Page 4 of Twisted Empire

He couldn’t mean…

“He’ll never put it all together,” Yvonne said pleadingly. “You’ve covered up the organ routes and the hospital records so well. We’ll just hold on to the girl until everyone’s thinking straight and realizes just how much is on the line, and everything will be fine.”

Doom’s Seed let out a huff. “It sounds like you’re having second thoughts about your choice to stick with me, Yvonne.”

“No. Of course not. I’m doing thisforyou. Less blood on your hands means fewer crimes the police might investigate, doesn’t it?”

He paused. “Fine. We’ll try your way for a day or two. But if it isn’t working outperfectly, we end this immediately. It’s enough of a mess already.”

“It’ll work. I swear. Thank you, darling.”

Yvonne’s voice had turned so simpering it’d have turned my stomach if my gut wasn’t already churning with queasiness. The footsteps moved away, and their voices faded again until I couldn’t hear them at all.

I slumped down on the floor, my spirits sinking. The weight of what I’d just discovered pressed down on my shoulders.

Organ routes and hospital records. A second chance Logan’s mom had bought for him. The operating table in the facility we’d discovered—the pills that corresponded with his transplant medication. We’d wondered what it all meant, the suspicion starting to emerge, but those comments brought the picture completely into focus.

Doom’s Seed was harvesting body parts and arranging illegal transplants—and Logan’s liver had been one of those illicit organs. I didn’t know why his mom would have felt the need to turn to a criminal for help, but every other part of the scenario made far too much sense.

That was how she’d met Doom’s Seed in the first place. And that was how my dad could have gotten involved. He’d seen something suspicious in those doctored records and started following the trail from there.

And that was why Doom’s Seed had ordered Dad’s death… just like he was on the verge of ordering mine and those of the Vigil guys as well.

Had Yvonne faked her death to be with this murderous asshole? What the hell had she been thinking?

I stared at the closet door in a gloomy daze. It didn’t really matter why she had. From what I’d heard, she didn’t hold anywhere near as much influence over her lover as she wanted to, even when it came to her son. Definitely not when it came to me. She’d barely bought any time at all before he slaughtered us too.

Was I even going to make it out of this apartment to tell the guys what I’d learned?

CHAPTERTWO

Beckett

“She grabbed her,” Logan said, pacing unceasingly as he repeated that part of his story. He raked his hand back through his short chestnut-brown hair. “My mom… she just took her. Held a fucking gun on her and took her.”

His voice echoed through the vacant guest house that my family hadn’t used in years—a house that shouldn’t have any obvious ties to the Storm. It’d been the closest nearby building where the Vigil guys and I could regroup without worrying about the police or Doom’s Seed’s people finding us.

We needed to find Maddie, and we couldn’t worry about anything else in the meantime.

Slade had managed to sit down on one of the armchairs in the dusty living room, but his knee bounced incessantly, the bright metal ankle of his prosthetic showing when his pantleg swayed. “Yourdeadmom. What the hell is going on here?”

Logan shook his head. “I haven’t seen the slightest reason to believe that she was still alive in the last eleven years. I never would have thought she’d leave us on purpose. I had no idea she was even capable of handling a gun. Damn it.” He aimed a kick at the baseboard, hard enough that it probably hurt his toes.

Dexter had been staring off into space as if processing everything from a distance, his normally alert green eyes gone hazy. Now, he glanced Logan’s way. “Are you sure it was your mom who came and grabbed Madelyn? It wasn’t just someone who looked like your mother?”

“It was her. One hundred percent. The way she talked to me…” Logan let out a ragged breath. “She told me she wasproudof me, for fuck’s sake, and then she yanked Maddie away from me. She told me I had to stop digging—she’s got to be involved with the people we’re investigating somehow. It doesn’t make sense!”

“We’ll figure it out,” I said, reaching for my phone. “Whatever else is going on, I’ll get my best people tracking that car. We’ll figure out where your mother took Maddie and get her back. Maybe Lindell will cough up some more information too.”

I didn’t have a lot of hope about that last possibility. We’d dropped off the local lieutenant who answered to Doom’s Seed with a bunch of my people so they could interrogate him at length. He’d have been too much baggage to drag around with us while we searched for Maddie. And I had the feeling he’d already coughed up as much as he’d be willing to—he’d choose death before saying more.

“Maddie still had her phone on her, right?” I said to Logan as I tapped my phone’s screen.

He nodded, and just a tiny bit of the tension wound tight inside me released. That was a reason to hope.

Of course, who knew what this woman who seemed to have risen from the dead had already done to Maddie? What her goals were? Why she’d intervened at all?

This whole situation had gotten far more complicated than I liked, and I had no idea how to untangle it when new snags rose up faster than we could work through the previous ones.

---