Page 98 of The Two Last Moments

“About a month and a half ago, she was staying here. With me.”

That statement hits me like a kick in the stomach. Rearranging my insides, threatening to make me vomit. “Were you…were you and Lark…” I can’t even say it.

His eyes widen. “Lark is like a daughter to me. She’s practically a kid.”

“She’s twenty-four, but…yeah.” I wipe away the sheen of sweat on my skin. Jeez. Freaked me out for a moment there.

“Lark and I are friends. Or maybewere. We don’t always agree on things, and she got angry with me and took off. It’s a thing she does.”

“I’ve learned that about her.”

“So it seems. Though I don’t understandhow. Clearly a whole lot’s happened I don’t know about.” He shoves the hair back from his forehead. “She looked well in the picture. She’s all right?”

“Mostly.” I jam my phone into my pocket. “About six weeks ago, she came to me and Nina.” Tried, at least, before that asshole got to her first. But she ended up with us, thankfully. No one is ever going to convince me that Lark isn’t better off with us, or that we’re not better off with her. “Someone followed her. Hurt her. We think it was her stepbrother. She called him Z. And he’s still threatening her.”

My uncle shakes his head, cursing under his breath. “I had no idea where she’d gone. She wouldn’t answer her phone or email. I didn’t think she would go to West Oaks, though.”

“If you had known she was in West Oaks, would you have come to us to find her?”

Travis glances away, and that’s all the answer I need.

No, he wouldn’t have come. Because he didn’t want to see us.

“Nina is sick, not that you would care. You don’t want to come to West Oaks, and I don’t want you there either. Fine. The only reason I’m here is for Lark. Just so we’re clear.”

“Then what do you need?”

“I need to know the fuckingtruth.”

34

I’m so caught up in my thoughts that I don’t hear at first when Quinn comes into my room. She taps me on the shoulder. “Lark?”

I jump up from my seat by the window. “Oh my gosh, what are you doing here?”

“Cliff sounded the alarm. Aiden and I got here as soon as we could.” Quinn wraps me in a huge hug, and that makes me realize how badly I needed it.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“I do. I really, really do.”

I just finished up with Cliff and the other patrol officer. I’m starting to become an expert on giving police statements. It’s not anything I would ever want to learn. But that wasn’t the same as telling Quinn.

There are too many thoughts in my brain and I need to get them out. I desperately need my friend.

“Hold that thought,” she says, going over to my window. She pulls back the curtain, and warm sunlight floods the room. “There. That’s better. Now, tell me all about it.”

She sits on the bed beside me and keeps her arm around me as I speak.

“He actuallycame here? That’s brazen.”

“Yep. Steps away from this house and from the public street. But even though he was right there, I didn’t see his face. He’s like this bogeyman hiding in the shadows. With all he’s done, I still haven’t even figured out hisname.”

Cliff told me he’d accessed Nina’s security system, and the cameras didn’t show anything useful. As if Z somehow knew exactly where they were pointing and how to avoid them. Which only adds to the superhuman mystique he’s taken on in my head.

“He’ll mess up at some point,” Quinn says. “Everyone does, and that’s when we’ll get him.”

“Spoken like a prosecutor.” Then I tell her the rest of what he said.

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