Page 18 of Lamb

I wouldn’t have killed her for no reason. I wasn’t bloodthirsty. Just enthusiastic. More experimental than anything else. And half out of my mind on drugs. Which meant things could have gotten out of hand…

I’d wanted to feel inside her. To consume her. But not in any way that would have me pulling a knife and actually cutting into her skin. At least I didn’t think so.

I glanced back down at my phone. Tugging off my gloves and scrolling through the only messages in my log.

ME:

Good morning, princess. Just checking in.

I couldn’t bring myself to use her pet name. Both out of self-preservation and shame.

ME:

I need you to respond, Marisela. Right now.

ME:

This isn’t a game. How are you feeling?

ME:

Are you there? A simple Y or N will suffice.

ME:

Send me a goddamn emoji for all I care. But send me something, Marisela.

I’d lost my cool with that last one. But it was too late now. There was no taking it back. And I honestly didn’t want to. If she was fucking with me, it was long past the point of being fun. Orfunny. Considering the extra time I’d spent to measure the sample’s telomeres did more to heighten my anxiety than dispel it.

This blood didn’t just belong to a female. It belonged to ayoungfemale. An adult female, forty or under. Likely under.

I swiped the glass slide from the stage clips and tossed it across the room. Watching it shatter as soon as it hit the tile floor. There wasn’t much else it could tell me without running a DNA test. And I didn’t have the time or patience for that.

No, I needed to know what happened last night. Which meant I was breaking the first rule of not getting caught. Returning to the scene of the crime.

25

ADRIAN

Istood back from the sidewalk. A crowd of spectators already flocking around the bright-yellow crime tape that separated the outside world from whatever was happening inside the towering gates of the Cruz family mansion. Except I knew what was happening, while the hordes of plain-clothed officers were still trying to figure it out.

What I didn’t see was a body bag. Nothing on a stretcher. No medical examiner either. Which was a good sign. I guess. It told me that I wasn’t completely incompetent when it came to cleaning up after myself. Though it still didn’t answer the question lingering in the back of my mind.

Where the fuck was Marisela?

Because she wasn’t standing next to her father as he shouted orders at the highest ranking official on the scene.And I refused to accept the fact that I would have hurt her, knowingly or not.

I ground a palm against my twitching orbital muscle, dropping my hand to my neck and popping the collar of my long black trench coat, and stepped away from the chaos. I needed to get out of here before I was spotted and someone started asking questions.

I could feel everyone’s eyes on me even as I knew no one was looking. It was paranoia. Another side effect of the drugs still in my system. Drugs that weren’t metabolizing as quickly as they should have, and I’d yet to figure out why that was either.

By the time I’d made it back to my room, John was waiting for me. His hands clasped behind his back as he eyed the sparse space like it held anything of interest to him. It didn’t. It was just his way of feeling superior. Because he had more than I had and I didn’t even have this, seeing as everything I owned belonged to my father. And Tate.

“There you are,” John grumbled as he pivoted on his heel to face me.

“Here I am,” I parroted as I shrugged out of my jacket, shaking out the wrinkles in the fabric as I set it gingerly on the hook to my left. I might not have had much to my name, but at least I took care of it. Unlike the fucker in front of me who liked to toss aside the gadgets in his collection every time something newer and shinier came along.

John raised a challenging brow, meant to caution me, before he took another step forward. “Grab your bag and achange of scrubs. You have twenty minutes to meet me in the car.”

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