Page 34 of Bleed the Shadows

“Damn,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Where’s the house?” Poe asked.

“Up on the mountain,” she said. “There’s a gate, security.”

Bram narrowed his eyes. “And you’d know this how?”

“I went up there,” she said. “A few weeks ago.”

“That was fucking stupid,” Bram said.

“Maybe, but at least I was doing something,” she shot back. “Someone had to.”

Bram’s jaw tightened at the dig and I felt his guilt like my own. Maeve had been with us for two months and we hadn’t done shit to help her with Ethan Todd. She’d been out there alone, trying to figure it out.

Trying to make him pay.

“Anyway, I wasn’t going to do anything.”

It was the same thing she’d said when I’d pulled her out of the protest outside the hotel where Ethan Todd had been giving a speech. I still didn’t know if she was trying to convince us or herself.

“Then why did you go?” Poe asked.

“I just wanted to see it for myself.” She took a deep breath. “In case I had to take another run at him.”

“What do you mean ‘take another run at him’?” Bram asked.

She bit her lower lip. “I tried to take him out once. At his hotel in the city, right after Chris’ trial.”

“I knew it,” I said. “That was you.”

Poe looked at me. “What are you talking about?”

“There were rumors online that someone had tried to kill him in the city, but they’ve never been proven.”

Bram was practically apoplectic. “And you didn’t think to mention it?” He looked at Maeve. “Either of you?”

Maeve shrugged. “I thought I was on my own.” She bit into her donut, then looked at Poe. “You were right, this is crazy delicious.”

“So you went to his house to case the place,” I said, trying to get Bram off the part that threatened to make his head explode.

“Kind of,” she said. “I just wanted to see what I’d be up against if I had to try again.”

Bram pushed back from the island hard enough to make the chair wobble.

He paced the room. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

I braced myself for the two of them to go head-to-head, but when Maeve answered her voice was calm. “It’s not crazy to want justice for someone you love.”

“We need more.” Poe was obviously as eager as I was to turn the conversation around. “A lot more.”

“We can put Aloha on him,” I said.

“Do it,” Bram said. “While he’s working we can take care of our other problem.”

Maeve licked maple frosting off her fingers. “What other problem?”