Page 117 of Riot Act

He smells like cheap, stale beer. “The smoking hot redhead you pissed off earlier. The one you hurt outside the bathrooms,” I snarl.

“Wait—what? I—I didn’t hurt anyone! That girl was rude as fuck. I—”

Blood explodes out of his mouth when I hit him. “Try again, motherfucker.”

“I swear!” the guy moans. “I didn’t touch her!” His eyes roll back into his head, and I believe him. No one can be this drunk, reeling from a right hook, and still manage to lie convincingly.

I let the bastard go.

“WHO SAW THE REDHEAD BY THE BATHROOMS?” I roar. Stunned groups of people stop talking, and dancing, and laughing, all turning to look at me. One girl with braids, wearing a skintight body suit steps forward. “I spoke to her in the restrooms,” she says. “I left my phone in there. When I went back to get it, I saw someone carrying her toward the emergency exit. She was upset over her boyfriend. I figured he’d apologized and…I don’t know.” She looks confused. “Swept her off her feet or something. I thought it was romantic.”

Chase was upset because of me.

Iam the boyfriend.

Whoever carried her off in their arms was not performing some romantic gesture.

“What did he look like?” I rage.

“Tall. Sandy blond hair. Handsome. But…really shitty tattoos,” the girl says.

I don’t need to hear this description to confirm my suspicions. I already know perfectly well who took Chase. Because I brought him here.Iarranged to meet him here, for fuck’s sake. He wasn’t supposed to show for another two hours, though. Chase was supposed to be long gone by then.

The bastard came early.

44

PRES

“Wakey wakey eggs and bakey…”

Something cold and sharp presses against my cheek, shocking me back to consciousness. The ground is icy and rough underneath me, and my head…ah, shit, my head is pounding. I wince, trying to open my eyes, but it hurts too bad to contemplate.

“That friend of yours is a real piece of work. He threatened me, y’know. Told me I couldn’t even come to my own father’s restaurant opening. I gotta say, that made me pretty mad, Red. You shouldn’t have had him do that.”

Jonah is close. Too close. His breath fans across my face, and I gag involuntarily, nausea making my mouth sweat. He’s here. In New York. He found me outside the bathrooms and hit me over the head with…something…

The pieces slowly fit together.

They don’t make much sense, though.

God, I’m going to throw up.

Groaning, I roll onto my side just in time as I retch, the contents of my stomach rushing up my throat.

“Jesus. You’re fucking disgusting. I knew you were a mess but look at you.”

Cold seeps into my bones. I’m shaking. I feel like death. Slowly, I make my eyes open, even though my thumping head protests. Where the hell are we? There are cars, lined up in rows, stretching on forever and ever. The walls are close, the ceiling low…

A parking garage?

Oh, God...

“I assumed you’d broken your promise to me at first. I thought you’d told that dumb meathead what happened back at the house, but then I get a text from him and I realized you’d kept that pretty little mouth shut after all.” Jonah’s deranged laughter bounces off the concrete walls. I drag myself up into a sitting position, trying not to vomit again when my stomach rolls, and there he is, crouching a couple of feet away, turning a knife over in his hands.

It's the same knife I took into my bedroom that night—the one from Dad’s chef’s set. The same one he used to slice my wrists open. Fear jangles through my nerve endings when I see the blade catch the light and glint wickedly. It looks even sharper now. Even more deadly.

“That moron said that he’d stave my face in with a fire extinguisher if I came back to Mountain Lakes for Dad’s party.” Jonah says, smiling. “I’ll give him ten out of ten for creativity. A fire extinguisher? That would have fuckinghurt, Pres.”