Page 79 of To Curse A Knight

She wordlessly turned up the sound on the radio she had been listening to quietly up front, and a male news announcer's voice flooded the cab of the G-Wagon.

“They’re calling her the ‘Mutilation Mistress.’ Anonymous sources report that this woman has been targeting high-profile men in Sequoia county for over a year, forcefully castrating them with a team of mercenary killers, and then blackmailing them once released. Three victims have come forward, and local police are investigating what they are calling the most gruesome serial mutilator since Jeffrey Dahmer, although at this time, there is no confirmation that she’s actually killed any of her victims.”

A ravenous fear gripped my belly, its familiar claws holding me hostage as I listened to the radio with rapt attention.

“David Owens, recognized military hero and husband of Sandra Owens, reported his wife missing just two weeks ago. In an updated recount, he asserts that she’d called him from a truck stop north of Carlisle, claiming she’d been drugged and captured by a team of masked men, then held captive and tortured in a padded cell by a woman. Sandra had escaped her captivity and was waiting for her husband to come meet her, but she never arrived at her destination. It is unclear if these two cases are related, but we’ve learned that this is also an active investigation. An anonymous tip from Carlisle Police indicated that the Sequoia office of the FBI will be brought in to take over from here.”

How in the ever-loving fuck was I not informed of this? I had eyes and ears everywhere; Kellan had eyes and ears everywhere. How had he missed this?

I sought Joey’s eyes in the rearview mirror once again, catching the fierce stare of solidarity. Whatever this was, we were in this together. “Get home as fast as you can.”

She gunned the engine and squeezed through impossible spaces while I frantically dialed Sammy.

“Shut everything down,” I ordered brusquely when he picked up on the second ring. “Disband the team, offload the equipment. We’re going underground for a little while.”

“On it,Ojitos.”

I hung up and called Kellan. I was sent directly to his voicemail. I dialed Aaron; after six rings, I heard his smooth tenor come through the line, his answering machine tricking me for the briefest of seconds into thinking he was on the other end. Lucky didn’t answer his phone either.

Panic seared through my guts in burning waves. Something was very wrong.

When we arrived at the condo, I raced through my private lower-level parking garage, Joey on my heels, before the agonizing elevator trip up to my floor stalled us.

A jumbled mass of thoughts tumbled through my mind at light speed. Where were they? How had the media found out about us? Had I covered my tracks enough so all leads couldn’t be traced back to me? Where were they?

I’d check their trackers as soon as I got inside my condo. I wouldn’t feel any semblance of safety until I was within the walls of my home.

Withdrawing my gun from my purse, I readied myself for whatever lay on the other side of the elevator door. Joey and I exchanged a solemn nod, her controlled calm a much-needed balm to my raging insides.

“Aaron?” I screeched as the door opened and I raced through my condo. Joey and I moved from room to room with our weapons raised, finding no one waiting for us in the silence of the rooms. “Lucky!?”

I stood in his empty bedroom, the faint crease of Aaron’s body on top of the duvet still an imprint in the bed clothing. I fought my body to get my breathing under control. In the last two weeks, panic had become a clinging force holding me in its clutches and tethering to my soul. I didn’t panic. I wasHillary Lane, for fuck’s sake.

“Ms. Lane, you’re going to want to see this,” Joey called, her usually stoic voice grim.

I retreated from the room and found her standing at the entry to the living room with her arms folded across her chest, as if shielding me from what lay behind her. My gaze moved past her to the room beyond.

A blueish lump nestled in pink was set on the coffee table. As I moved closer, I realized the blue was strands of cobalt hair, the lump a severed head, the pink congealed blood that had hardened to the glass.

Blackbird’s lifeless eyes stared back at me, the blank eye sockets pulling me into their terrible, barren void.

I screamed.

Ipaced the floor of the long ballroom, the original space just plaster and plywood the last time I had been here.

The doc was working on Aaron now. For all Lauchlan’s faults, the man had skills, and when he started speaking to the doctor in medical terms and offered himself as the helper, Doc gladly took him into the makeshift infirmary of a co-opted office space and a stretcher.

Hillary had taken over the construction contract when Aaron disappeared, and turned this place into a massive entertainment space that would have been warm and inviting—if I wasn’t terrified the man I’d been sent to kill all those months ago was actually goingto die.

I’d missed three of her calls, and knew I had to call her back. She was going to kill me for waiting this long, but I couldn’t answer until I knew Aaron was going to be okay. I couldn’t be the one to tell her the man she’d admitted to loving was dead.

Carmen Delgado had targeted Aaron Rodriguez, which told me two things: she’d been hired to do it, even when Antonio directed me to make the kill, and that she or my father hadn’t believed Aaron was actually dead. She’d lured him out of his hiding spot today, and she could only do that if she’d suspected him to be alive. Which meant my father knew I hadn’t killed him after all.

We’d prepared for the possibility of needing to bring Aaron back from the dead—but not with Antonio in mind. The car crash was flawless, the cover story air-tight. If my father had trusted me, he never would have put her up to this.

Which meant I’d fallen out of my father’s favor, once and for all.

If I’d fallen out of my father’s favor, everyone around me was now in danger.

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