My hands shook at my sides, my gut twisting. I clamped my eyes shut—not that it did any good. The rumors had been true. Was that who she’d gone to meet the night she disappeared? Had she lied to me this entire time?
A phone on the nightstand began to buzz, and Fitzgerald’s hairy arm reached over to pick it up and hand it to my sister. “Hello? … Are you sure you don’t want to reschedule?… Just some harmless fun… I see… Well, hopefully we’ll find you something else soon.”
She frowned and hung up the phone.
“Another one?” Aurora asked, looking at my sister with something akin to genuine concern.
“Yeah.”
“Do you want me to talk to Sandra?” Fitz offered, sitting upright and putting his watch on, his wife still straddling my sister.
It was all so casual, like this was a normal occurrence.
My gut churned, acid boiling up my throat.
“If anyone is going to talk to her, it should be me. I’m her coveness.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Hazel heaved a sigh. “They haven’t even cared that the HOA has emailed them multiple times. I’ll figure something out.”
The nursery slammed back into view, but the vision of my sister and our former coveness was etched into my mind.
“You okay?” Hazel asked, careful not to touch me again.
“No,” I said, still shaking from the vision. “Was something going on between you and the Wellses?”
My sister’s face drained of all its color, then she turned on her heels, her footsteps echoing off the walls until her bedroom doorsnickedshut.
Chapter13
Lynx
After three hours of looking over case files solo, the door swung open. Saros passed me on the bed and went straight into the bathroom.
“What happened back there?” I called to him, focused on the river of blue and red mixing into purple following each of his steps. “Where have you been?”
He washed his hands twice, then walked over to the board, staring at the orbs hovering there, brows furrowed. Pulling the case file out of his pocket, he shook it a few times until it was full size. Then he climbed into the bed and propped his feet up, reaching over to the nightstand for his glasses. Always a favorite look of mine.
If he thought I was just going to let it go, he knew better than that. There was only so much breathing room in Atlas’s office with all the suffocating red smoke blanketing it. I was grateful to get out of there—until I had a moment to wonder what would have them both at odds.
I pivoted my body, sitting cross-legged and making it very apparent I was staring at him. He lifted the paper higher, as if to block me from view. Placing my fingertips on the edge, I lowered the sheet until his eyes met mine. His lips drew into a frown. “You going to tell me what happened or make me play the guessing game?”
A frustrated groan later, he’d put the paper down and turned to face me. “Oakley came by Luna’s today as I was closing up. She was pissed I hadn’t visited her since I’d gotten back, and we argued.”
“Okay…” I said, not sure where this was going. “What does that have to do with Atlas?”
Saros’s hands scraped his jeans, gaze lowered, anxiety bubbling up around him in pale-green pops. “He caught us…making up.”
I couldn’t stifle my smirk. “Making up how?”
His green eyes snapped to mine and he swallowed hard. “With my tongue twisted around her clit.”
“So basically, you’re lucky not to be a dead man?” I chuckled, not having to imagine too hard how horrible that must have been. Even Saros managed a huffed laugh at his own survival. “What did Oakley do?”
His lips flatlined. “She came.”
“I feel like I’m missing pieces of the story here,” I said, tilting my head, waiting for more of an explanation before I tried to talk him off whatever ledge he’d found himself on. The temptation to touch him, to calm him with my Empathy, was near irresistible, but I knew how much he hated that. So instead, I twiddled my fingers in my lap.
“We’d agreed she would warn me. It happened so quickly. One second she was coming on my tongue and the next she said he’d seen us.” He shrugged, as if it would make the story less shocking if he pretended it was an everyday occurrence to get caught with your tongue in someone’s cauldron. “Then I got the text about the meeting and… Well, you were there for that.”
