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“What do you want, Saxon?”
“Aw, no more Leo?” My stomach twists as he takes a highway on-ramp—he could be taking me anywhere. I’m sure Cash has some sort of tracking device on my phone, but of course I left it at home. In my defense, I wasn’t planning on getting kidnapped before eight a.m. I can only hope that Alfie saw me get into the car and is right behind us.
“Why her?” I demand. If I’m going to die, I want to go knowing the answers to the questions that haunt me.
“I prefer blondes.” He gives me a sympathetic look that makes my skin crawl. “It was nothing personal, darling.”
“You’re sick.”
“I’m actually feeling fine.”Smug bastard.
A few minutes later, we pull up to an empty construction lot for a new business park. There are various pieces of machinery, concrete foundation poured, and stacks of lumber ready to use. But no workers. Not a single person is in sight. Leo drives across the dusty lot to an office trailer. Bile rises in my throat when I notice the yellow crime scene tape strapped across the door.
It’s a perfect kill location. With the lot empty, no one will hear anything, and no one will question a car with government plates at a crime scene. He gets out of the car and opens my door, waving me out with the gun.
“You shouldn’t have waited until after they poured the concrete. It would have been a great way to dispose of my body.” His jaw ticks, clearly annoyed I’m not acting more frightened.
He uses a pocket knife to lift the tape without breaking the seal. Inside, the trailer looks like any other well-used office: travel coffee cups, post-its placed around a computer monitor, file cabinets with loose documents piled on top. But among the space, there are swatches of black powder, almost like soot, especially on the desk with a knocked-over cup of pencils and a flipped chair. Plus little, plastic, yellow triangles with numbers dot the room.
I look around the space and wonder if this is what the movie theater parking lot looked like after Beth’s murder. Were there little yellow markers pointing to clues that led nowhere? Did they dust for fingerprints and come up empty?
“Come here,” Leo calls me over to a slatted shelf and handcuffs one of my wrists to it.
I avoid asking any more questions, instead just watching him and wondering how I could have been so wrong.
“Quincy, Saxon.” Leo speaks into his phone. “I’m following a hunch. Don’t want it on the books quite yet, but I’ll be in later today…okay…sounds good. Bye.”Quincy.Is he in on it too? Does he know he’s hunting his partner?
He hangs up and immediately dials another number on speaker phone. “Good morning, Fox.” My blood chills.
“Who is this?” My heart tears hearing his husky morning voice. I can perfectly picture the way his pillow creases will be pressed into his cheeks.
“Sorry, I interrupted your coffee girl—”
“Saxon,”Cash growls. I can hear him shuffling around on the other end of the line.
“I think it’s time we talk this thing through, what do you say?” Leo speaks, and it reminds me of a frat bro trying to convince his rape victim to take daddy’s hush money. “I have a proposition you may be inclined—”
“Is she there? Harlow, can you hear me?” The concern in his voice, still after everything, is unbearable.
“I’m fine, Cash—oof.”Leo sucker punches me in the stomach, knocking all the air from my lungs. Cash hollers a string of gruesome threats through the phone.
“You better hurry, Fox. You know how much I love tarnishing pretty things.” Leo uses a light finger to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, and I spit in his face. He scowls and slaps me hard, but I try my best to muffle any groan for Cash’s sake, but I’m sure the slap rang through.
“Anything you do to her, I’ll do to you ten times worse, pig,” Cash roars.
Leo gives him directions to the construction site. “And I don’t think I need to tell you what will happen if you don’t come alone.” He rips on my hair, making me scream in surprised pain for Cash to hear one last time before he hangs up.
2Ten minutes later, I hear a car racing through the gravel. Leo has been waiting on the trailer steps for the last two, and I wait, heart racing, for gunfire to erupt as a car door slams.
My stomach swoops when I hear footsteps leading up to the door instead.
The door opens, and Cash’s frantic eyes immediately lock with mine, taking my breath away. I’m relieved to see him, but terrified. I’m happy he’s here, but also wish he was safe miles and miles away. I thought Leo brought me here to kill me, and I don’t know what it means that he’s now called Cash here. Because I can tell you one thing, it will be infinitely harder to kill me in his presence.
His eyes scan me head to toe, and he gives me a look to ask if I’m okay. I nod back, and he quickly turns his attention back to Leo. Cash doesn’t have his crutches—in an attempt to not show weakness I'm sure—and he leans relaxed against a file cabinet, but I can tell he’s trying to displace weight.
I notice Leo setting two pistols on the desk and removing the magazines. He must have patted down Cash.That’s okay, if Cash can’t shoot, he’s less likely to be shot at.I try to convince myself there’s a good way this ends.
“Start talking, Saxon,” Cash drawls.
