Page 103 of Reaper and Ruin

She clearly took that as her sign to get back to work. Her fingers pecked at the keyboard, and her frown grew deeper.

“What’s wrong?” X asked

“I can’t find an email from a Paul or Claire Jeddersen. Odd, because I never delete emails.” Her frown smoothed out. “Oh, wait. Their names do come up when I search it, just not as the sender. Let me just…”

She clicked something on her screen then sat back, her gaze lifting to mine. “You’re right. Neither Paul or Claire Jeddersen made the booking. Someone made it on their behalf.”

“Is that normal?” X asked.

Francine nodded at him. “Happens all the time when people are elderly or sick. A relative or caregiver will often make a booking on behalf of someone else.”

“Paul Jeddersen wasn’t either of those things,” X said quietly. “And we all know Claire Jeddersen isn’t a real person.”

But they were both missing the point. There was only one thing I wanted to know. “Who sent that email, Francine?”

She peered at the screen again and then up at me. “A Travis Brumley.”

My blood ran cold at the sound of my foster brother’s name on her lips. Something Paul had said that night rang through my head. He’d taunted Toby, calling him my “gay boyfriend.”

Paul Jeddersen wouldn’t have known anything about Toby. But Travis would have.

I’d assumed Paul had been stalking me. But maybe he’d just been fed the information.

“That name mean something to you?” Francine asked.

I so desperately wished it didn’t.

32

VIOLET

Iwalked out of Francine’s office like I was in a daze. I barely saw the late afternoon sun sinking behind Psychos across the road. Barely felt its warmth.

All I felt was cold shock and sickness swirling inside me.

Travis’s name repeated over and over in my head.

Whip caught me on the sidewalk, his hands gripping both my arms. “Violet? What happened in there?”

I shook my head, burying it in his chest and inhaling his warm, masculine, familiar scent that always calmed my nervous system.

X answered for me, his tone grim. “It’s her foster brother. He’s been threatening her for weeks. I thought it was harmless, but Francine just told us he was the one who booked her for that job at Paul Jeddersen’s house.”

Levi swore under his breath. “Her own brother sent her to that creep? What the fuck?”

“He is NOT my brother,” I snapped at him. “Fang is my brother. Travis is a piece of shit. Always was. Always will be.” I shook my head. “He’s been threatening me, demanding I get money from Fang to give to him. Saying I owe him.”

“Why would he think that?” Whip asked.

I shook my head. “I always hated him. I would catch him watching me in the shower, through the crack in the door. He would always make sexual comments about me and the other girls in our home. I started barricading our door at night, scared he would try to get in while I was sleeping. And there were rumors. Toby told me one of the girls at school accused him of touching them, but rumors like that aren’t exactly uncommon at Saint View High, and nobody ever did anything about it. It all just got swept under the rug, nobody gave a shit when a girl from a trailer park tried to say that someone had abused her.” I breathed out a wobbly breath. “There was one night, when he was seventeen and I was sixteen, he and his friends had a party at our foster parents’ house when he knew they would be down at the bar getting drunk. The party got wild. I had our two younger foster siblings locked in a room with me. Travis and his friends were all drunk. There was so much noise. Music and laughter and screaming and shouting. It all mixed together. Them banging on the door, trying to get in. Me pushing anything I could in front of it and assuring the kids they were just mucking around and they weren’t really going to hurt us. I think I was trying to convince myself even more than them.”

I remembered it all too clearly. Like it was playing out in front of me again, as crisp and clear as that night fifteen years ago when I’d been a terrified teenager with no power, no agency, no life skills to know how to help.

Screams in the night were all too common in my world.

“The next day, the police came to our house,” I practically whispered. “Someone had made a report, saying Travis and his friends had indecently assaulted her. Our foster parents told them to get fucked, that they were here all night and nothing had happened. That the girl was a well-known slut and a liar. They didn’t even ask Travis about it. They just knew if they admittedthey’d both been off drinking at the pub and had allowed an underage party and rape to happen in their home, they would have lost their foster license. That was the only income either of them had. Neither of them could ever hold down a job long. They lived solely off what they got paid for taking in kids.”

X’s fingers clenched into fists. “I’m going to take a lot of pleasure in ending their pathetic lives.”