“Think Kaprolov is helping Todd?” Remy asked.
I scrubbed at my face, fighting the exhaustion that had been trying to claim my body in the three days since Todd had taken Maeve. “At the very least, he’s giving Todd someplace to crash. The Moscow angle is too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence.”
I stood to pace the room. Beyond the apartment’s windows, Bucharest was waking up, the distant sound of car horns and sirens drifting from the streets below, pedestrians huddled in coats hurrying down the sidewalks like ants on their way to a picnic.
I forced myself to focus on the logistics of getting Maeve out of a fucking castle. Logistics were easier than thinking about Maeve, than wondering if she was scared or hurt or worse.
I wouldn’t let myself think about that.
She was out there, just a couple hundred miles away. We would get her back. We had to because I didn’t think my heart would keep beating without her.
A few months ago, it wouldn’t have mattered whether my heart kept beating. Cassie was taken care of whether I was aliveor not, and I’d been passing time, whiling my life away in a series of pleasure hits that made me feel alive: eating, hunting, fucking, killing.
But it had been a shadow of a life. I knew that now.
I knew that because Maeve had descended into our lives like some kind of dark angel, carrying a gun, a planet-sized attitude, and a smile that stopped my heart. And then, all at once, my life had looked completely different, like one of those old black-and-white movies that were re-released, newly colored with modern technology.
I wanted to stay alive because I wanted more of Maeve’s attitude, more of her smile. And there was something else, something I hadn’t even realized until she’d been taken: I wanted to see what would happen next in my life with her in it.
Because for the first time, I saw a future that might include more than just the same thing day after day, a future that might just hold all the things I hadn’t dared to want: a home and family of my own.
Purpose.
Fuckinglove.
It was just a glimpse, a shimmer on the horizon. But it was there, and I fucking wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.
But it didn’t exist without Maeve. She was the one who’d brought it to life.
It didn’t work without her.
Poe finally spoke. “So we go in, we get her out.”
“Obviously,” Remy said.
“We need to do it fast,” I said. “Tonight.”
“Obviously,” Remy said again.
I stood. “Then what are we waiting for?”
7
MAEVE
No oneeven knows where you are.
Ethan Todd’s words burrowed into my psyche like a rabid mole in the hours after he left my cell. I’d been sure the Butchers would come for me, but now I couldn’t help wondering if I’d been naive.
There was a big blank spot in my memory from the time I lost consciousness outside the loft until I woke up in the underground cell, but in the moment before everything had gone black, Todd had mentioned a plane.
We crossed an ocean to get here.
Todd hadn’t locked me up in some compound in the mountains surrounding Blackwell Falls — he’d taken me somewhere far, far away.
What if the Butchers couldn’t find me?
… in a few days, you’ll be another dumb bitch fucking rich guys for money.
