brow stood over him, a shovel in his beefy-looking hands.
“I didn’t know you didn’t like roses, Miss Eden. Sorry ‘bout that.” Despite his brutish look, his Kentucky-accented voice was polite and borderline hesitant. It was almost impossible to believe someone who possessed a croony-swoony voice like that just bashed another human being in the head with a shovel. But the evidence stood right there, the shovel still clamped in his hands.
And there was no mistaking the blood dripping off of it.
Chapter Twenty-Three
One. Two. Three.
Luke
“Goddamn it.” I had the gas pedal pushed all the way to the floorboard by the time I roared onto HEG property, all the while keeping the phone line open so I could hear Eden. The one thing I needed to hear—her screaming for Echo and Nix—wasn’t happening. Because of course. Anyone else would freak their shit out if they found themselves confronted with their stalker, the same asshole who’d put her father in the hospital. But my woman? Of course she’d never do that. She wanted to have fucking tea and conversation with the sick twist, because she was probably terrified. Thanks to her PTSD crossed wires, her fear translated into a compulsive need to destroy whatever it was that was scaring her.
I could relate. My only compulsive need at the moment was to beat the fucking shit out of the owner of that soft Southern voice coming through my phone.
“I guess I screwed up, huh? Thing is, I-I’ve never given flowers to a woman before,” came that asshole’s hesitant voice. Just what the world needed—a simpering, awkward asshole with murderous tendencies. “But I promise, Miss Eden, I didn’t kill any cat. I like cats. That wasn’t me, I swear.”
Come on, genius. Don’t attack. Count to ten and play him like a fucking violin until I get there.
I had no clue where the damn greenhouses were, so it took a minute to finally spot the glass and plastic enclosures buried behind HEG’s main building. Eden’s car was parked next to a white gravel trail, telling me that I was in the right place. But after jumping out of my own car and running down that trail a good twenty feet or so, I came to a halt when it split off to three separate commercial-sized greenhouses.
FUCK.
“The reason I don’t like roses is because a person can pick them up anywhere, even at a gas station.” I heard Eden’s voice, remarkably calm, as if she didn’t have a damn care in the world. Shit. Talk about a bad sign. I would have preferred hearing at least an ounce of fear. That would mean she was responding correctly, and not out of her fucking mind with rage. “I’d like to be more than an afterthought for anyone who just happened to gas up and pick up a lottery ticket, you know? Even daisies or wildflowers would make me feel like I’m special. If you had only bothered to ask me, I would have been happy to tell you that.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t talk to women.”
“Big surprise,” I muttered, scanning the area for Echo or Nix, then headed for the one greenhouse that seemed larger than the other two. “Eden? Baby, can you hear me? Which greenhouse?”
Sounds of movement were my immediate answer. Then Eden’s voice, more muffled, “Maybe you need to get out of this greenhouse and try to meet some people. It might be the biggest greenhouse on the property, but it’s still going spare when it comes to finding loads of available ladies you could date.”
“That’s my genius,” I muttered into the phone, not even sure she could still hear me. Grimly I headed toward the plastic-covered doors, reaching behind my back to unholster my gun with my free hand. “Just count to ten, yeah? Stay calm and count to ten, and I’ll be there by the time you hit eight.”
*
Eden
