Mila and I exchange a glance, and I see it in her eyes that she’s barely holding it together. Her fingers tremble as she goes to open her door, but I reach across to stop her.
“Wait until he says it’s clear.”
We watch through the window as Kieran walks up the steps and pulls out a key.
I find myself holding my breath as I watch him disappear inside to check the coast is clear, but when he doesn’t come back after a few minutes, I know something is wrong.
I’m out of the car and sprinting across the street in an instant, with Mila right behind me.
“Fuck!” The word rips through the night like a gunshot.
“Kieran?” I yell, my heart already pounding as I race up the front steps.
“Stay the fuck back,” he barks from inside the doorway, but I ignore him.
The second I step foot in the house and the smell of blood hits my nose, I stumble backward right into Mila.
The interior of the house is dimly lit, with shadows stretching across the walls from the single lamp on the edge of a console table. It’s so dim that at first, I couldn’t see the blood spattered on the walls or the obvious man lying dead in the center of the floor, his throat completely missing.
“Oh, my God.” My hand clamps over my mouth to stop myself from throwing up.
Kieran turns and tries to force me back, but it’s too late. I’ve already seen too much, and from the sound of Mila’s sudden scream, she’s seen it too.
“Don’t look,” I spin around and try to push her back onto the street.
But Mila shakes her head, firmly planting her feet as her eyes lock on something over my shoulder.
“What?”
I turn slowly, my eyes following the splatters of blood along the walls. There’s so much that it almost doesn’t look real. But as I look up at the top of the staircase, I notice another body—a woman this time—slumped against the wall at the very top, her head tilted at an unnatural angle.
Her brown hair is matted with blood, and her hands are stained red as if she tried to fight back.
But she lost.
They both did.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” Mila’s body shakes violently.
“I told you to wait in the car.” Kieran’s dark eyes are wild as he looks from me to Mila.
“I thought you were in trouble. What the hell happened? How did they know we were coming?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out.”
Chapter Thirty-One
RONAN
My gun is drawn,and every nerve in my body is on high alert as I sweep through Mila’s apartment. Thankfully, it’s small, so there are very few places for anyone to hide, and from the looks of it, whoever was here is long gone.
If I didn’t know there was an intruder, it would look like any other twenty-something girl's apartment. Enough mess to indicate someone lives here, but not enough to suggest the place has been ransacked.
The door hasn’t been forced open, so either Mila forgot to lock it as she thought or whoever was here knew how to get in without making a sound.
Were they looking for something?
My first thought is Finn. Was he looking for Max’s laptop to erase the footage of him shooting him dead? It’s a possibility… But then again, no one knew about the hidden cameras except for Max, and now Mila.
