Starling.
Us.
Liam.
Milo.
Doc.
Dozens of photos. All of us. Freddie. Jasper. Kel.
All with targets on them.
“He threatened her.” Liam’s words penetrated the red haze burning through me and I looked at my other half. He held up a photo of the two of them, his expression cold, remote, and murderous.
“He threatened us.”
That snapped his attention to me. Fury burned in the tundra behind his eyes. Before he could say anything though, his phone rang and he answered it. He turned away, distracted as he answered whoever it was.
He.
No one who sent these was a friend.
This “he” was an enemy.
I picked up her note to Liam. The tremors disrupting the ink, the water stain. Starling hadn’t wanted to go.
Setting the note down, I went through the pictures again. No clues on any of them. No writing. Had she known automatically who sent them? I replayed her actions on the video.
Within minutes of receiving the pictures, she was back in my room and then she was leaving. She’d known. Her family was the enemy.
It was the only way it made sense.
She knew who it was.
Turning on her phone, I waited for the screen to power up. It requested a password or pin to unlock it.
I entered her birthday.
No.
What other numbers would have any meaning?
I tried spelling dove out with numbers. It was Vaughn who gave her the phone.
It didn’t work.
I tried Vandal.
No.
Frustration rifled over my skin and I gripped one of the chairs and flung it. Something crashed in the living room, but I didn’t look at it. My attention was on the phone.
“I gotta go.” Liam’s voice re-entered my sphere. “You found her phone.”
I nodded. He didn’t need an answer. I had the phone in my hand. Would Vaughn have passcoded it before he gave it to her?
Milo’s birthday had been the default we used for most things before we personalized them.
No.
I closed my eyes. I couldn’t throw the phone. It was another tether to Starling. Until we found her and brought her home. What would she use as a number? Most used something valuable. Liam’s was the day the O’Connells adopted him. A date that had significance for him. Vaughn’s was the day his mother died. Freddie used the date of his suicide attempt. A reminder, he’d told me once.
The day of her first show. The first time Emersyn Sharpe performed. I entered the date and the phone unlocked. The mail app was empty. The messages were all to and from us. Nothing stood out. I didn’t read her messages to my brothers.
Liam stood right at my shoulder, his focus on the screen. “Wait. Scroll back.”
There were only two screens of apps. She didn’t have very many. Not even games.
“This isn’t right.”
I looked at Liam. “What isn’t?”
He held out his hand and I fought the initial resistance to hold onto the phone. If he could find something that could help, then I needed to relinquish it to him. He swiped back and forth between the two screens. Then he opened the apps store and checked recent purchases.
“I knew she had another one on here.” He held it up to show me. I didn’t know the app. Not waiting for me, he reinstalled it. When he opened it, he messed around for a few minutes. I opened and closed my hands, flexing my fists. The aggravation rippling over my skin made me want to move, but if I moved I couldn’t see what he was doing.
He swore.
“What?”
“She has fading on. It went to its default settings.” At my silence, he said, “This is a messaging app. Like our texts, only when you send a message, once it has been read, it wipes itself. When I reinstalled it, I was hoping the histories would come up—that happens sometimes, but she’s wiped those. So, the app is here and so is her login, but there are no contacts, no message histories. Goddammit. Why didn’t she call one of us?”
“Because she wanted to protect us. You should have been here when those came.”
Liam scowled. “I know that. I told her to not answer the damn door.” When he started to throw the phone I covered it in his hand and yanked it away.
The phone vibrated in my palm and we both stared down at it.
A name popped up on the screen.
“Fuck me,” Liam swore.
I stared at the name Lainey.
I didn’t know who that was. But from Liam’s fierce expression—it seemed he might.
“Who is she?”
CHAPTER 7
FREDDIE
A week. A whole week. After the one brief sighting of her on the news, Emersyn all but vanished from the public view. The family had withdrawn behind an army of lawyers and corporate double talk. In fact, the only ones still talking about her were the tabloid shows that kept speculating about everything from a legal investigation to a medical one. Worse, some had begun to suggest she had a drug problem.
Boo-Boo. A drug problem.
Assholes.
The one hard line had been ‘the family would like their privacy during this difficult time.’ “My mother is sick. My father had a heart attack.” Both seemed reasonable. The news touched on them, but only in passing. So, were they really in danger? Or had she lied to me?
No. The tremor in the words. That hadn’t been a lie.
I knew fear when I heard it.
Every minute that passed without something more seemed to draw blood. The jittery feeling racing over my flesh increased every single day that dawned without news. We’d all tried calling the house.
If they bothered to answer, we never got past the butler. Doc had taken a different tack. He’d called as her doctor. When he was told to just send a bill, he’d actually thrown his phone against the wall. The device shattered into chunky bits. After, he’d just walked out and we hadn’t seen him in three days.
Liam and Rome had been curiously silent on the whole damn thing. Or maybe they were just talking to each other. I didn’t know. All I knew was I couldn’t sleep. Food held little appeal. I couldn’t shake the quiver in her voice when she said she had to go. The almost mournful sigh. I’d told her nothing good came after a sigh like that.
I’d been right.
I was still right, only now they weren’t listening. Jasper and Vaughn had been working overtime to sort out who was sabotaging our shipments, or hijacking them, and using our transportation for flesh peddling. Not even the Bay Ridge Royals, which we knew for damn sure peddled in flesh, had been so bold.
The 19 Diamonds had been keeping their heads down. Juan Ricardo probably heard Milo was back, pissed himself, and fled. We’d catch him sooner or later.
I flipped my blade in my hand as I stared down the street. The guys were cleaning house. Body disposal was a pain in the ass, but they were doing the hard part here, then separating it all out after. Drums would go on different ships, to different ports, and by the time they got there, what was left wouldn’t even be recognizable as human.
We’d gotten pretty good at this part.
Still, the guys we’d taken apart had given us nothing. They didn’t know who hired them. All of our tails had also vanished, almost overnight. The men watching Doc had been the only ones caught, but the guys watching Liam’s had never come back. We knew very little and Milo—goddammit, Milo pissed me off. He wanted us to leave it alone.