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“Grey!?”
Ollie and I exchanged concerned glances as Paxton’s brow furrowed at her tone, and in the next beat, all three of us were moving for the living room. My wife stood in her loose-fitting tank, tucked into casual shorts, but the ease stopped there. Her skin had gone terrifyingly pale, eyes rimmed in silver as a shaking hand rubbed at her mouth.
“Grey,” she repeated, more a broken cry than my name. Rushing for her, I pulled her against me, terrified I couldn’t make whatever this was go away. “It’sher,” she breathed.
“What happened, baby? It’s who?”
Trembling, she rotated for the television, pointing a shaky hand. My heart dropped. I didn’t have to unmute the local news in order to see the headline about the body dredged out of the river. Or for me to scour the flat brown eyes, fair skin, and dark, kinky hair of the victim.
I knew her.Had seen her only last night, fumbling to fix our table?—
“Our server. The one who…” She gulped, hard.
The one who’d spilled wine over her dress and then escorted her past the perfectly functional guest bathroom to the staff facility.
The staff restroomconnectedto the men’s room, where Alice believed she heard a man talking aboutme. Us. The man that led her to an office, where Max could access a buried code aboutObsidian.
With her family surrounding us with worried faces, all I could do was wrap her tighter in my arms, pressing my lips to her hair.
They knew.
22
Izzie Medina
ALICE
From time to time, music reaches into my soul to meld a glimmering fragment of the artist into the fabric of my very being. Hozier was one of those artists for me. Especially so when I had too many emotions to grapple with and no safe space to grapple in.
To the serenade of his Gaelic lyrics, tears streaming down my cheeks,I drew.
My fingers ached with how long I’d whisked charcoal across paper.
Again and again, I started the piece only to throw it in the trash bin.
There was no perfection. Nothing adequate enough for Izzie Medina of Yuma, Arizona. The server whose name I hadn’t bothered to learn.
Nothing was lifelike enough to capture the fear in those shallow eyes or how she rolled her lips between her teeth when she looked over her shoulder. Nothing could do justice to the woman who I was convinced had somehow…known. Known what I would overhear if she just got me to that bathroom. Known I’d put it together and fight to protect Greyson.
That palpable anxiety in her fidgeting fingers had nothing to do with a catering gig and everything to do with what she needed me to know.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I breathed, running my thumb across her lips to blend the shades. I knew better, but fuck anybody who limits your tools to pretentious store-bought items when skin works just fine. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I muttered, replaying the fear pouring from her in waves.She’d known. Somehow, she’d known. Had she been a victim herself? Tucked in plain sight? I couldn’t wrap my head around that idea, though. Not any better than I could erase the picture of her they’d plastered over the news the last few days.
Grey, Jackson, and Max were all hunting for answers. Attempting to find a very small needle in a very large haystack for any connection or correlation.
Izzie didn’t have much known family.
She grew up in the south of Arizona.
Had no local relatives.
No easily identified features like tattoos on her skin.
Which, from what I’d read, made her…well, the perfect target. This meant if her body hadn’t turned up, it might have been months before anybody knew she was gone.
And I very well may have been the last person that saw her alive.
Greyson had doubled our security at the house and the office, and Jax’s men were on a rampage to find answers.