Page 63 of Villains Series

NINETY MINUTES UNTIL MIDNIGHT

THE ESQUIRE HOTEL

SYDNEY perched on the desk chair, arms wrapped around her knees, attention flicking between the clock on the wall, the clock on the computer (the wall clock was a full ninety seconds faster), and the Post button glowing green in the open program on Mitch’s screen.

Just above the button was the profile they’d constructed.

Victor Vale was typed in across the top, with Eli listed as his middle name.

Where his date of birth should be, the current date was written.

The space reserved for last known whereabouts was filled with the address of the Falcon Price high-rise project.

Every other space—those reserved for background information, history, police notation—was filled with one word, repeated in every slot: midnight.

To the left of the profile was the photo, or the place where the photo would have been.

Instead, the bold lettering of the book spine ran vertically, reading VALE.

The book they’d used for the picture, the one Victor had bought on their walk the day before, sat beneath the stack of papers Sydney was supposed to start burning soon, the blue lighter a spot of color resting on top.

She slid the massive text out from under the folders, and ran a thumb over the book’s cover.

She’d seen it before, or one just like it.

Her parents had a set in their study (spines uncracked, of course).

Sydney opened the book, and turned to the first page, but it was a wall of black.

Flipping through, she saw that every one of the first thirty-three pages had been systematically blacked out.

The Sharpie nesting into the fold between pages thirty-three and thirty-four suggested that the only reason the remaining pages had been spared was because Victor hadn’t gotten to them yet.

It was only while flipping back through those thirty-three pages toward the front of the book that Sydney noticed two words exempt from the blackout.

For and ever.

The words were several pages apart, separated and surrounded by a sea of black.

Not only that, but the word ever had been altered, part of a larger word, the for- preceding it blotted carefully out, which meant Victor was not trying to piece together the word forever from the text.

He clearly wanted it to be two separate words. Distinct.

For.

Ever.

She ran her fingers over the page, expected them to come away stained, but they didn’t.

Dol whined faintly beneath the desk chair, where he’d somehow crammed himself—or at least a good part of his front half—and Sydney shut the book and looked back at the clock.

It was after ten thirty according to both the wall and the computer.

Her index finger hovered over the screen.

She knew what it would mean to hit the button.

Even without knowing Victor’s plan, she knew that if she clicked Post there would be no going back, and Eli would find Victor, and at least one of them would die, and tomorrow everything would be horrible again.

She would be alone.

One way or another, alone.

An EO with a wounded arm and a sister who wanted her dead, with a sick, strange gift and absent parents, and maybe she would be running or maybe she would be killed, too—none of it sounded terribly appealing.

She considered not posting it.

She could pretend the computer had crashed, could steal them another day.

Why did Victor have to do this? Why did he and Eli have to find each other? But even as she asked it, she knew the answer.

She knew because her own pulse still quickened defiantly at the thought of Serena, because even as reason told her to run as far from her sister as possible, the gravity of want drew Sydney back.

She couldn’t break the orbit.

But she could keep from falling.

Couldn’t Victor, just for a little while? Couldn’t they all stay aloft? Alive?

But then Mitch’s warning echoed in her head—there are no good men in this game—and when she closed her eyes to block it out, she saw Victor Vale, not as he was in the rain that first day, or even as he was when she accidentally woke him, but as he was this afternoon, standing over that cop’s body, pain crackling in the air around him as he ordered her to bring the dead man back.

Sydney opened her eyes, and hit the Post button.