The older guy was gym fit. He wore diamond earrings and a fancy watch. He definitely looked like he enjoyed control. He idly played Sebastian like a fish on a line. He reeled the kid in a little, let him worry, reeled a little more, all the while with a sick slash of a smile on his lips.
The entire encounter happened over the span of two minutes. Then something across the room caught Sebastian’s attention, and he turned his head to see what was going on.
While Sebastian was distracted, a hand holding a small brown vial hovered over his drink. The first guy offered a ghastly, conspiratorial grin to whoever owned the hand. He smiled graciously when Sebastian returned. He offered Sebastian the drink, holding it to his lips at one point to make certain he drank it all down.
The video ended with the words, “I HAVE THE REST.” written in Sharpie on an index card.
“Jesus Christ.” Deacon looked shocked. “Jesus motherfucking Christ.”
“What’s that mean?” I asked. “I have the rest. Is that some kind of threat? Blackmail? Who is that video aimed at? Sebastian?”
“I don’t know. If it’s new…”
“Does that mean—”
“Get back to work,” Deacon shouted at a group milling around nearby. “Do we pay you to gossip? Goddamnit.”
I asked again, “Who is that video aimed at, Deacon?”
“I don’t know.” He looked worried now, rather than irritated. “First things first, we need to find Sebastian. Molly says he left with their golf cart before she woke up. We found it smashed into a tree, but we haven’t located Sebastian yet.”
“What?” Horror burst through me. Of course my mind went to the worst-case scenario. “Oh my God. Did you try the beach?”
“Not yet. You think it’s possible he headed for your place?”
“Not that I saw.” I hadn’t seen him near my place, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t somewhere along the mile-long stretch of rocky cliffs overlooking the ocean.
Oh God. Please let him be all right.
“I’ve got people searching the entire area, but it’s a lot of ground to cover.”
“How badly was the vehicle damaged?” I asked.
“There was some blood inside. No trail that we could follow from the scene of the accident because of the fucking fog.”
“Show me.”
“The police are on their way.”
“Morrigan might be able to find him before they get here.” I hoped she could. She liked him. It was worth a try.
“This way.” Deacon shouted at a few more people as I got Morrigan from the van. Hades and Seph fussed in their crates, so I put their muzzles on and closed them inside the pen.
“We can’t leave these two unattended.”
“You!” Deacon frightened the life out of his personal assistant. “You’re in charge here, Adam. Nobody goes near the wolves, got it?”
I went back to my van and got a rabies pole. “Adam, if anybody so much as tries to lay a finger on them, use this.” I handed the pole over. “On the person, not the dog.”
We took off through the trees as fast as we could maneuver.
“Molly must be beside herself,” I said. “I saw her on the phone earlier. She looked upset.”
“She called Sebastian’s dad. He’s on his way.” Deacon obviously knew where he was going, so I followed close behind. He stopped and looked around before saying, “It’s over here.”
“There’s no path.” The trees got thicker the farther we went in. “What was he thinking, trying to drive a cart through here?”
“You ask me, he was out of his mind. Either angry or suicidal. Can’t believe someone’s dredging that shit up all over again.”
“You think Sebastian crashed the cart on purpose? Why would he?”
“I take it he didn’t tell you what happened with Jericho Waltham.”
“Be more specific. You told me some guy you knew killed himself.”
“That was the guy. The one in the picture.” Deacon tapped the pocket where he kept his phone. “Jericho Waltham. It’s no secret he killed himself over the legal and financial pressure Alastair Keye put on him after some party where things got out of hand with Sebastian.”
“I get the feeling everyone’s been blaming Sebastian for that.”
“Yeah, well.” Deacon didn’t look my way. “Obviously we didn’t know the whole story, did we? I never once heard that somebody drugged his drink.”
Deacon found the crash site. “Here.”
The buggy was such a mangled wreck, my gut clenched. There was blood on the steering wheel, in the footwell, and across the broken fiberglass body where Sebastian had evidently crawled out.
Surrounded by trees and with a thick carpet of mulch beneath our feet, it wasn’t easy to see where Sebastian had gone from there.
“Morrigan.” My girl immediately looked to me for a command. I brought her to the ruined golf cart and let her sniff around. “Sebastian was here, girl. Find Sebastian. Help me find Sebastian.”
To be honest, I had no clue whether she could help. She liked Sebastian, but she’d only met him a couple times. The name might be gibberish to her. What I was asking went far beyond her training, but I had to do something. Honestly, Persephone—with her prey drive—might have been a better choice for chasing down the wounded actor, but I didn’t want to take the time to get her.
We followed Morrigan, partly because I’d seen one too many movies where German shepherds saved the day and partly because she was my emotional support animal, and if anything bad had happened to Sebastian, I’d need her.
“Looks like the dog has something.” Deacon had called 911 again, and this time they were keeping him on the line. “We’re heading southwest, toward the bluffs, I think. No, I have no idea what his condition will be. We’re trying to locate him now. He wasn’t where the vehicle crashed. We believe he moved from that location on his own.”
“She’s heading that way,” someone shouted from behind me.
Morrigan moved fast. Even I had to scramble to keep up with the pace she set. Then suddenly there was a break in the trees, and she skidded to a stop at the edge of the earth.
“Jesus. Did he fall?” Deacon asked. “Oh my God, do you think he—”
Morrigan barked wildly at the cliff’s edge. Time froze as we looked at one another in horror. The craggy edge of the cliff itself looked like it could crumble beneath our feet. I didn’t hesitate because I might have fallen; I couldn’t move because I didn’t want to see Sebastian Keye lying broken on the beach.
I took a deep breath. “Let me check it out.”
I got to my knees beside Morrigan and crept forward carefully. I saw nothing on the beach, but despair hit me hard when I realized we'd recently had high tide.
If Sebastian fell, his body might have washed out to sea.
“What?” Deacon’s voice trembled.
“I don’t see him. Let me just…” Bits of earth skittered down to the beach in front of me as I pushed far enough forward to see directly below. “Oh my God. There’s a ledge, and Sebastian’s on it. He looks pale. His arm is at a funny angle. There’s blood, D. He needs rescue right the fuck now.”