No phone.
What the…
My stomach drops as I take a few steps toward the front room where the Christmas tree and the dark fireplace are. Only the fireplace isn’t dark anymore, and while I didn’t absent-mindedly drop my phone on thecouch instead of the table, that doesn’t mean the couch is empty.
It isn’t.
Because there he is. Patrick North is sitting on the couch, fully dressed in the same sweater and jeans he’d been wearing before he went into the shower. He has an ankle propped on his thigh, leaning back into the furniture, watching me with the sort of smile a cat wears after it spies a mouse.
Me. I’m the fucking mouse.
SEVEN
LIPS
NOELLE
He glances over when he hears my slight gasp, his expression pleased. “There you are. I’ve been waiting for you.”
I’m sure he has. “Where’s my purse?”
He doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he gestures with an open hand toward the mahogany coffee table in front of the couch. Like the kitchen, there are two glasses set out on top of it. Unlike the kitchen, they’re both filled with a deep-red, almost purple-colored liquid.
“Come in. Sit with me. Look, I poured us a drink.”
Remembering the article that announced Charles Dutton’s death, I stare at them like they might be poisoned.
“Not cranberry,” Patrick adds smoothly, as though that’s what I’m worried about. Which, fair… I normally would be when I saw a drink that color, but now that I know what he’s capable of? That he’s poisoned before? Yeah… I have bigger concerns, including just how the fuck he knows that I hate anything cranberry. “I wouldn’t do that to you, Starling. It’s from a bottle of red I found in one of the cabinets.”
He knows. He knows about Evan and Marcus, Dean and Grant… he knows about Charles. He knows about cranberry.
Heknows,and I don’t know how.
I don’t know who this man is, why he’s here, and why he’s decided to torment me for another Christmas. I want to escape, but I can’t, and that smug look is all I need to accuse him again: “You took my things.”
“I secured them,” he corrects, as if this is a matter of semantics. “You were upset.”
“I was leaving.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “And that doesn’t quite work for me. If the snow can’t keep you here with me, then I will have to take care of that myself.”
Who does he think he is? “You don’t get to decide?—”
“No,” he says, “but I will make sure you don’t hurt yourself running into the aftermath of a blizzard when it’s dark out.”
I gape at him. “By stealing my keys?”
“You can have them back when we’re done here,” Patrick says.
A spark of hope fills my chest.When we’re done here… that implies that, whatever he wants, if I give it to him, he’ll leave me alone. I don’t think I’m one of his targets. If those leaves on his shoulder mean that he’s killed for his Family, and I’ve had nothing to do with any of the mafias in Springfield, I don’t think he’s here to kill me. If he was, he’s had plenty of opportunities over the last twenty-four hours.
No. He wants something else, and I’m not sure if I want to hear this.
Trying my best to look brave and defiant, I cross my arms over my chest and snap, “You can’t keep me here.”
He considers me for a moment, gaze steady.
“I can,” he says simply. “But I’d rather you sit. Talk to me. Listen.”
