“Was…with S-Simone.” Harry’s lashes fell. “He…pulled her…”
“We’re leaving, now,” the ambulance driver barked from the front.
“I’m staying with him.” Jezebel pushed Ryan. “You go find Simone. You find Konstantin. You take that bastard down, you understand me?”
He was already leaping from the ambulance. He cleared it right before another attendant slammed the rear doors shut.
Charlotte rushed toward him, with her phone held near her ear.
The ambulance roared away.
“We have a body!” Charlotte cried.
Not Simone. Not?—
“Frederick Bradwin was just found in his bed. Stabbed multiple times. Someone tossed covers over him and left the guy there.” She shook her head in disgust.
“That someone is Hugo Thomas.” He was sure of it. “Get the ME to compare the wounds Frederick has to the knife we retrieved from Hugo.” Ryan whirled and stared hard at the bloody scene.
Harry’s injuries told him that the poor guy had been hit by a car. There were no skid marks in the area, so the vehicle hadn’t slowed. The hit had been intentional. No cameras on this street. No witnesses left behind.
Why had Harry been out there? Had he perhaps seen Simone and Logan? And he’d been chasing after them? Only to get hit by Konstantin’s vehicle when the prick came to collect Simone and Logan?
Ryan kept replaying the scene from the suite in his head, and certain things that Logan had said took on all new meaning now for him.
Like when Logan had told him… “You need to tell me to fuck off. You need to beat the hell out of me and whisk Simone away. Seriously, do it.”
Oh, but Ryan wished he’d beaten the hell out of Logan Sterling when he’d had the chance. But he’d truly believed Logan cared for Simone. Logan and Simone had known each other since they were children. They’d grown up together, with Logan’s grandmother taking care of them both.
Yet in the suite, Logan had told Ryan and Simone, “I am not trustworthy. Ask anyone.”
He remembered that Simone had just rolled her eyes in response. “You know I trust you with my life.”
And Logan, he’d just said?—
“Ryan, what are the orders?” Charlotte asked. Jamar wasn’t with her. He’d taken Hugo to a secure holding.
“Don’t,” he whispered.
“What?” She lowered her phone. “Don’t what?”
When Simone had said that she trusted Logan with her life, he’d told her… “Don’t.” The man had been telling them that he was working with Konstantin. The truth had been right there. “He was trying to make us understand.” Ryan rubbed his forehead. “He asked about the egg. Wanted to know if it was stashed in the suite’s safe.”
“I am really lost,” Charlotte informed him. “Trying to keep up, truly trying, but you’re going to have to tell me more.”
His gaze collided with hers.
“The body at the country estate is being transported.” She nodded. “Crime scene techs will document everything, but we are back to having no clue where Konstantin took Simone. His phone has gone dark, as in, just utterly vanished. Tracing them that way isn’t going to be possible. And her phone is a dead end.”
Konstantin would have known to ditch his phone so he could not be traced.
As for Simone’s phone, had it deliberately been crushed? Or had she accidentally dropped it when she’d been trying to help Harry?
How could Logan do this to her?
Family.
Family.
