“I’m serious,” he growled. “Leave her be. She made her choice. Live with it.”
Then he spun on his heel and stalked out.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
“I’m not leaving it alone,” Freddie swore and goddammit—neither was I.
CHAPTER 6
ROME
The apartment had been hauntingly quiet when I arrived. I’d never believed in ghosts or other supernatural phenomena. They made for curious and entertaining television or movies. They weren’t real. But Starling’s ghost was everywhere in Liam’s apartment. The floor near the equipment where she stretched. On the treadmill where she ran sometimes. On the kitchen counter where we had kissed. On the sofa where I’d held her.
The silence inside the apartment swelled. I walked back to my room and stopped at the door. The scent of her filled the air. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath. It was there, the scent of the soap and the shampoo. There was coconut from the lotion she used. The faint undertones of sweat. Trapped in the doorway, I studied the room but couldn’t bring myself to walk in. It was my room, but it had become hers. Retreating, I went back to the front. Flipping open the panel in the dining room, I keyed in the code and waited for the cameras to come up on the small screens.
While I rarely used Liam’s system, I understood it. He’d explained it to me so I could access it whenever I wanted. I’d never wanted before. Entering the time code for earlier in the day, I searched for when Liam left.
There.
The lack of sound minimized distractions, but I wanted to hear her if she said anything. Impossible, but she moved to sit in the living room and turned on the television. Her attention seemed split between what was in her hand and what was on the screen. Maybe her phone? She watched the news. A moment later, she twisted to look toward the kitchen. I turned to scan it.
The phone.
Back to the camera. She didn’t get up and answer it. She turned the television off. Then she looked at the door. Facing it, I studied it. Nothing obvious hinted why she stared at it. Had someone knocked? Had they rung the bell? She didn’t answer the phone. She shouldn’t answer the door. The waiting scraped against me like an uncomfortable sweater.
Still, I didn’t move. She walked over to the door, but her hands didn’t go to the knob. She was checking the view hole.
Hitting pause, I walked to the door and checked through it. The hall in front of the door, the door at the end of the hall and the elevator were visible. But only an angle of the doors, not the interior. Still, nothing moved.
I returned to the monitor and hit play. I tried not to focus too much on every step she took, how her expression shifted or her respiration. When she opened the door, I tensed. But no one was there and she just picked up a package from in front of the door.
She carried it to the table and opened it. The camera angle wasn’t sharp enough for me to see. I pressed as close to the screen as I could. She went through the pages and whatever she found—it upset her. When she put it all back away, I only got a glimpse of the front of one—it looked like a photograph. I backed up the recording twice and played it again.
I still couldn’t see what she was looking at. The next few minutes had her vanishing back to my room and then she came out with a bag. One final look around and then she just—left.
Liam put no cameras in my room. He had them in his, but not mine.
We would change that.
There was a note on Liam’s door. I hadn’t even looked at it earlier, but there was a note stuck to it. I peeled it off and read the words written by a trembling hand. There were little fine tremors in the ink.
Liam,
Thank you for everything. It’s time for me to go home.
H.
There was a watermark around the h. The note was another clue. H.
Hellspawn.
Liam called her Hellspawn.
In my bedroom, I swept the room with a look. Starting in the closet, I searched. Her clothes—all the new things were here. The dirty clothes in the hamper, same thing. All new clothes. Opening the drawers, I checked for the items that came with her from her dressing room.
They were gone.
Nothing of ours had gone with her. My shirt that she’d been wearing was there at the end of the bed. Vaughn’s was in the drawer. Pivoting, I faced the bed. The bear was still there.
She’d left him.
Something uncomfortable gnawed inside my chest and I rubbed a hand against my sternum as I looked at the room. Tried to see it as she would. She’d had her phone. Did she take it with her? I pulled out mine and found her name in my contacts.
Starling.
One press and then I hit the speaker on the phone.
It went straight to voicemail. It didn’t even ring.
The message wasn’t her voice either, just the standard message. Vaughn had gotten her the basic plan. One more try. Straight to voicemail. I considered leaving a message, but when I got to the end it said the voicemail box was full.
Putting my phone away, I stared at the room again. I wanted to know what she’d done in here, but there were no cameras. So, I started at one side of the room and opened, looked under, moved, and searched everything. At the bed, I paused from looking under it to study the bed itself. Under the bed was too easy, if I had to secure something I’d use the slats of the box spring. This bed had no rips or cuts in the box spring for her to get inside it.
Gripping the mattress, I lifted the whole thing up. At the edge, there was a chance of finding something when the bed was stripped or remade. Hiding it in the middle made it far less easy to find because who would hide something that far—there was a small envelope there. Manila. Smaller than the one she’d had at the table.
I snagged it and pulled it out. It had weight.
Inside?
New identification, credit cards, cash, and everything she could need to be someone else. The work on the cards was good. The electronic stamp and foil were present. The hologram too. I checked them for any other identifying marks.
Forgers could be specific, but these were clean. The cash was too. The serial numbers were sequential. It was nearly ten thousand.
Why would she leave this behind?
How long has she had it?
Why hadn’t she used them?
Because she didn’t want to leave us.
A single thought crystalized and I set the new IDs and cards aside with the note and continued to pull the room apart. If she had one hiding spot. She’d have another. I went back to the dresser and slid my hands inside to search above, below. I even pulled the drawers all the way out to look under.
It wasn’t until I got to the bottom one that something jammed the drawer and wouldn’t let me pull it all the way out. Snaking my hand under the small space between the floor and the dresser bottom, I found the phone tucked away and pulled it out.
It was hers and it was off.
I added that to my stack and then went back to my search. When Liam walked in, I’d just found the envelope with the pictures. She’d slid them into a cleaning bag in the back of the closet. It held a suit Liam had made for me that I never wore.
Good place for hiding something.
“Rome.”
I met my mirror’s gaze as I came out of the closet with the envelope in my hands. Then he looked away, anger had turned his jaw taut. He studied the room. The wreck that I’d left in my wake. Right now, the contents of the room mattered less than what I’d found. I took the envelope with its photos, and everything else, out to the table. When I dumped the pictures out, I stared at them.