Page 46 of Rule the Night (Blackwell Butchers #1)

POE

I forced myself to finish my workout before checking the tracker we’d installed on Maeve’s phone. It had become something of an obsession in the weeks she’d been living with us.

More so once I realized she wasn’t always where she said she was going to be.

At first, she’d gone to work and come home, maybe stopped at the grocery store for an occasional forgotten item or at Cassie’s for a cup of coffee after work. But after a while she’d started making bigger detours.

Namely to the gun range.

That shouldn’t have been a surprise. She’d brought her weapon to the Hunt, still carried it around the house under her clothes.

I was starting to know Maeve, if not understand her — and Maeve wasn’t stupid.

If she had a weapon it was because she’d learned to use it.

Her trips to the firing range had gotten me curious, and I’d gotten into the habit of checking her location at least once a day when she was out of the house, even though I knew it would piss her the fuck off if she ever found out.

And don’t get me started on the tracking app we’d put on her phone.

But now she wasn’t at Cassie’s Cuppa or at the range. She wasn’t anywhere in Blackwell Falls.

She was in the city.

What the fuck?

I walked into the living room holding my phone. Bram was at the dining-room table doing something on his computer while Remy played a video game on the sofa.

“Maeve isn’t at work.”

Bram looked up, his face frozen in that expression he’d perfected where he tried to make it seem like he didn’t give a shit about something, but the fact that he was trying so hard meant he actually gave quite a lot of shits about that something.

“What do you mean?”

“She said she was going to work today, but she’s in the city.”

“She lied to us?” Remy sounded hurt.

I rolled my eyes. “That’s the least of our problems. Why the fuck would Maeve have gone all the way into the city? And why would she have lied about it?”

Remy stood up fast, snapping at me. “I know.”

He started around the sofa, bumped into the coffee table, and went down hard.

“Ow, fuck!” He popped back up inside of two seconds, probably because he was so used to falling over shit.

“What do you know?” Bram asked as Remy continued to his laptop on the dining-room table.

He opened it up and tapped at the keys. Then he turned it around so Bram and I could see it. “Ethan Todd is in the city today. He’s giving some bullshit speech at a bullshit douchebag conference.”

“Why the fuck would Maeve go all that way to see that guy?” I asked.

“I told you, she follows him,” Remy said. “Like really follows him.”

Bram leaned back in the chair and rubbed at his jaw. I knew that look on his face.

“What?” I asked. “What do you know?”

He hesitated. “I had Aloha do some work on Maeve.”

“We already did background,” I said.

“Not background,” Bram said. “A deep dive.”

“Why?” I remembered my conversation with Maeve in the car the first day we’d gone to the store together, remembered how hurt and angry she’d been that we’d dug around in her life.

It would be so much worse now, especially after what had happened between us in the studio.

The memory of it haunted my dreams: the sweet smell of her flesh, the taste of her on my tongue, her tight little cunt wrapped around my dick as I tunneled through her.

I wanted more. A lot more.

But I also knew it was a tricky situation. Maeve wasn’t here because she wanted to be. She was here to honor a debt.

And I didn’t want fucking me to be part of that bet, even subconsciously.

No, I wanted a hell of a lot more than that from Maeve Haver.

Bram didn’t flinch. “Because I wanted to.”

Bram did everything because he wanted to. The rest of us were just along for the ride.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Remy asked.

“It hasn’t come up until now.”

“Then tell us now.” I didn’t moderate the undercurrent of annoyance in my voice. Bram might have been king of Blackwell Falls, but here, we were partners.

“Remy’s right,” Bram said, “she’s been following Todd. But not just his videos or his podcast. She’s been digging, asking questions in all kinds of obscure internet forums, and she’s been doing it for over a year.”

I swore. “So Remy’s right. She went to the city to see him.”

“That would be my guess,” Bram said.

I headed for the stairs. “I’m going down.”

“Not you.” Bram’s words stopped me in my tracks. “Remy, you go.”

“You got it.” Remy moved past me and started down the stairs.

I waited until I heard the door close on the first floor to confront Bram. “You don’t tell me what to do.”

He stared me down. “You’re too close.”

So he knew. Maybe he didn’t know when it had happened, but he knew I’d fucked Maeve, and he probably knew there was more to it than that too.

“Not for you to decide.”

“I’m saving you from yourself.”

“Not for you to decide.”

Bram stood. “It’s a bad idea and you know it.”

They were the exact same words I’d said to Maeve, the same words she’d said to me, but I still had to force myself not to go at Bram as he walked past me into the hall.

It’s a bad idea and you know it.

I didn’t know if he was talking about fucking Maeve, going after her in the city, or the feelings I was holding close and secret.

Probably all three.