Death.
I hadn’t really thought about what it meant up until now. Yes, I’d lost both sets of grandparents over the years, but all four had lived incredible lives. This was entirely different.
I’d never experienced such hopelessness, the sadness overwhelming. While there was a chance the body in the morgue didn’t belong to my sister, I’d mentally prepared myself for the worst.
What other choice did I have?
The rumble of the car’s engine added to the extreme nausea. My brain remained foggy, still trying to accept there were such horrible people in this world.
“How are you holding up?” Kendrick’s voice was as soothing as it had been when he’d shared the news. After that, I hadn’t heard a word for at least thirty minutes, sobbing uncontrollably the entire time.
“I’m fine.” A lie. A big, bad, bold lie. I was lost, the deep ache leaving bile in my throat and a huge crater in my heart. “What if it’s her?”
“Then we double down on our efforts.”
“What if you can’t catch them?”
“We will, baby. We will. Are you certain you want to do this?”
“I have to, Kendrick. My mother and father won’t be able to handle it. Briana is my sister. You should have heard Daddy on the phone. He was so anxious.”
“I confirmed that they arrived at the safehouse.”
Exhaling, I nodded. “Thank God. Will they be safe there?”
“Nothing a couple strapping Marines can’t handle. Ruger is already working with your father. With any luck, they’ll hack the system.”
“Then what? Is this about identities or something else?”
I’d be damned if his grin wasn’t positively evil. “It’s also about freezing their accounts.”
“And just what do you do with all that money?” I asked.
His shrug was just as full of mischief as the look on his face. “Rob from the rich to pay the poor?”
He swung his head in my direction while making a turn.
“That’s a little too Robin Hood, but perhaps something similar.” While my statement was true, I was curious as to his intentions.
“Like I said, I’m no real hero.”
Since Franklin, I’d suffered in silence for what I’d endured. Even though my father had eventually learned of our indiscretion through use of blackmail, the subject had been off limits. That had kept me in a small vacuum of my own, pretending that I no longer needed a man in my life or hungered for the roughest edges of sex. The cravings had defied the good girl inside of me.Somehow, I’d managed to shove aside the dark yearning, finding fulfillment in vibrators and kinky stories instead.
Only in the last few days had I been forced to understand my intentions at avoiding the very sinful intimacy had been a shallow attempt at satisfaction.
The moment Kendrick had touched me, the intensity of my longing had been brought to the surface.
The truth was that I’d hungered for acts of roughness, embarrassed given what I’d experienced with Franklin. The yin and yang of being with Kendrick wasn’t conventional, the two sides of him both forced by circumstances and by an awakening of his own. How cathartic and perhaps a telling statement of the darkness residing in me that I found him even more attractive because of what he was willing to do.
For me.
For other victims.
For justice.
When he reached for my hand, I almost broke down. He had a way of getting to me without saying a single word. And I was a freaking mess. “But I will tell you this. If my sister was murdered, there isn’t a single person on this earth who can stop me from bringing her and the other women justice. Even you. Do you hear me? Do you?”
If the man believed he was going to control me, he was out of his freaking mind. My glare was harsher than necessary, but the humming vibrations coursing through every muscle as well as the sheer volume of adrenaline had me swaying on a sharp, steep precipice.
