Page 42 of Behind the Shadows

“I thought he died in a car crash,” Dope said.

“That’s what I was told. I don’t think this picture is that old, but it could have been right before he died.”

I stared at the screen.

And then my stomach dropped.

“No.” I shook my head in dismay.

“What?” Dope asked.

“Back row. Left.” I pointed. “That’s Pastor Elias Pendleton. He baptized me. I went to school with his son.”

“He’s part of it too?” Death growled.

“He’s in every photo I’ve seen at my house,” I said numbly. “Every family album. School functions. Sunday mass. Birthdays. Fucking everywhere. I thought it was because I was friends with his son, but this …”

My knees nearly gave out. I braced myself against the edge of the table.

“It was all fake. All of it. My family pretended to be something that they’re not.”

Death stepped back as if the image physically burned him. “The Pied Piper doesn’t only kill people, Kip. He builds nests. Cultivates monsters.”

I focused on my mother’s smile in the photo.

My voice cracked as a new reality crushed my chest. “What if I was one of them?”

No one answered.

Because no one could.

17

HOLLAND

I smoothed my gray pencil skirt before I sat in my office chair and looked out the window. My emotions had been on a crazy, unpredictable spiral and in a lame attempt to cheer myself up, I’d worn a soft pink blouse with my skirt. It hadn’t worked. I was constantly looking over my shoulder for either Draco or Cooper, questioning every sound along with every person I saw walk through the parking lot. Clinically speaking, I wasn’t sure I hadn’t mentally split beyond repair. The PTSD and hallucinations were playing hell with me, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t shake them. I shouldn’t have been working, but listening to other people’s problems made me feel a little better about mine.

It had been days since I’d last seen Kip. He’d texted to check if Draco or Cooper had shown up again, but he hadn’t asked to meet. Still, his words looped in my head—you know who I am.

Did I?

The way he’d said it … like a confession, or a threat. Like he knew something about me I didn’t know about myself. For a moment, his eyes had gone distant, almost fractured, as if he were standing in two places at once.

I shifted in my chair, promising myself I’d ask him when the opportunity was right. But the waiting gnawed at me. One minute, I was furious he wasn’t here like he said he would be. The next, I was replaying the press of his body, the wall at my back, the raw hunger in his voice.

When he’d pinned me against the wall, for the first time in years, I’d felt alive.

Desire pulsed through me, dark and addictive as my thoughts returned to the masked man. Was Kip into role play? Would he act out a fantasy with me? I was used to dark, rough sex. I thrived on it. Wanted it. That much I understood after what I’d lived through. It was no use trying to deny it anymore. Cooper had also fed that part of me, but he was gone, or so I hoped since I hadn’t heard anything from him since Kip had tossed him out of my office the other day.

I touched my throat where Kip had wrapped his fingers around it, my pussy clenching. A flash of his scent hit me like a drug. Burnt amber. Spiced cedar. Clean and masculine—but underneath, something darker. Sinful. Familiar. But I couldn’t place where I’d smelled it before. He must have used the same soap when he’d met me at the office, then dealt with Cooper.

My phone pinged and I reached over and picked it up from the side table.

Unknown:

You look so beautiful today.

My pulse skipped a few beats, and I held my breath as I stared at the screen.