Page 95

Verity

Ballsy passesthrough the palace gates, giving a quick nod to Matt Kramus. He’s been quiet ever since he returned to East End, probably a little shell-shocked after spending forty-eight hours being interrogated by Agent Knight. Thankfully, Sy was able to get one of Saul’s former attorneys to get him released. According to Sy, it turns out the arrest warrant had nothing to do with Stella or any of the other girls. That was bullshit. It was a simple bench warrant for failing to appear in traffic court six months ago. Since the FBI had no actual evidence that Ballsack had anything to do with the girls’ disappearance, and the bench warrant was easily taken care of once he got in front of a judge, they had to release him.

Even after being out for days now, he still looks tired. He could be in West End laying low, except he wants to stay busy, so when he showed up to take me to the shower, I wasn’t surprised. Concerned, but not surprised. “Ballsy,” I start, “you don’t have to do this. Any one of the guys can take me, and I don’t expect there will be any trouble. Not with Mama there, and?—”

“I need to ask a favor,” he blurts, “but you have to promise not to put any attention on yourself.”

I take in the stiff way he holds onto the steering wheel. The tight muscles in his neck. “Not sure I can promise that. I’m roughly the size ofa planet.”

He sighs, but goes on, “Remy’s cousin called late last night, and that girl they found by the river? The dean’s niece?” He glances over. “She’s going to be initiated as the new Baroness in the next few days.”

I freeze, taking this in. Classes start back up in a week so I was expecting a new Royal stock. “Well, that can’t be a coincidence, can it? What have you found out so far?”

Pace has been shut-lipped about the whole thing, which is probably because every time I think of her, the sick feeling that’s hovered over me since we found those bones in the solarium threatens to rise up the back of my throat.

I think of Odette. Or Amber Maddox. Posey Payne. Not all women who go missing are dead. Some are still missing. Others are hospitalized or in prison. I rest my hand on my stomach, relieved, not for the first time, that I’m carrying a boy and not a girl.

Although, I know firsthand that boys get hurt in Forsyth, too.

“We talked to the two kids who found her,” he begins. “They were fishing that morning on the river, way out in the northern section.”

“It’s all forest out there, right?”

He nods. “They said she washed up completely unconscious. They thought she was a corpse at first, but one of them—some kind of fucking Eagle Scout or whatever—gave her CPR while the other called for help.”

The hard line carved into his forehead makes me ask, “What aren’t you telling me? You know I can handle it.”

He shakes his head, huffing. “I know you can, it’s just the way the boys described her. Like she’d been running for days. Makes it hard to pin down direction or territory.”

That nauseous feeling from before intensifies. “Did anyone say anything else?”

“Not anything we don’t already know about Arianette Hexley.” Shrugging, he elaborates. “Nineteen-year-old black female, sophomore, pretty, related to the Dean of Admissions. All fairly surface-level details.”

The Gilded Rose comes into view. “So what makes everyone sure she’s connected to the other disappearances? She could have just fallen into the river, right? Or gotten lost. Or been a victim of something domestic.”

“There were indicators,” he says carefully.

“What kind?” I ask, needing to know.

“Implications she’d been held against her will. She was emaciated and covered in bruises. There were ligature marks around her wrists. Her knees had sores on them, and her feet… they looked like she hadn’t been wearing shoes.”

“She ran through the forest barefoot?” I wince. There’s something barbaric about it, stripping a person of their basic needs. “Honestly, if Ashby wasn’t locked in the basement and the Princes weren’t sleeping in my bed every night, I’d accuse them. Sounds like torture.”

He grunts, but we both know this isn’t the Princes’ work. Too sloppy and they’re too preoccupied.

“There was something else. A wound just behind her ear.” He touches the spot. “She’d been embedded with a tracker but it was removed. No idea how long she had it or who put it there.”

It’s common knowledge the Royals track their House Girls. Lionel Lucia and his penchant for sex trafficking set that into motion, but this girl was young, and not affiliated with any house or territory as far as I know.

His mouth forms a tense line. “But if she’s told that FBI agent anything of actual value, they haven’t been acting on it. The radios and the wires are suspiciously quiet. No one except me has been brought in for questioning.”

My emotions rise and fall like I'm riding over the crests and dips of a roller coaster. Everyone’s been interested in her story, but not like me, Pace, and Ballsy. A survivor’s witness account has to be a huge break in Agent Knight’s case.

So why hasn’t anything come of it?

That’s when it hits me. “The Barons. They have her under lock and key.”

“Even more than usual.” Face drawn, Ballsy pulls into the drive that leads to the Gilded Rose. “Pace and I can’t get to her to ask her any questions.”