Page 2 of Whips and Chains (Saint View Murder Squad #2)

LEVI

“ T he omelet is out of the frying pan!”

That one ridiculous sentence repeated over and over in my head while I pushed my bike through the quiet, middle-of-the-night streets of Saint View.

I was going to kill X and his ridiculous code names if anything had happened to Violet.

I tried to quell the rising panic in my gut that told me something was wrong and reminded myself I was overreacting. So she’d created a distraction and slipped away with her bestie. She was probably just out at a club dancing, but the fact she wasn’t answering her phone was stressing me out.

Though that could also be explained by the fact she was barely speaking to me right now.

She probably would have ignored my calls even if her phone was on.

It was why I’d been sending her letters instead.

Though for all I knew, she’d been burning those or dropping them directly into the paper shredder.

But none of that mattered. She’d managed to give X the slip and now she was out somewhere, unprotected, and with no idea of the danger she was potentially in.

I gunned the engine, pulling into her street in record time.

X’s ice cream van was still surrounded by a crowd of children and their parents.

It seemed like half the neighborhood had shown up and it had turned into something of a street party, with music playing from a portable speaker and groups of people milling around the lawn while kids ran around crazy on a sugar high.

X stuck his head out the window. “Levi! Help me!”

I took in the chocolate sauce smudged on his face.

“Not a chance.” I needed to get up to Violet’s apartment and see if there was any indication of where she might have gone.

There weren’t many clubs in Saint View, but for all I knew, she and Toby had hopped an Uber into Providence or gotten on the late bus into the city.

She could be fucking anywhere by now.

“Why are you going inside? They went that way!” X pointed down the road as he handed another kid a sloppy-looking ice cream sundae.

“Unless you can sniff her out, then I’m going to go inside and see if I can work out where they might have gone.”

X waved his hand around his face. “I’m actually a little stuffed up in the head at the moment. Think I caught a bit of a cold when I was out here soaking wet the other night. It was so cold. You know, since I wasn’t really wearing clothes.”

I ignored him and was almost at the apartment doors when X shouted, “Oh, for the love of ducks and geese!”

I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see his apron fly out the server window, quickly followed by the rest of his lanky body.

His feet hit the ground, and he glanced at the maybe twelve-year-old kid who’d caught his apron and said seriously, “The ice cream gods have chosen you. The plastic spoons are in the first drawer and we’re fresh out of soft serve. ”

A groan of complaint came up from the rest of the people waiting on their sugar fix.

The kid just stared at him.

X made a shooing motion with his hands. “Go on then! Start serving, young padawan!”

The kid’s eyes were about as wide as dinner plates as X shoved him up into the van and then took off running after me.

He caught up, and I raised an eyebrow. “You know they’re going to clean you out, right?”

“I know. But I can’t stand there serving fucking ice cream another second while she’s out there somewhere alone.” He shook his head. “I’m an idiot. I should have gone after her straightaway. But I didn’t want to freak her out after…”

I stopped walking. “What the fuck happened between the two of you the other night? You came out of Violet’s apartment soaking wet, half-dressed, and so upset about something that you sent Whip in to fix it.”

X’s face clouded over, and he clutched the back of his neck, squeezing his eyes shut as if he were reliving the scene. “I choked her.”

I froze. “What?”

He opened his eyes, and they were filled with remorse. “I know. I know, okay! You don’t need to fucking look at me with all that damn judgment in your stupidly pretty eyes.” He peered at me, moving in closer. “I can see why Whip keeps staring into them, you know. They’re insanely green.”

I shoved him off me. “Focus, would you?”

He sighed. “I’m fucked in the head, okay? Is that what you want to hear? I can’t be alone with women because every time I am, all I can think about is killing them.”

Red-hot anger coursed through me. “You knew this and you let yourself be alone with Violet? You could have hurt her!”

“Don’t you think I know that? I already hate myself, Levi! You don’t have to worry about that. I’m never going to be alone with her again.”

His expression was filled with so much remorse it was practically palpable.

But I didn’t have time to baby his feelings.

I stormed up the stairs, X following close behind, until I got to Violet’s apartment.

I grabbed the door handle, but it was locked.

I did a quick scout around for a spare key hidden in the light fixture or the dying potted plant at the end of the hallway, but there was nothing.

X watched me, and when I shook my head, he lifted one foot and kicked in the door.

The lock sprang free so easily we both winced. She may as well have left it wide open. A toddler could have broken that lock.

But worrying about Violet’s apartment security, or lack thereof, was the least of my current concerns. I stormed inside, calling out just in case she and Toby had returned, but the apartment was empty.

“Levi.”

I stuck my head back out into the open-plan living/kitchen area, to X holding out a note. One that looked exactly like the letters I’d been sending her. He already had his burner phone out and up to his ear, calling someone.

I took the note from his fingers, Whip’s voice faintly answering X’s call in the background.

Words are easy, ink runs free,

But face-to-face, we fall, we flee.

Maybe letters are our space,

A quiet world, our own escape.

But one last time, let’s break the rule,

Meet me where the night is cool.

No crowds, no noise, just you and me,

A place where no one else will see.

We’ll start again, the way we should,

And if we don’t, then it was good.

Come alone, come when it’s late,

I’ll be waiting. Don’t be late.

There was an address at the bottom. I snapped my gaze up to meet X’s. “I didn’t write this. This seems like it’s from me, but it isn’t.”

I stared down at the note. Had she thought this was from me? Admittedly, it was the same type of paper and the same sort of font I’d been using to write her letters on Hawk’s computer.

Had she slipped away from X so she could meet me and try again?

A stupid part of my heart flickered with the tiniest glimmer of hope.

But it was snuffed out just as fast.

Because if this letter wasn’t from me, then it was most definitely from the person targeting us.

And that left me colder than X standing half naked and soaking wet outside Violet’s apartment.

He relayed the info back to Whip, including the address.

I didn’t wait for him. Knowing he’d follow, I thundered out of the apartment, down the stairs and outside to where I’d left my bike.

The impromptu street party all turned and stared at us, but neither of us stopped.

X’s ice cream van had been overrun by kids, all helping themselves to whatever they could find, but he didn’t make a move to stop them.

I threw my leg over my bike and gunned the engine.

X slid on behind me, wrapping his arms around my middle.

“Seriously?” I shouted.

“I’m coming!”

“Please don’t say that when you’re on the back of my bike and snuggled up against me.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to get a hard-on.”

“You better fucking not!”

“I’m not Whip.”

Even with the roar of the engine and the looming danger Violet was in, I could hear the laughter in his voice.

I envied his ability to provide comic relief in the most serious of situations. Sometimes, I even secretly found him funny. But not tonight. Tonight, all I did was slam my hand on the throttle, giving my bike what it needed to get us to Violet.

W hip’s shitty little house in the worst part of Saint View was closer to the industrial area than Violet’s apartment was, so he beat us there and was already getting out of his car when X and I arrived.

He didn’t stop and wait for us, just like I wouldn’t have waited for him either. He stormed ahead, leaving X and I to jog after him to catch up. Our footsteps were loud in the silent night, but none of us bothered to quiet them.

We were the scariest things out here.

We were the monsters in the darkness.

But, apparently, another had joined us.

I hoped like hell whoever had tricked Violet into coming here saw us now and realized what a big fucking mistake that had been. It was one thing to mess with us. Another entirely to target her.

Huge industrial-sized warehouses loomed all around, each one identical to the last, nothing but badly lit concrete paths in between. Whip pulled out his phone and flicked on the flashlight function so we could see the numbers on each building.

We worked our way through the maze that seemed to have no end, a ticking clock in the back of my head reminding me that every second we lost trying to find the right building was another second Violet was alone with a psychopath.

Whip’s flashlight bounced over something on the path ahead, before moving away again.

“Wait. What was that?” I ignored that I noticed what his skin felt like as I grabbed his arm and guided it back to where I’d spotted something.

The light lit up the dark round shape, and all three of us froze.

“Is that…” Whip choked out.

We moved in unison, as if drawn in by some sort of sick, morbid curiosity we shared.

“A severed head?” I stared down at the bloodied hair. “Yeah.”

X squinted at it. “Do we like…pick it up? Is there a lost and found for body parts?”

I squatted and grimaced at the clean slice across the neck. It was face down, and that sick part of me demanded I turn it over.