Page 109 of Smith

“Trust me?—”

“I trust you with my life, but there is no chance in hell I’m leaving this room. What did you find?”

If Smith’s fury was blanketing the room, Kira’s fear was cloaking it.

“He uploaded pictures to his cloud,” she whispered.

But it might as well have been a muzzle blast going off in the room.

Smith paused mid-stride, his face contorted in barely contained agony, and his hands balled into tight fists.

He was bracing for the worst.

“Put them up on screen.”

“Smith—”

“Put. Them. Up.”

Kira looked at Zane, my eyes followed, and I watched him begrudgingly nod.

Two seconds later when Smith punched his fist through the wall, I was up out of my seat, as was Jonas.

“Brother,” Jonas warned. “You tearing about the room isn’t gonna help.”

Jonas and I crowded Smith, but my eyes stayed locked on the image of Aria. Blood covered her pretty face, a gash above her right eyebrow the obvious source of most of the blood, but the laceration on left cheek was open and oozing, too. Right eye swollen shut, angry red welt at her jaw, bruising under her left eye that would turn gnarly shades of green in the next few days. But she was alive. Dead was dead. The eyes told the tale, and there was still fight in that one eye.

“Don’t touch me,” Smith grunted.

Neither of us moved away from him.

The end was near, I could feel it.

Smith’s body jerked in an unnatural way that had me reaching to catch him. He didn’t fall but only because his forehead went to the wall, his hands went up, and he steadied himself.

“Fuck,” he groaned. “Fuckingfuck.”

“All I need is one…” Kira mumbled. “Come on, asshole, give me something…” there was a pause in her mumbling but her hands kept moving. “There.”

Three images replaced the close-up of Aria.

One was of her in the passenger seat of a car. The blur out the window meant Billy had been driving when he’d taken that picture. The second was of Aria in the fetal position on the floor. Her body curled into itself on a blue and red rug. Out the window was a body of water. Next to that image was one of Aria on the navy-blue couch, her bare legs scratched to hell, oversized t-shirt I didn’t have to ask to know was Smith’s torn and bloodied. She was positioned in one corner, head resting on the back cushion, lulled to the side, eyes closed. The shot was wide; in the background the water was clearer as were the buildings on the other side of the channel.

“Where is that?” Zane demanded.

“Well, King of Patience, if you’d give me a second, I’ll tell you.”

Kira was back.

Thank fuck.

If she was sassing Zane she was close to finding something.

“I think that’s the Hyatt Grand,” she said.

Smith shoved away from the wall, pushed past Jonas, and in two wooden, tense steps he was behind Kira.

“You get this one-time pass, looking over my shoulder,” Kira grumbled.

---