Page 149 of Hide and Keep

The door to his room flies open, spraying the room in harsh light. My shirtless bodyguard stands at the threshold.

“Where have you been?” I demand.

“How’d you get in here?” He checks his phone.

I blindly thrust a hand toward the floor. “Who is this?”

Crue barely eyes what has to be a gruesome scene before saying matter-of-factly, “I don’t know. I didn’t name her yet.”

That sounds like a psychopath to me. Damn it.

After a sigh, I ask, “Where’s her body?” As long as he didn’t fuck her, I’ll help him get rid of the evidence. If he did fuck her, he’s so on his own.

“She didn’t come with one. At least not one that Chloe offered up.”

Chloe? My hairstylist?

For the first time, I look down at the head, finding it doesn’t belong to my hairstylist, or even a human. It belongs to a mannequin.

I didn’t decapitate anybody. My bodyguard didn’t decapitate anybody.

The biggest relief of all though? He didn’t fuck anybody.

“Why did Chloe give that to you?”

Shaking his head, he closes the door behind him. “To learn how to do hair.”

He’s worth burying a body—or head—for. Unless…

“Do you two talk now?”

“Talk? We had one conversation and it ended the moment I…”

“The moment you what?”

“Told her to give it to Edwin because we wouldn’t be home.”

“So it was before the gala?”

“Yes. When you were in the bathroom, getting dressed.”

That’s what they had their heads together about when I came out?

Now that I think about it, I’m not sure Chloe’s the best fit for me anymore.

“How’d you get in my room?”

“Your door doesn’t have a lock.”

With a wave of his illuminated phone, he says, “There’s no history of you leaving yours.”

Using that little bit of light, I busy myself retrieving the mannequin. “Maybe you missed it.”

“I didn’t.”

“Must’ve malfunctioned then. I don’t know what to tell you.” Certainly not the truth.

The room goes pitch black.

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