“Bring her food,” I said as Dee headed out the front door with a thud.
Mav tilted his head. “You must be faltering if that’s the case.”
“What are you, Dante? Shut up and do as you’re told.”
“Axton.”
I cleared my throat. “I can’t deny what’s in front of me, and it’s our fault for not considering it.”
He shook his head. “You couldn’t have possibly—”
I turned away from him and rolled my shoulders back. “Take her some food and make sure she eats. We need to start covering our asses, just in case.”
And as I headed for the stairs, venturing up to my bedroom, I kept a lid on it just long enough. Long enough to get into my room. Long enough to rush into the bathroom. Long enough to get the water running to cover up the sound of my gagging and heaving before I unleashed the contents of my stomach into the bathroom sink. Because if I was beating on an innocent woman for information she didn’t have, I wasn’t sure I’d ever forgive myself.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever be deserving of it.
3
DANTE
The roar of my bike’s engine vibrated between my legs as I raced down the highway. Every turn I made was met with the sound of that lusciously thick dossier I had on our woman. The papers flopped against the inner walls of my bike’s back compartment.Thwip, thwip. Thwip, thwip.It reminded me of all the research we had done. The pictures I had taken. The information I had pulled and teased from our colleagues and connections in town, as well as in the surrounding areas. With every flop of that folder as I crested corners and roared over peaks and valleys, I was haunted by our mistake. Even with all the stakeouts I had completed to line all of this up, and even with all of the payouts for information, and even with all of the dancing around we had to do at the hospital to get birth records…
Only for us to snag the wrong fucking girl.
“Come on, go faster,” I grumbled as I soared through a yellow light.
So many facts raced through my mind. Her birth date. The layout of the hospital where she had been born. Her love of ranged rifles and her backup knives on her hips, just in case. For fuck’s sake, we had a picture of the woman, decked out in an all-black, skin-tight suit with heels as high as God himself. Even down to that crooked-ass smile that made her face seem lopsided like a goddamn melted cake! It was all right there, from her doe eyes that tracked her victims from the darkness all the way down to those thick-thighed legs of hers that stalked her prey for fun. A lonely, solitary woman, with no one to leverage over her head because she cared about no one and nothing.
We had tracked a psychopath.
And yet, the woman we had in our basement was anything but.
“Hey, hey!” Roger said as I pulled my bike into the parking space next to his rust bucket of a truck. “Everything okay? You need something for one of your guys? Because I’m just on my lunch break and—”
I quickly killed the engine. “Just the male nurse I was looking for.”
His smile quickly faded. “Is something really wrong?”
I leaned back and slid my hands into my pockets, fiddling with the small, foldable knives I kept inside of them. How did I want to approach this? Did I want to slit his throat and leave him choking in his own blood? Or did I want to give out one of those rare second chances I wasn’t very good at giving?
But Roger backed up. “Oh, no.”
I moved fluidly, sliding off the back of my bike and slipping my hands out of my pockets. “We really need to talk, Roger.”
He shook his head, raising his hands in mock surrender. “I gave you everything you needed. I swear. Everything we had on that girl is in the files that I gave you.”
I put my kickstand down before sliding my hands out of my pockets. “I just want to walk.”
He watched me crack my knuckles. “I just got off a double shift. I’m exhausted, Dante. And, for what it’s worth, you and your guys never look like you come in peace. Just tell me what you want so I can go home and sleep.”
“This won’t take long,” I said as I stood mere inches away from his body. “Just got a few questions.”
He sighed, tilting his head back to keep me in view, like most people around me had to. “You and I both know it’s never just a few questions.”
I tilted my head. “And the longer you fight, the longer we’ll be here.”
He groaned, slamming his car door closed. “What do you want now?”
