Page 15 of The Verdict

“Hey there, birthday girl.” I smiled. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for the entertainment,” Harm grumbled, but it was hard not to see the love he had for his niece.

“Is it time to sing already?” I drawled, knowing that was what she was after.Poppy was obsessed with motorcycles—and my singing with the hurdy-gurdy—which was why she’d insisted on having her birthday party at the garage.

“Almost.” Her head bobbed unsteadily on her scrawny neck.

“Everything okay?” Harm asked, looking from me to Ty.

“Hey, Pops,” Ty broke in, calling Poppy by her nickname around here. “You want to take a sneak peek at your birthday cake?”

My lips turned down in surprise. Ty wasn’t… kid-friendly, so to speak. Lingering trauma involving another one of his best friends he’d lost in the war. I only knew some details. A single father. An orphaned daughter. We all had our shit we didn’t want to talk about.

“Yeah!” Poppy squealed, kicking Harm in the ribs with excitement.

“Don’t tell Mom.” Harm wheezed and set her down, letting Ty lead her from the room and down the hall to the fridge in the clubhouse kitchen.

The garage and clubhouse were run of the mill—if high-tech equipment and pristine white floors could be standard for a garage—but the property housed more than that; it was our living compound. Who we were, what drove us, and what we did… it made it hard to livenormallyagain. So, we chose not to. Instead, the garage was built with a secure elevator that descended to an underground passage leading into the surrounding woods. From there, separate halls led to staircases and individual cabins dispersed in Sherwood’s thick forest.

Hidden in plain sight.

The door closed with a click, and my smile evaporated.“Les Wheaton was murdered.”

“What?”

I turned up the volume again.“Dr. Wheaton was stabbed to death in his home two days ago. We don’t believe there is any risk to the public at this time…”

Harm’s eyes narrowed.“Does Rob know?”

Rob—Robyn DuBois. The fifth member of the Vigilantes as well as Harm and Dare’s stepsister. She rarely stayed at the garage, preferring to live in the shadows of San Francisco in proximity to her network of spies. Much of the intel we got on our targets came from her widespread collection of maids and bellmen, delivery people, and cab drivers—those the wealthy saw as invisible,those who saw everything.

“Not sure.” But it was her intel that sent me to Wheaton’s damn party in the first place in search of Ivans.

Dr. Ray Ivans had worked at GrowTech, a billion-dollar biotech company, with Rob’s parents. He was the chief health and safety doctor supervising the whole scope of the groundbreaking pesticide’s development. And he’d checked and tested her parents when they’d started to get sick during the final phase;he’d told them they were fine.And then, in a matter of weeks, they’d both died of an aggressive form of cancer. It wasn’t a coincidence; it was the chemicals. And Ivans had tried to cover it up. All of the C-suite at GrowTech had. And we’d sworn to bring them to justice.

That’s what we did. We lived and breathed and would die for our creed:Family first. Justice for all.

Ivans disappeared after their deaths, and Rob’sassumption—our assumption—was that he’d either been paid off or killed.As most people in his precarious situation would be.Until he’d resurfaced on a holiday guest list for one Dr. Les Wheaton.

“I’ll call her. She’s supposed to be here by now anyway,” Harm said. “If it made it to the news, she should know. Unless…”

“Unless?”

He shook his head, his jaw tightening. “Never mind.”

Rob was determined and secretive—the best qualities for a vigilante seeking justice, except when those secrets were kept from us. She was driven by a different kind of desperation that was both admirable and dangerous if it went unchecked. And recently, it had gone unchecked.

“I can go up there and poke around—” The words died on my tongue, eviscerated by the image of a woman on TV—a woman I recognized.

“Merritt Manning is wanted in connection with Dr. Wheaton’s murder. If anyone has any information on her whereabouts, please call the tip line.”

Merritt.

Merritt Manning. My heart slammed into the front of my chest. It was her.And she was wanted for murder.

No.My mind reeled. The police couldn’t be right. This couldn’t be—they had to be wrong.She’d been a victim that night. How the hell was she their best suspect? My mind began to turn—grind through every moment I’d been with her for some sliver of an answer.

Had Wheaton tried to hurt her? Hot anger started to course through me. Was it self-defense?Was she still in danger?

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