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He breathed in deeply, then let out a horrendous cough, dropping his gun and stumbling away with his hands enclosed over his mouth.

“Don’t look,” he yelled mid-cough, shaking his head at me as I planted a heel atop the front porch step, then another. “Don’t!”

“Spike—”

“It’s a cat,” he yelled, coughing harder and gagging, my heart sinking once his words had finally registered with my ears.

“He sent you a dead fucking cat.”

twenty-four

Spike

The police arrived at Charlotte’s house within minutes of me calling the report in. Charlotte was currently talking with Chief and Captain Burgess and was in utter shambles, barely holding it together.

“Spike!”

My brows shot up to my hairline when I spun around at the sound of my name.

“What the hell happened?”

“Charlotte’s fine,” I told Phoenix, confused as to why he was here. “I thought you were at the club?”

“I was,” he answered, worrying his bottom lip the more he stared at Charlotte talking to our bosses. “I left early after overhearing on the scanner that something happened here at Charlotte’s house.”

“Someone cut the lines on her security cameras. There was a package delivered on her porch with a dead cat inside of it.”

“What?” he asked, jerking his head back in disbelief. “Tell me you’re not serious.”

I sadly shook my head, wishing I had better news to deliver.

“Was it Karl?”

“Charlotte seems to think so. Aside from him, her coworker Blaire, and Peter, nobody else is familiar with the cameras or knows where they’re located. There’s something else too.”

I checked my surroundings and then leaned in closer to my best friend.

“Charlotte received several texts on the way here from a restricted number.”

I relayed to him what the messages said.

“But get this… Charlotte also told me she’d received another package from a local flower shop the same day Karl showed up here. There wasn’t a sender listed but there was a card taped to the box with the exact words written inside.”

“Wait…” Phoenix shook his head, completely flabbergasted. “She told you that? I mean… Obviously, I knew about Karl, but this is the first I’m hearing about a package. She never told me about that.”

I looked away from him long enough to carefully narrow my eyes over his shoulder at the random car whipping madly inside Charlotte’s driveway. It was Peter. He literally jumped out, leaving his door open, and immediately ran over to Charlotte, who was still in deep conversation with Cap and Chief, tears flooding her cheeks.

“Maybe it slipped her mind. But that doesn’t matter right now. She said it’s Karl and that the whole ‘it should’ve been you’ thing is just another bullshit form of him trying to woo her back.”

“His way of saying he should’ve chosen her instead of his mistress,” Phoenix uneasily grumbled.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “That’s how it sounded to me too.”

“But a dead fucking cat?” he said more angrily, gritting his teeth. “Why would Karl—”

“I have a theory about that,” I whispered, not wanting to be too loud just in case Charlotte overheard. I fucking refused to upset her any more than she already was at the moment. “But before I can elaborate any further, that’s the person we need to speak with first.”

He followed my pointing finger’s trajectory.