Page 47 of Dark Knight

Not seeing anything else worth noting, I moved toward her slowly so I didn't startle her. I squatted in front of her, voice soft as I said, "Evie, it's Hud. Can you look at me?"

Her head jerked up at the sound of my voice, and her eyes went wide. Not just wide with surprise, but wide from shock as well, which was something her pale skin and rapid breathing could attest to.

"Hud. Th–there’s–there’s–"

"I know. I saw." I cut her off before she started to talk herself into another panic attack. "We're going to get you out of here and get you to safety. Don't worry. Are you hurt?"

"No," she mumbled.

When I looked at her, I realized there was blood on her hands, probably from her opening the locker, and that's what had smeared over her face. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t any fresh blood coming from anywhere on her, which was a relief.

"I'm just going to text a couple of people, okay? I'll be right here, though." I slid my phone from my pocket and messaged the two other members of our team that were outside, telling them to send one to the locker rooms and for the other to drive the car around to the back exit. I also texted Dina, asking her to come back to the locker rooms as well. As much as I didn’t want this kind of thing on my phone I took a couple of photos for evidence.

I knew I should call Dylan, but I didn't. I didn't want to face the anger I knew he would be feeling, not over the phone. I'd rather see the fury in person, be able to gauge how reckless he might be instead of him hiding it from me. Whether or not he wanted to admit it, Dylan was attached to this slip of a woman.

Evie ran into our lives buck naked and took them over with just a few bats of her eyelashes. How that managed to happen, I wasn't entirely sure, but I knew that Dylan and I were both well under her control.

Not that she seemed to realize it.

The door burst open, and Evie screamed.

"It's just Ty." I dropped to the ground and pulled her to my chest, cradling her against me as I rubbed soothing circles on her back. This whole thing had gone tits up.

"Jared's pulling the car around now." Ty's voice was quiet as he took in the scene before him.

I nodded in response before I said, "Give me your jacket."

He did as I asked without question, and I wrapped Evie in the jacket, shielding her body from view. I didn’t care that she had just been dancing in front of a crowd of strangers. There was something very different from standing up there and doing your own thing to being vulnerable and carried in somebody's arms while you had a panic attack.

I could have given her my own jacket. But honestly, I didn't want to let go of her long enough for me to take the jacket off and wrap her up in it.

Dina appeared a moment later, her eyes going wide as she took in the scene in the locker room. Before she could speak, I said, "Don't let anybody touch this locker. I am dead serious." I paused and held her gaze so she knew exactly how pissed I'd be if that order was disobeyed. "Ty is going to stay here. He's going to watch it, and I'm going to send somebody to do some analysis on whatever the fuck this is."

I really hoped it wasn't a human heart and blood, but I couldn't rule that out. Not yet, at least. The heart looked fairly human, but there was a good chance it could be a pig's heart.

How somebody would randomly know that Evie would be in the club today and have a bucket of blood and a pig's heart on hand I didn't know. I wasn't ready to rule anything out at this point.

The worst case scenario was the first that came to mind, though. There could be a body around here somewhere that was missing most of its blood and its heart. If that was the case, there wasn't a chance in hell I'd tell Evie about it. The last thing she needed was to feel responsible for the death of a person, so I had to hold to the fact that it could be a pig's heart. I didn't actually know anybody that could actually analyze what kind of blood and heart it was, but I knew Theo would.

"I have to get her back and get her safe and cleaned up. Ty, you're on guard. Do you know why she was pulled down from the stage?" I looked between him and Dina.

"Someone kept touching her, and she was starting to panic. One of the bartenders saw it and let me know with a whistle. By the time I got there, I didn't see anybody suspicious around, but I could have missed them. The place is crowded tonight." Dina was as white as a sheet. Still, she was able to conduct business, which was partially why she was the manager of this club.

She could handle shit like this, as much as it sucked, and she was usually right about people as well. Dylan's plan was to try to draw the stalker out, and the plan may have worked a little too well. The fact that this place was busy was something we had both banked on and feared. If the club was busy, it was more likely that the stalker would try to make a move. On the flip side, the size of the crowd would also make narrowing down who the stalker was more difficult.

"I'll text you when I have more information," I said to Ty before pushing up on my feet and carrying Evie out. Before I was completely out of the door, I called over my shoulder to Dina, "Keep the rest of your girls safe tonight, yeah? I'm sure Dylan will want to talk to you."

She nodded, and I made my way down the hallway toward the back exit with Evie in my arms. A swift kick to the safety bar on the back door had it swinging open, and I got us through the door before it could close again.

Jared waited there with the car, just as I had instructed, which was a relief. At least something went right tonight. "Take us home as quickly as possible. I don't care how fast you have to go."

He nodded, though he just stood there staring at Evie for a moment. "Open the back seat," I snapped. Jared wasn't a high ranking member of our organization for a reason, and that was mainly because he was a little slow on the uptake.

Once the door was open, I slid into the car, gliding across the leather seat while still holding Evie. I didn't give a fuck about seat belts or anything like that right now. The way Evie clung to me was like she was drowning and I was her lifeline.

Neither of us wanted to let go of the other.

Jared slid behind the wheel and took off. He gunned it when he saw lights turning yellow so he could make it through and zipped between cars that were driving too slow. All the while, I murmured random shit to Evie. I said anything that I could think of to help calm her down.

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