Page 91 of Beautiful Exile

“But?” I asked.

One corner of Anson’s mouth tugged up the barest amount as if he was trying to smile but couldn’t quite get there. “Whoever was pulling the strings back then stayed under the radar. We still have no clue who ordered the hit or who the second person in that hallway was. There are no phone records, no emails. We have no idea how they were communicating.”

I knew all that. “If there’s nothing, and I obviously haven’t remembered a damn thing, why would someone risk trying to hurt me now?”

“Arden, whoever had your parents killed uses people like pawns to get what they want. And they were smart enough to make it so we couldn’t trace anything back to them. Even the few cases we know your dad threw don’t have a common thread.”

The reminder of what my dad had done felt like a stinging slap. He had thrown away his purpose and family for just a little bitmore.

Anson pressed on. “Someone like that won’t want any loose threads. They won’t want to take that risk. They’ll have been looking for you this whole time. And the kinds of people someone like that would hire for this type of work? Their brains don’t process empathy the same way others do. Some simply disassociate from the fact that they’re taking a human life. But others? They get joy from it and the hunt. Andthosepeople would play with you before they killed you. Just because it makes it more fun.”

32

ARDEN

Gray clouds rolled in,right along with a clap of thunder. It was the kind of stormy sky that sometimes meant rain and other times didn’t. Which meant it was also the type that held the greatest risk of forest fire. As if there weren’t enough threats in our midst.

Linc shoved a broken frame into a trash bag with enough force that it should’ve gone right through the heavy-duty plastic. He hadn’t asked if he could help clean this time; he’d simply started stomping around, muttering to himself as he picked up detritus.

“You wanna talk about it?” I asked as I wiped the paste from the walls. It had cleaned a lot of the blood, but I would still need to paint them. Even then, I wondered if they’d ever be blood-free in my mind.

Linc picked up what looked like pieces of paintbrushes. “He shouldn’t have told you that.”

The statement had surprise lighting through me. “Who shouldn’t have told me what?”

Linc straightened, finally turning his supremely pissed-off face tome. “Anson. Telling you there could be some psycho killer out there plotting your murder but deciding he wants to play with you first.”

“Whether he told me or not wouldn’t make the possibility any less true.”

“But it would make you less fucking terrified,” he spat.

“Linc,” I said quietly. “Do I look like I’m cowering in a corner?”

His hazel eyes burned brighter. “You fight through the fear. You always have.”

Damn him. He was right. I shoved the feelings down and soldiered on. But I knew something else, too. “When I have all the facts, it helps somehow. If I can name all the possibilities, it takes away some of the power.” I held up my gloved hands, ticking off the options on my fingers. “One, unhinged hitman with a thing for the drama. Two, spoiled rich boy with too much time on his hands. Three, some unknown person I cut off in traffic, and they decided I was the spawn of Satan.”

“It’s not funny,” Linc growled. A loud clap of thunder sounded as the sky darkened even more.

I pulled off the gloves and laid them over my bucket. “I know it’s your instinct to shield the people you care about, but I don’t want to be kept from the truth. The last time someone tried to do that, my whole world got ripped apart.”

For a moment, I thought Linc might fight me and hold tight to the urge to shield me from everything, even truths I needed to know. But then he exhaled, his shoulders sagging in a mixture of defeat and understanding. He dropped the bag, not saying anything. He simply wrapped me in his arms and held on.

Maybe nothing needed to be said. Because Linc couldn’t fix this, no matter how much he wanted to. He kept those strong arms around me as thunder rolled outside. Then, finally, his lips teased my hair as he whispered, “I’m sorry.”

I held him tighter, my hands fisting in his shirt. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

Linc pulled back, searching my face. “I don’t have a right to try to keep information from you. No one does.”

“No. But I understand why you’d want to. I’d probably want the same if I were in your shoes.”

Linc lifted a hand, his callused thumb skating across my jaw. “Trace’s right. You’ve become agreeable.”

I shoved at his chest, a laugh slipping free. “You all suck.”

Linc grinned as he released me. “What do you think? More rage-cleaning, or are you ready for a break?”

I’d lost some of my mad over the past few hours as the sun sank lower in the late-afternoon sky. It was more a numbed sadness now. But as I looked around the room, I knew one thing. “I want every single thing that he touched in here tossed.”

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