The throbbing ache settles deep inside my head, and I work my jaw in a desperate attempt to make it go away.
I set my thoughts on Isa. Her smile. The sound of her voice. Soft skin beneath my fingertips.
Relax.
The blur begins to sharpen at the edges, while the pain dissolves. The air thins in my lungs, and I exhale as clarity seeps back into the fringes.
The dusky orange sky gives way to the dark cover of trees, and I check my phone one more time to see the dot hasn’t moved. About a mile up the road, from the looks of it. I slow the vehicle and catch sight of the Whitman Woodlands sign off to the side. Turning into the narrow drive, I kill the lights. Gravel pops beneath my tires as I roll down the obscure path. Before reaching the cabins, I turn the Bugatti off the road and throw it in park.
A half-mile up the drive, a row of cabins sit in darkness, with one lone vehicle parked out in front. I stalk through the woods toward them, careful to stay in the shadows. Sweeping a hand over the gun tucked inside my jeans, I trudge through the brush, pausing when I feel the slight vibration of my phone against my hip. Tugging it out of my pocket, I glance down at the dot blinking on the screen and halt my approach. Using the dim light from the screen, I angle the phone downward and scan the ground. A mound of dirt ahead catches my eye, and as I get closer, I notice what appears to be fingertips sticking up from a fresh grave.
The private investigator, I’m guessing.
Tucking my phone back into my jeans, I keep on toward the cabin, careful to avoid the floodlight’s halo, and once I reach the south wall, I flatten myself against it and listen for voices inside.
Nothing.
Keeping low to avoid being seen, I peer through a window and spot Isa strapped to the bed, all four limbs tied to each of the four posts. My attention is drawn to the white gauze wrapped around her ankle, dotted in what looks like blood. Silver tape covers her mouth, and she squirms and writhes on the bed in a disastrous attempt to get loose.
Tugging the gun from my pants, I rack the chamber and let it lead the way, as I creep around the house and up the staircase to the front window. Scanning the rest of the interior shows no sign of Boyd. Only sparse furniture and an open kitchen. Carefully turning the knob on what appears to be the only door, I push it open, cringing at the chasing creak of its rusted hinges.
Isa stills on the bed, only her legs in view from around the corner, as I make my way toward the back room.
“Don’t move.” The familiar voice arrives from behind, and I halt my steps, keeping my gun held out in front of me. “Pass me the gun. Behind your back.”
“You hand her over to them, you’ll never see her again.”
“Pass me. Your fucking. Gun.” Boyd has always carried an edge of fake benevolence in his tone, and the hostility that bleeds through is strange, coming from him. “I’ve got a bullet with your name on it, Lucian. All I have to do is pull the trigger.”
From the other room, Isa’s muffled screams tell me she can hear our exchange.
The cold rush of adrenaline pulses through me as the seconds tick off before this motherfucker’ll lose his patience. “You killed Nell, didn’t you?”
“That meddling bitch just couldn’t keep her hands out of it.”
“You were afraid she’d find out the truth about Amelia. And Roark. And Isa.”
“She was out to destroy everything. She told that fucking investigator everything.” The words hiss through his teeth.
“How do you know what she told him?”
“Who do you think hired the bastard?”
Boyd is the last person I suspected. In fact, I’d have pegged Friedrich before this asshole. “Why?”
“There were things I needed to know. Things you weren’t telling me. And then I learned of Isa. The daughter I never knew.”
“So, why would you hand her over to them?” I kick my head to the side, catching a shadow of him in my periphery, a few steps back, along with the gun pointed directly at me.
“If I thought cutting her up into tiny pieces and giftwrapping her organs would get me into Schadenfreude, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
And I’d do the same to him, if I got wind he was behind it. Only I wouldn’t bother to giftwrap the shit. “You’re a heartless prick, Patrick. A sick and disturbed man.”
“Says the Devil of Bonesalt.”
“Did you kill Isa’s mother?”
“Jenny? What do you think? That I would stand by and let some junkie whore slink back into my life like a nightmare?”
I thought I had problems with women. This guy is the Godfather of bad decisions. “You kill me, and they’ll come after you. You know that, right?”
“I don’t have to kill you. You’re going to hand me that gun right now.”
“Now, why would I do a stupid thing like that?”
“Because I know the truth about your girl. Why she came back to Tempest Cove. What really happened the night of that party.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know. Good one, though.” What really happened was served to me in an envelope from Rand, dug up from one of our many contacts.
“Pass me the gun.”
“Fuck off, Patrick.”
“You really are the Mad Son. Pass me the fucking gun!”
“No.”
“You like to straddle the line between life and death? Huh? Let’s see how long you hang there with a bullet in your skull.”
At the sound of a gunshot and shattering glass from behind, I drop to the floor. I don’t know who fired, just that it didn’t come from my gun, and the tortured pitch of Patrick’s outcry is a sure bet that a bullet hit him, somehow, instead of me. I twist around to see a massive figure standing on the other side of the broken window next to the front door.
Makaio, I’ll bet.
A hard thump vibrates over the wooden floor planks, and I glance back to see Patrick holding his knee to his chest, scooting back against the wall across the room from me. When his eyes meet mine, he scrambles for his fallen gun, and I fire a shot, just missing his arm, which he recoils back.
“Motherfucker!” he grits out, reaching for it again.
Not a second later, I twist back around, and a shot rings out, its bullet flying over me, hitting the wall ahead on a puff of drywall dust.
The chasing sound of Isa’s screams through the tape skate down my spine, and my first thought, my only thought, is that she’s been hit by the bullet. Urgency ignites in my veins. Another gunshot echoes in the room. A fourth. Isa’s screams heighten. I keep low on another shot, and don’t even allow myself to do a sweep, or look back at Patrick, before I army crawl into the next room to get to her.
Another bullet whizzes past, and a cold hot pain streaks across my shoulder. “Fuck!” I grit my teeth and ignore it, until I’m through the door, separated from Boyd by the bedroom wall.
Isa’s screams, still muffled by the tape across her mouth, draw my attention to where she struggles against her binds on the bed.
I climb over her, covering her body with mine, feeling her jerk and twitch with another gunshot. Patrick screams again, as if he’s been hit a second time.
Finally, the melee settles to quiet.
At the sound of heavy footfalls across the floor, I point my gun toward the bedroom door, muscles sagging when Makaio steps into the room carrying two guns.