Page 11 of Carved Obsession (The Sanctum Syndicate #4)

Carter

“This just won’t do,” I say to myself with a long sigh as I watch the city’s CCTV cameras on two of the six thirty-inch monitors fixed on the wall above my desk. The others hold the brief information I managed to find on the wretched kitten.

Her largely undocumented life surrounds me on these screens.

They’re fixed on flexible brackets I’ve adjusted so that the outside monitors are on a slight diagonal angle. They immerse me in whatever research or work I’m doing, but there’s nothing useful to be immersed in now.

Scarlet lives on the same estate as her father, at the edge of Queenscove where CCTV is sparse or non-existent and the houses are pulled away from the road.

In their case, according to satellite images, they own enough land that the buildings I can see might as well be in different neighborhoods, separated by hedges, fences, and thickets of trees.

I can only guess which belongs to the woman I’m looking for.

Probably the smaller cottage-like building on the northeast side, next to a large pond.

I have no idea why that one seems most relevant out of the three houses, but it does.

This is what I’ve been doing, watching Scarlet’s property, or trying to, since I woke up from the best sleep I’ve had in months, though that might not mean much, since I’ve been sleeping like shit.

Regardless, it seems pointless. I checked the two cameras that come close to the property boundary, but all they see are the roads leading to the estate. No house, no drive, no nothing. A distant, tall hedge and nothing else.

I need more. I need to see her house. Her windows. Inside ...

I woke up with an itchy need scratching through my veins.

A frustration that demanded satisfaction.

It didn’t get it last night. Not for lack of trying, but I just couldn’t get myself in the mood at Metamorphosis.

I still played, but I could not fuck. It felt wrong, somehow.

I can’t find a rational explanation for it, and that is simply unacceptable.

To make matters worse, Margo could tell something was off. It’s one thing to be off my game, but it’s another for it to show. I can’t let any cracks reach the surface. They might embed, and I can’t allow that.

This, though—the inability to have eyes on Scarlet—doesn’t just frustrate me. It downright angers me.

For some reason, my brain finds it important to lay eyes on her. These days, it seems to be working on its own accord. Finnigan would call it intuition. I call it ridiculous distractions from the norm.

I lie back in my thickly padded computer chair, clutching the mouse in one hand while rubbing the hem of my T-shirt between my index and middle finger.

A strange habit.

The feel of the hem between those digits pleasantly tickles a part of my brain that finds comfort in that particular texture. So, I carry on, as always, while I switch between different cameras, hoping that a new feed will magically appear. No such luck, of course.

I move to the only photos I found of her online. Nine in total. A shocking amount, considering the age we live in. It’s almost suspicious.

Fuck, it is suspicious.

Two photos aren’t even of her. They’re of someone else at an event, and she appears in the background.

Only, there’s something about Scarlet. The way her walnut-colored waves flow down to the middle of her back.

Her creamy skin against the dark-green dress.

Her sweet smile, even as she looks away from the camera, hiding a wickedness the lens doesn’t manage to capture.

She may be in the background, but she stands out.

I wish I hadn’t noticed that.

The third photo is from a sealed record.

Black eye and burst lip, the same pixie grin shining in her gaze and the curve of her lips.

She beat up someone in school when she was sixteen.

Badly enough that they ended up in the hospital with three broken fingers, a fractured arm, and a broken nose.

And there is no remorse whatsoever on her face.

I’m intrigued. Thoroughly.

The last six photos awaken a masochistic sense in me that I sometimes forget exists. I have no desire to see the pictures. They infuriate me for reasons I fail to understand, yet I keep fucking looking at them, regardless. They’re from her wedding with Bernard Camora a few years back.

She looked happy.

Searing heat melts beneath my skin at the images that have wrongness to them. Unexplainable, infuriating wrongness. Mostly aimed at Camora.

Yet, I keep staring, allowing the images to burrow deeper into my nerves.

I have to get to her.

Scrape her out of my fucking mind once and for all.

Without a second thought, I lock my screens, rise, and head straight out of my office and toward the dressing room attached to my bedroom.

I quickly change the sweatpants to a pair of dark-blue slacks, then pull on a shirt, roll the sleeves, and finish off with a light gray tweed waistcoat, socks, and brown leather shoes.

I pass by the mirror, forcing myself to leave the house without fixing my messy hair at the top of my head.

But as I approach the bedroom door to leave, the compulsion makes my palms itch and my teeth clench.

With a deep sigh, I turn on my heels and head to the en suite bathroom.

I attempt to rush, but in the end, I still make sure my hair looks as it’s supposed to—perfectly neat. Slicked back, as always.

With one final look in the mirror, I hurry to the garage, straight to the F-type Jag parked there. The mood calls for something agile. Then I’m out the door, waiting for my gates to open, rolling my fists around the leather steering wheel that threatens to bend beneath my hold.

My phone rings and almost makes me jump.

“Yes,” I say more aggressively than I should.

“Good morning to you too.”

Vincent.

“You left your Range Rover at the club last night, right?” he continues.

“I did.”

“I think you should come here.”

“I’m busy.”

I make a right after the gates close behind me and drive toward Queenscove’s outskirts.

“Carter, your driver’s side door is cracked open. Only enough that you can see it if you’re close, but it’s clearly unlocked.”

I almost slam on the brake at those words.

“Is mine the only one broken into?” I keep calm as I run through the list of what they could have taken from my car, but there’s barely anything in there.

For security reasons, I refrain from keeping things in my cars. Especially if I plan on leaving them away from my home overnight. Which I usually do, either in Midnight’s or Metamorphosis’ parking lot if I’m drinking more than a couple. The difference is that the speakeasy has a gated, secured lot.

“I had a look. There are only five cars here, and yours seems to be the only one broken into.”

Fuck.

I have something more important to deal with right now, and it grates me that this break-in sounds targeted.

“There’s something else,” he adds.

“What?”

“Did you leave anything on your driver’s seat?”

I frown, squeezing the steering wheel a little too hard. “No.”

“They left something for you.”

“Don’t touch anything.” I rush through the words as I slam on the brake and turn the car around, heading back toward the club. “Check around and underneath for a—”

“ Already done. No bombs. But I’m not sure about the inside .”

“I think it’s clean.” I hear Morrigan, his wife, in the background.

“I’m on my way.” I hit a button on my car and hang up.

Why the hell would someone break into my car?

* * *

“Is that what I think it is?” Vincent asks as I hold the offending object left on my driver’s seat.

We checked the Range—no devices. Nothing stolen. Nothing moved.

“It’s a puzzle box. A complex one, at that,” I say, flipping the wooden contraption, similar in size to a Rubik’s Cube, in my hand.

“Do you think it’s a trap?”

I look at the symbols and shapes etched into the cube, the seams and divots serving a purpose I have yet to identify. “No, I don’t. But whatever it is, I’m fucking pissed.”

“You want to go inside and give it a go?” Morrigan asks. When I look up, she’s nodding toward the club.

“I’d like to check your cameras.” I have to wait for Otto to come pick up the car and drop it at my house anyway.

“Come, then.” She turns and heads straight to the club without checking to see if we’re following.

Ten minutes later, we’re in the office, rewinding through the footage.

“There.” I point at the screen when a hooded figure dressed in loose black clothes finally shows up. “Rewind until you find the moment they came to my car.”

“There it is.” Vincent stops her. “Play it.”

Three seventeen in the morning. The club only closed an hour before.

We watch in silence as this person comes from the shadows, walking with a grating confidence straight to my car. There’s no hesitation, no cowering. I notice something in their hand, and I tense as I wonder if I missed a device stuck somewhere.

“They had a key?” Morrigan exclaims as the person simply unlocks the door.

The lights start flashing and the alarm goes off as they climb in, and we lose sight of what they’re doing.

My shoulders relax when I realize they were holding one of those immobilizers that disable car alarms. Forty-two seconds pass, and then the lights go off and the sound stops. That’s fast. Very fast.

“Did you hear it? The alarm?” I ask.

Loreley owns the four-story period building which houses the club in the basement, her apartment on the top floor, and Morrigan’s on the third. She and Vincent slept here last night; they didn’t go back to their house in the woods.

He nods, but Morrigan answers. “I did. From up there, you can’t really localize the sound, though. I got up to go to the window, but it stopped by then. The thing is, we’re in the center of Queenscove... Alarms aren’t uncommon, especially on the weekend and with the tourists that we get.”

As much as I want to be frustrated, it’s illogical. This is not on them. And whoever did this was impressively quick.

“Can you download the footage, the whole thing, from just before I arrived?” I ask her.

“Yeah. I’ll pop it on our server. You can access that, yes?”

“I can. Thank you.”

Vincent cocks his head as he watches the end of the clip. “After they disabled the alarm, they spent a bit more time there. Only a minute or so, but longer than it would take to leave a puzzle box on the seat.”

He’s just pointing out the obvious as we watch the hooded figure climb out of the car and carefully push the door until it just catches the latch. Then they stroll away from sight.

I want to hope that a different camera angle would give me a view of their face, but I know I won’t see a thing.

They’re wearing all black from head to toe—sweatpants, and a baggy hoodie pulled over their head so that it shades their face too.

Though, that also appears to be covered with a ski mask or something.

“I think you’re right,” he continues. “I don’t think the box is a trap, and it might tell you why they lingered in the car.”

My phone vibrates, and I take it out to find the text I’ve been waiting for. “Otto is outside. I’ll give him the key and head home.”

For the first time in a long time, I’m uncomfortable.

These last two days seem to have been dominated by states of mind I’m largely unfamiliar with.

This one, I don’t like. I’ve been given a task by a complete stranger who broke into my fucking car, and it seems I have no other choice but to do it.

I’m being controlled, and it’s awakening that simmering creature within me that demands satisfaction in pounds of flesh and spilled blood.

But things have been unseasonably quiet lately...I have no people on the roster to torture.

I squeeze the puzzle in my hand, feeding on the sharp pain from one of the corners as it digs deeper into my skin. I guess the quiet times have officially ended.

“One of us should be with you when you open the box,” Vincent offers.

“I’ll be fine. I’ll let you know what I find. See you later.”

I turn and walk away before they can stall me with further futile conversation. If this box is a trap—a bomb—I don’t want anyone else to go down with me. I suspect it’s not, but I’m not willing to risk any of them.

“Check your cars,” I say loud enough for them to hear as the door shuts behind me.

I suspect I was the only one targeted, but better safe than sorry.