Page 68 of Broken Truths

“No one of concern, unless you try to do something stupid. Then, I’m your murderer, Eden Astor.”

I breathe in a shaky breath. I believe him. My gaze darts to the passenger seat. There’s my purse but no phone. Leo still has my tracker on there, but obviously that’s not going to do any good since I physically don’t have it on me.

Stupid.

I search the car for a weapon, but Oliver keeps his things so meticulously clean, there’s not even a piece of lint to blow in the guy’s eyeball.

Before we get to Carnegie, the man instructs me to turn down a side street, and I do as he says. Up ahead, I spot an abandoned gravel parking lot.

That’s where he’s taking me. I know it.

I could speed away, but all he would have to do is shoot. At this close range, I’d die if he pulled the trigger.

I could intentionally crash the car into a tree…if I could do it before he shot me…

“Right there,” he says, motioning with the gun toward the parking lot.

I slow to a crawl. “What are we doing?”

“No questions. Just pull in.”

“What are we doing?” I ask again with a little more authority, hoping I can strong-arm this guy into saying anything useful to me.

Instead, he takes a fistful of my hair, yanking it back into him, making me cry out. “I said pull into the fucking parking lot.”

He immediately lets go as I make the turn.

In the rearview mirror, I see the guy peer out the windows like he’s looking for something. Someone?

Fuck it.

I lean into the accelerator and the car takes off, the engine rumbling underneath me. I aim the front end right at a tree. At the very last second, I lift my hands and everything goes dark...

25

Leo

Ipace around the kitchen. Alaric sits on his stool sipping coffee, and Oliver and Eden are taking their sweet time getting up this morning. I only heard the shower turn on five minutes ago.

Surprisingly—though I kind of still want to cut off the other two dicks in the house—sharing Eden is not as terrible as I imagined. Actually, the other guys are better at some of the finer aspects of dating than I am.

Oliver, making sure she’s always safe, where I’m like full speed ahead, let’s go kill some people.

Alaric, studying The Secret File as if he could single-handedly figure all of this out. I don’t have the patience for that.

“Calm yourself,” Alaric says. “They’ll be down soon. Forbes will still be around to dismember once we get a plan together.”

I smirk. That actually sounds like a great plan. I move around the side of the counter and sit next to him. “Does your family have any contacts in the police department?”

He looks over the top of today’s paper that he’s reading and locks his gaze on mine for a brief second before lowering it. “Not that I’m aware of. Doesn’t yours?”

“Yeah, but they’re my grandfather’s, not mine.”

Alaric leans back in his chair. “Why? What were you thinking?”

I check for the stairs. I don’t want to talk about this in front of Eden. She’s had enough on her plate. “I was thinking we should look for the file they have on her dad.”

“A lot of good that will do,” Alaric states. “It’ll all be bullshit. They didn’t even give him an autopsy.”

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