Page 26 of From Hell

* * *

LAINE

I snatch awake like I’ve been shot.

A shiver slides down my spine and settles in my bones.

The dream recedes into memory but not soon enough for me to suppress the ghost of the dead haunting me or the need to inspect my hands for blood like I do every morning.

Then it comes back to me.

The killer was in my house. He was there, somehow. I know it was him. He said as much in his last letter. Did he come in other times? Did he watch me while I slept, take anything? The clothes I wore the night I killed Henry are missing. Did he take them?

Sunlight peeks through my blinds, streaking bars of it across the paperwork strewn across my desk. Outside, a lawnmower is on full kilter, attacking whatever grass my cousin has grown across his scurvy-looking lawn. I look through the blinds to see Cash in a dressing gown, mowing everything in his path.

My cousin’s investigative agency doesn’t have an office. Cash has a shed, which I’m welcome to use for research. It’s waterproofed and has heating, so sometimes I take him up on his offer. It says a lot when you choose a garden storage container office over your own warm bed.

A lot.

I give my back a crack and sip the water I bought from the gas station before I settled here for the night. I didn’t plan to fall asleep, but I’m glad I did. Despite the hideous nightmares, I needed it.

Cash jerks and switches off the mower as I emerge from what feels like a hole in the ground. Sunlight strikes me blind until my eyes adjust.

“What the fuck, Lainey.” He switches the ride-on mower off, shaking his head. “Make a noise when you appear out of fucking nowhere. I almost ran you over.”

Mum hates Cash because he epitomizes everything she despises in Dad…his traveler’s blood, dodgy company, and reckless lifestyle. Where Dad followed his instincts and penchant for fighting into the force, Cash’s mother, Sabine, went in the opposite direction and married into the Haines family. Ivan Haines, to be exact. Cashton Haines and his brother Presley, West End’s answer to the Krays, have never forgiven Dad for squeezing their family into going straight—if you can call what Cash doesgoingstraight.

Cash may be my cousin, but he’s also a thief and a liar. He also has enough money to have an office on Kings Road, but Cash wouldn’t be caught dead doing the usual billionaire thing.

I wish he would. The shed is getting old.

“Cash, I need your help.”

He raises a brow and climbs off his mower. “You need drugs?”

“What? No, I need access to the cameras outside Buck’s nightclub.”

He rubs his chin. “Buck’s doesn’t have any cameras.” Cash was the one who told me about it.

“The grocery store across the road has one.” It’s a bit of a way down, but if anyone was following me that night, they’d be doing it on the main road from the club. It’s the only lead I’ve got.

“Come inside. I’ve got something you can help me with.”

“Do you have food too?”

Cash laughs. “Do I have food? Give me strength.”

Cash’s house is one of those crumbling mansions. It looks lovely and grand on the outside, but once you get past the door, you realize it needs a new carpet, a lick of paint, and tons of filler for all the cracks spidering all over the walls. Like I said before, Cash has money. It’s just probably stuffed in those cracks. Rumor has it he has real diamonds stashed in the chandeliers. Knowing Cash, he would think that was hilarious.

His office next to the sitting room is all mahogany wood paneling and moss-green flocked wallpaper. All the rage in the 70s, I’m sure. We pass it by, aiming for the kitchen. It’s the only modern room in the entire house, from marble worktops to stark white subway tiles and smokey granite floors. Cash takes his cooking seriously. I drop my bag onto the vast kitchen breakfast bar that spans the room while Cash raids a sleek black American fridge filled to the brim.

“Here, read that while I whip you up a hearty English breakfast.” He tosses a folder onto the bar for me to look at. “It came in last night.”

I help myself to a filter coffee and then take a seat, enjoying the aroma of Cash’s cooking. My stomach twists when I see what the file contains.

“Henry Wickham’s family wants you to investigate his disappearance?”Be careful what you wish for.

Cash looks over his shoulder at me, blue eyes full of mirth. “Fucker’s probably shacked up with a piece of ass somewhere. I need you on this one. It’s right up your street. Didn’t you go to school with him?”