Page 27 of Hide From Me

Nothing on the bookcases made me think there was anything hidden behind them, but I ran a gloved hand over them, making sure they each gave just enough to tell me it was a real book. Disappointing when they all were.

There was a closet, so I headed there next. There was a safe, but I wouldn’t start screaming for joy because the fucking thing was open and empty. Fuck.

I knelt down and tried what we assumed was a combination. The number sequence seemed logical, but the safe didn’t respond. It wasn’t the combination to this thing.

Leaving the nearly empty closet, I went to the desk and pulled out the drawers, rifling through papers here and there. He wasn’t keeping anything here, not in this room anyway. Fine. I kept searching until I’d exhausted every nook and cranny. I couldn’t hear my brothers, but X wasn’t in the kitchen anymore, so I headed down to the basement. These homes were renovated, but they were old, and the basement was what screamed of their age. Creaky old stairs led me down to what was more of a cellar. It was nearly empty, except for the racks and racks of wine. I supposed this was a good use for something the judge could never see the beauty in.

There was a possibility that he could use this place to hide something. Not a safe, but since I was here, I’d explore. I went after the bottles, turning them and waiting for something to feeloff.After at least fifteen minutes, I hadn’t gotten to each one, but this wasn’t going anywhere either.

I dialed Zeid’s number from the cellar.

“I’m not finding shit. I don’t think what we need is here.”

We’d been longer than I’d realized when I glanced at the time, waiting for him to tell me something good. That wasn’t what happened.

He grumbled something and then swore.

“There’s a cop car outside. Just pulled up. Grab X and get up to the main floor.”

Fuck. I took the stairs two at a time and bolted through the house, texting X as I went. The one thing we were good at was getting out of shit situations.

They wouldn’t enter, not this quickly. The body had just been fucking found. If I knew anything, and I knew a lot, the police around here worked slowly, especially when deaths or murders had gang ties. I’d still been surprised they were deep in the slums of our territory, but I supposed that someone had tipped them off.

“Shhh. We need to get out of here,” Zeid said as I met up with him. X was looking around through windows.

“Are they out back? If it’s just one cop, they can’t watch everything.”

He held his finger to his lips and started walking back upstairs as we heard the thud of shoes against the porch out back. The front was cement, but there was a possibility there were two cops at this point.

We got upstairs and followed Zeid to what I’d guess was the master bedroom as he walked to the patio doors.

“We wait out here until we see the chance to jump.”

He opened the door, and I waited to hear a beep, but nothing happened. Zeid much have cut the wires earlier. Who cared?

Zeid held up his fingers. Two, to be exact.

Two cops.

This was a fucking trap, and my mood soured.

Not only did we find nothing, we’d fallen into a game that we didn’t know any rules for.

ELEVEN

rylee

It probably saida lot about me that I was bummed there hadn’t been any good murders in the last twenty-four hours. At least none that I was invited to.

I needed something to distract me. When I was alone, all I could think about was Cas, masked. No, it wasn’t even that. It was Cas feeling me up, knowing just how to touch every inch of my body. I should have been jealous at the fact it had seemed second nature to him. But my body couldn’t get past the way it felt to come for him.

I needed to get out of my apartment. I looked out the window and felt the same feeling, like something was watching me. It had felt like someone had been watching me since the day I left the wreckage of my father, and my twisted little brain had grown to love it. Something felt safe about anything looking after me, even if it was probably dark. Even if it wasn’t real. I liked my imagination far more than reality.

Deep down, I knew why none of those guys had come back. And I knew why I kept trying. I wanted to give whoever watched me a show.

What kind of fucked up person thought they were not only being watched, but they wanted to taunt them?

Me. It was little ol’ me.

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