Page 57 of Reaper and Ruin

“I love Reginald like that.”

Levi sighed. “You do not love your wild park duck like Whip loved his baby, X.”

“You don’t know the depth of a father’s love, Levi!”

Whip rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers between the two of them. “You’re missing the point.”

X side-eyed him. “The point being Paul Jeddersen’s gross nanny cam bear somehow moved from his bookshelf to this creepy warehouse?”

Whip’s lips pulled into a thin line. “The point being someone filmed what happened here the night Toby died.” He swallowed thickly, eyeing me. “And that if this bear was also on Paul Jeddersen’s bookshelf, someone probably filmed everything that happened that day on Olympic Drive too.”

My blood ran cold. Him drugging me. Stripping me down to my underwear while I was unconscious. X saving me. Whip cleaning it up.

Someone had seen it all through the glassy eyes of a ratty bear.

18

LEVI

Ilowered my binoculars. “I’m not sure watching Ace practice line dances in his living room is really helping us prove anything.”

Whip cringed, leaning back in his seat behind the wheel. “He’s still doing that? He’s been at it for two hours.”

“And not getting any better. He’s gotta be the most uncoordinated motherfucker I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Violet reached across the back seat and plucked the binoculars from my fingers, holding them up to her eyes again. She watched Ace dance for a bit, a smile playing across her pretty mouth. “I don’t know. I think it’s really cute he wants to learn.”

I tilted my head back and stared at the ceiling of the car. The interior smelled vaguely of grease and salt, courtesy of the McDonald’s pit stop we’d made between watching Trigger attend an AA meeting and Torch sitting in his yard with a fire going in a metal drum. Trigger had been serious and solemn, shaking the hands of other members and talking to them quietly. Torch had looked like he was living his best life, watching shit he threw into the bin go up in flames.

Neither had been doing anything that would have made me think they were capable of capturing a bunch of innocent women, torturing them to death, then dumping their bodies without so much as bothering to cover them with anything.

Ace’s fumbling, mis-stepping line dances sure as hell weren’t giving ‘I get off on torturing women’ vibes.

I tossed the binoculars down on the seat between me and Violet. “This is a waste of time. We need to go back out to the dump site and check out those bodies ourselves.”

“What’s the point?” Whip asked. “You searching for some sort of calling card?”

I swallowed thickly. I didn’t want to admit that was exactly what I wanted to do.

Ever since I’d realized Lynx was out of jail and Toby’s photos had proved he was lurking around with people he shouldn’t, a bad feeling had swirled in my gut.

I’d almost wanted to believe that Trigger, Ace, and Torch were responsible for those dead women, and for all the other shit Violet had gone through. I mean, that would have sucked. I’d come to like them all since I’d been dragged into the group, even if I didn’t know them as well as Whip and X.

But I’d shared a cell with Lynx for a lot longer than a couple of months. He was my friend in the true sense of the word, not just an acquaintance like Trig, Ace, and Torch were.

I didn’t want to think he might be responsible for all the shit that had happened since I’d gotten out.

Since we’dbothgotten out and he hadn’t even said a word.

I knew things about Lynx nobody else knew. Things not even the cops knew, or he wouldn’t be walking the street. Things clearly even Grayson and the rest of the Murder Squad didn’t know, or Lynx would be on the list too.

If I’d known he was out I would have suggested he join the squad himself. Would have made sure he was turning over anew leaf and putting his skills to use in a way that served the community around us, not hurt it.

But after seeing his face in Toby’s photos, I didn’t know what to think. Didn’t know if the friend I’d made was the real Lynx or if it had all been for show.

If Trig, Ace, and Torch weren’t responsible for it all, then Lynx needed to be ruled out.

I just didn’t have the guts to put my friend square in the sights of killers without some sort of proof. Sharing years in a cell with him surely meant I owed him at least that much.