Page 3

Blowing out a breath, I give him a rushed summary as my leg bounces impatiently. I’m leaving out a lot of details right now, and I think Emeric can sense it too once I’ve finished. The door to Jo’s room is still covered by a curtain and I’m getting anxious.
He's quiet for too long once I finish, the phone in my hand in danger of breaking from how tightly I’m holding it. “Porscha… took Alastair. That’s the story you want me to buy?”
“That’s what happened,” I reply, my voice tight. “There’s supposedly video footage of her in the penitentiary, leaving with Alastair and another guard. The guard is dead now.”
Emeric clicks his tongue. “Where does that leave you two?”
My eyes narrow on the curtain that’s keeping me separated from my wife. Xeno is distracted tapping away on his phone, and I try to reign in the rage. “I don’t know yet. I’d love to take Jo far away from here-”
“But she won’t go,” Emeric finishes for me. “Not with Alastair MIA.”
I purse my lips. “Can you still handle the club if your brother is missing?”
“Honestly, V, I’m not sure if Alastair even misses me. He never got into this much shit when I was home.”
“I don’t think he had Porscha to contend with either,” I grumble.
“I’m fine here for now,” Emeric says, his voice turning hard. “But take care of my brother the way I’m taking care of Jo’s cousin.”
I hardly consider Emeric co-managing a club with Serenity on-par withtaking care of, especially since they haven’t seemed to warm up to each other yet. Yet so far as I know, no one out there wants to kill Serenity either. “We’ll keep in touch.”
Emeric chats for another minute, and I half hang up on him when the curtain finally moves. Sterling appears, his hair more disheveled than it was in my room when he stopped in, his phone pressed to his ear as he walks out of Jo’s space.
Xeno moves with me and we meet Sterling in the middle of the hallway. He moves to step past us and I catch his shoulder, because goddamnit, he’s not going to sideline me or my wife now that Alastair is missing. “Have any news, Agent?”
He throws my hand off, muttering into the phone. “Hold on, Tyler.” Dropping his arm so the phone is away from his face, he glares at me. “Go make plans with Jo, whatever they are. I have things to take care of.”
“You didn’t answer me-”
“Not now, Vinny,” he sighs, shaking his head as he looks at me. “The coroner who handled all of Alastair’s victims is dead. Murdered. That has to be looked into. We need to make plans to exhume Porscha’s remains since she’s suddenly among the living. I have some things to sort through right now. When there is something to share you’ll be one of the first to know. Both of our suspects would have a distinct interest in the two of you.”
Both.He must be talking about Porscha, and it shouldn’t surprise me as much as it does that she’s a suspect too. I don’t know if he relayed that part to Jo or not, but it’s going to complicate things.
Maybe they aren’t just looking for one serial killer, but two.
Sterling is back on his phone again but I quickly lose focus on him when I peer through the curtain and spot Jo. She’s part way off the bed before I reach her, ignoring the cords attached to the monitors around her. I sweep her up in my arms, folding one leg to sit back on the bed with her before she accidentally pulls something out.
Xeno pulls the door mostly closed to stand outside like a guard. I almost miss it when she starts talking, her voice soft, quiet. “I can’t do it again, Vinny.”
“We won’t,” I promise her, kissing her temple. “This is more than it was before. If you want to go, we go. You need only say the words.”
She nods against me. “I want to see them put behind bars. B-both of them.”
She trips over the words, but I hear where her thoughts are going. “As you wish, darling. I’ll take them to hell myself if either comes for you ever again.”
Chapter 1
6 weeks later
“Oh, Porscha!”
My voice is scratchy, but I still manage to give it a little sing-song rhythm. I can hear her moving around upstairs, the creaky floorboards above the sunken basement enough to give me some idea what she’s doing. This room is all I’ve seen for the last several weeks, and Porscha started mocking me last week about how much time has passed, so now I at least have some sort of idea how long I’ve been trapped.
My vision is hazy as I look around the dreary room. If there are any windows, it’s hidden behind the piles of stuff that fill the space. The only window I can see is at the very top of the stairs, and it took a while to realize that’s what it is since I can only see part of it.
The scent of damp soil and rotting wood made me realize there’s mold in here and based on how close my bed is to the ceiling this has to be a storage room. It’s not anyplace fit for humans. But then again, maybe that’s how Porscha sees me.
When we first arrived here, I was covered in scrapes and bruises from the rough trip down, thanks to Porscha knocking me around. There was a welt that ached for a week on the back ofmy head that stopped hurting a long time ago. Moving me all by herself was a little harder than she expected and my body paid the price for it.