Page 54 of Reaper and Ruin

“You most definitely did not help.”

His shoulders slumped again, but it was impossible to stay mad at him. His heart had been in the right place and he’d been duly punished, cleaning up after us for hours, which for someone as squeamish as he was, had to have been torture.

“Can you take me back to the warehouse today?” I asked him.

Levi’s arm tightened around me, drawing me back into the warmth of his chest. “Not a fucking chance,” he mumbled into the back of my shoulder.

I hadn’t even realized he was awake. I linked my fingers through his and brought his hand up to my mouth, kissing hisknuckles. “I need to, Levi. Please. I don’t want to go without you all, but I will if I have to.”

He grumbled something else I didn’t catch, his arm banding around me again though, so I got the gist he wasn’t thrilled by the idea. I couldn’t blame him. I’d put myself in danger before, and it hadn’t worked out so well. But this seemed relatively low risk. The police had presumably gone through the place and cleared it of anything that could kill us. I doubted whoever had set the trap was going to use the same location twice.

That didn’t seem like their style. It was too obvious, and they were too smart.

I’d underestimated them once. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

“I’ll take you,” Whip said quietly without moving. “As long as I can stand up without the room spinning.”

X got up and hovered like Whip might need catching at any minute. The fact Whip didn’t complain told me their little conversation last night when they’d thought I was asleep had done them good.

Or that Whip was still seriously ill, but he got himself up with no assistance from X and turned to face me. “I want to look over the place again as well. Then we need to talk about the pile of bodies we found out at the dump site.”

“We should talk to Grayson,” Levi offered from behind me.

X frowned. “What if Trigger and Ace and Torch are responsible for those bodies though?”

Whip practically growled, “They aren’t. They can’t be.”

X pointed at him. “Times that reaction by a hundred and that’s how Gray is going to react. Trigger is his brother. You think he isn’t going to automatically want to protect him? He’s a biased witness. Or source. What’s the difference? I don’t know. He’s a biased man! But I do know we can’t go to Gray. We needto work out if any of the three of them are involved and have solid proof before we go accusing them of anything.”

Levi groaned. “I hate when X has a point.”

X clapped his hands. “Right then. It’s decided. We return to the scene of the crime, check out the warehouse, now that the cops will have quit crawling all over it, and then we go hunting Murder Squad members.”

“Not hunting,” Whip said dryly. “Researching. Surveilling perhaps. Not hunting. We aren’t hoping to have to kill anyone.”

X flapped his hand around dismissively. “Potato, pot-ah-to. Same, same. Either way, we have a big day ahead of us. We’re going to need breakfast.” He grinned. “I think there’s some leftover oysters in the fridge…”

The looks Levi, Whip, and I sent in his direction could have peeled his skin right off his bones.

“Or I could just do eggs!” He scuttled out of the bedroom before anything could be thrown at his head.

Whip, Levi, and I all picked at the omelets X set in front of us, none of us quite trusting our tender stomachs. Eventually, we all scraped our plates onto X’s, and he happily wolfed down the leftovers.

None of us had clean clothes at X’s place, so we did the rounds, stopping so everyone could get fresh clothes, but no one suggested it would be quicker to split up.

I didn’t know what had changed, maybe it was the sex, maybe it was the conversation Whip and X had last night, maybe it was just the fact what we were about to do felt a lot like walking back into the lion’s den even though the beast had already had a couple of swipes at us. But I wanted to be with them, and they seemed to feel the same, so nobody complained or suggested separating.

It was past midday when we got to the warehouse. Whip parked his car out front, in the same spot he had the night they’d found me inside, covered in Toby’s blood.

I hated that I remembered that. But was grateful as well that bits and pieces were coming back to me.

I had to have missed something. There had to be clues my brain wasn’t putting together.

Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.

Either way, I wasn’t going to get anywhere by sitting in the car, and they were clearly all waiting on me.

I pushed open the door, and without a word, the three of them followed. They flanked me as we walked past industrial businesses, going about their day, working out of the other occupied factories. But a lot of the buildings in the complex were empty, For Lease signs in the windows or taped to the doors.