“You’re saying she was taken.” His eyes had turned to slits.
“Well, yes, that’s why we’re here. We wanted to see if anyone here knew what had happened.” She brushed back a lock of her hair.
“What Maisey means…” Odin said. “Is we are looking for other suspects. And you just conveniently jumped into our path. You were fucking Whitney. Did you get mad when she rejected you? Did you make Whitney Augustine disappear?”
Silence.
“That wasn’t very tactful,” Maisey whispered to Odin.
“Screw tact.” Not a whisper.
Okay. If they were going down that path, then she’d be blunt, too. “You gave her the roses,” she told Ramsey. “The ones that kept appearing in her office each day.”
Ramsey jerked.
She took that response as a yes. And if he’d been giving Whitney the roses that made her smile so often… “It wasn’t just about fucking.”
Ramsey’s lips pressed into a thin line.
“Her face lit up when she showed me her roses. She cared about you.” Maisey scooted around Odin’s formidable frame so she could better face-off with Ramsey. “You were going off together, weren’t you? Running away?”
His gaze cut from hers. “My life isn’t the kind of life a woman like her could fit in.”
Maisey nodded. This was making sense to her. “So you were going to leave that life. Together. Both of you. But then she didn’t show. She vanished. You thought she’d rejected you.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed.
“You were looking for her, thinking she’d gone somewhere to…what? Hide from you?”
A shrug of one shoulder. “Not like it’s the first time people have run from me.”
He wasn’t looking at her. She couldn’t read his expression, his feelings, if he didn’t look her way. She needed to see his eyes. “Whitney could see the good in people.”
His head swung toward her.
“If she was with you, it wasn’t because she had a thing for bad boys. She was with you because she saw something good.” She held his gaze. “A packed bag was found in her home. She intended to leave with you. But something stopped her.” Something…someone. “If you weren’t involved in what happened…” And her instincts said that he wasn’t. She could see his pain as she stared into his dark eyes. “Then help us to figure out who was. Did Whitney mention anything about someone following her? Or someone who made her nervous? Or anything that might have happened—”
“He’s dead,” Ramsey said simply.
“Excuse me?” She must have misheard.
Odin swore.
“Whoever took my Whitney—he’s a fucking dead man. I’m putting out the word as soon as we leave this room. Offering fifty Gs for info. Then I’ll find him, and I’ll kill him. By the time I am done with him, the bastard will be begging me to end him.”
This was not the way she’d expected the conversation to go. “The police—”
“Time for you to leave the bar. I don’t think it’s in your best interest to come back.” His stare shifted between them. “Either of you.”
This guy was gonna go all rogue and get his own justice? Super bad plan. Amazingly bad. “What if you kill the wrong person?” Maisey asked. Had he considered that possibility?
Another shrug.
Dammit, he shrugged too much.
“Odin is a PI!” She slapped her hand against his chest. “He works with Trouble for Hire. You know they stopped that last serial killer—”
Ramsey took a lurching step back. “You’re telling me a serial killer took my Whitney?”
Her lips clamped together before she could tell him that, yes, she very much feared that—
“We don’t know,” Odin rumbled. “That’s what we’re investigating.”
“Who are your suspects? Other than me.”
Odin shook his head. “I give you a name, and you’ll kill the person, guilty or innocent.”
Ramsey surged forward. He was smaller than Odin, but his rage was clear. “What the hell would you do?” He jerked his thumb toward Maisey. “Someone takes your girl—someone steals her—and you find out it might be a freaking serial. You gonna stand there and tell me you wouldn’t rip apart every fucker you found?”
Odin’s face changed. A subtle change, but, suddenly, he looked just as dangerous and deadly as Ramsey. “Someone comes after my girl, someone tries to take her from me, and I will crucify the motherfucker.”
Goosebumps rose on her arms.
“She was almost taken last night,” Odin added grimly. “Right on the campus of Dunson College. Got there just in time to pull her away from the bastard. He escaped, but I will find him.”
“You think it was the same person?” Ramsey’s body rocked forward. “Whoever took my Whitney is now after her?” Another thumb jerk to Maisey.
“We’re asking questions people don’t like,” Odin replied. “We’re making someone nervous.”
Yes, they were making the perp nervous. The creep they were hunting.
Ramsey smiled again. An ice-cold smile that did reach his eyes. It lit his stare with lethal promise. “Then it’s gonna be a race.”
Maisey didn’t see a race…
“You two find him first…or I do,” Ramsey murmured. “And you already know what will happen when I get my hands on him.”
He was gonna kill the guy.
“Now, get the hell out of my way. The talk is over.”
Maisey didn’t move. No, she did move. After about ten seconds had passed of Odin and Ramsey having a stare-off, she jumped between them. “Two other women are missing. This isn’t just about Whitney. It’s about all of them. Their families deserve to know what happened. You can’t just take the killer and make him vanish. You can’t torture him—”
“Sure, I can. It’s the same thing your man would do for you.”
He thought Odin would torture for her? And Odin wasn’t exactly denying the charge. For the moment, she blazed on and said, “You get a lead, give it to us. Let us try to help those other victims and their families. Then you can have him.” Actually, she intended to call the cops, but this didn’t seem like the moment to tell Ramsey that plan. “Deal?” She held her breath.
He grunted. Walked around her and Odin. Yanked open the door.
Does that mean no deal? Maisey was afraid that was precisely what his exit meant. Her breath slowly eased out. “That was intense.” Maisey turned toward Odin. “I guess we should go—” She broke off. Odin still appeared way dangerous. Way scary.
Way…out of control?
It was in the bright gleam of his eyes. The hard set of his jaw. In the fierce glare that he was leveling on her. “Wh-what?” A little stutter that she couldn’t help.
“Do you know how dangerous this shit is?”
“How is it dangerous?” They’d just been having a private conversation. Granted, that conversation had been with one seriously intense and possibly homicidal guy. “I have you. My own personal PI. My—”