“I’ll go with you. I don’t want you out on the ice alone.”
“The only reason Jesse fell through was because that asshole busted a hole in it. It’ll be fine,” Liam assures me. “I’m going to walk out fifteen feet, dig a little in the snow, and turn back around. Just stay here.”
“Okay,” I say. “Just don’t go far. This snow is making it hard to see.”
“It’s a pond, my love. Not an ocean. I won’t get lost.”
I watch him go, the snow being kicked up by the wind consuming him almost immediately, and my unease grows. I don’t know whether it’s the situation as a whole or that this Whitaker person clearly has been around for years manipulating people and fucking up lives, but I feel unsettled and hurry after Liam. I don’t get very far before I see Liam, who is doing as he said he would.
“What’s wrong?” Liam asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit. I catch up to him while he snaps some pictures of the necklace and ring.
“This will blow everything open, I promise,” he tells me.
“I know it will,” I say as I notice something a little past him. The ice really is quite solid and isn’t even cracking when I walk a few feet past him while the cold bites into me, even with warm clothes on.
“This weather is actually diabolical,” I decide.
“First time I’ve heard weather called diabolical.”
“Well, it really fucking is,” I say as a dark shape catches my eye. “Did you leave anything else out here?”
“No. What do you see?” he asks, bagging the ring and necklace before slipping them into his pants pocket.
“I don’t know… we’re in a fucking blizzard, but… is that another person?”
“Be careful,” Liam warns when I start toward it. “I watched the body all night waiting for him to come, and instead, he was out here? Did he have another one of his followers dump a body off?”
“Liam, if he dumped something off, you know there’s a reason he did it. Did he leave something on it? He said the body that belonged to Lacey’s boyfriend would have evidence pointing at Jesse.”
“Well, then he fucked himself with the picture. We now know he’s targeting Jesse, so we can play into that,” Liam says, following me as I continue toward the body and confirm that it really is missing its head.
“It’s likely him. Unless there’s another head to be found,” I announce. That’s when I notice the body is lying at an odd angle, like something has been wedged under it. I carefully push up the dead man’s coat to see what it is an instant before panic hits me.
“Liam, run,” I yell, but it’s too late.
The explosion rips through the air and the ice buckles beneath my feet. Pain tears into my side and I’m thrown forward, smashing into the edge of the ice before sinking down beneath the surface, enveloped by the icy darkness.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Liam
It all happens so quickly that I have no time to react before the world is dropping out from under me. As I hit the icy-cold water, all I can think of is Gabriel. He was closest to the blast, and I didn’t see what happened to him.
Desperately, I kick my feet, fighting to reach the surface, but when I break through, all I can see is the snow pelting my face while freezing water drips from my hair.
“Gabriel!” I shout, but my ears are ringing. Even my own voice sounds so distant. If he was yelling for me, I’m not sure I could even hear it, but it doesn’t stop me from shouting his name again and again.
Panic is eating at me while my waterlogged clothing threatens to pull me down, and I realize that if Gabriel was knocked out or injured, he’d have been pulled straight down to the bottom.
I fight to get my heavy jacket off before I dive back under, leaving the weight of it behind so I can freely move under the water, but I can see nothing as the cold tears into my limbs. I’mdisoriented but determined to find him. I have to find him. I have to…
This is because I taunted Whitaker. This is because I was so fucking cocky that he targeted us. He hurt my sweet Gabriel. He…
What if he took him from me?
What if I lost the only thing that makes life worth living?
