Page 110 of Hard Heart

Me

Hard to say for sure with most of his face missing, but the coat and hair remind me of a man I saw in the cemetery near Ruby’s grave. P.S. You’re still a bunch of arseholes.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have included that last part, but I’d drunk half a bottle of wine in a vain attempt to knock myself out. And they deserved it. They’d stolen a freaking body. Plus someone—Jessalyn, by most accounts—had blasted so many bullets through the blond man’s face that there was little left to identify. Justin had been released from jail, which was probably justified under the circumstances, but I felt a tiny bit bitter that Jessalyn had her man back while mine was still sleeping on a narrow bunk in a concrete box.

Levi had been predictably incredulous about the whole situation when I’d told him the details, and I doubted he was getting much shuteye either. I was worrying about his safety; he was worrying about mine.

If only I’d realised our fears were misdirected.

If only I’d realised how truly depraved these people were.

But I didn’t understand what was at stake.

No, I turned onto my side, put the pillow over my head, and fell into a restless slumber.

CHAPTER 33

LEVI

Sera didn’t look great.

Not objectively speaking—she’d always be beautiful in Levi’s eyes—but comparatively. The dark circles under her eyes said she hadn’t been getting much sleep, and Levi imagined he didn’t look much better. Between Diesel’s snoring, an art order from a woman who had sixteen chihuahuas, and the news coming out of Greenway Park, Virginia, he’d spent most of his nights awake.

Sera had been keeping him updated, but she couldn’t go into detail on the phone. Plus Marnie was watching the news bulletins in the break room, and she’d tell him of any developments when she came to collect the dog paintings. With every new snippet of information, he thought, What have I done?

Four people were dead.

Okay, two of them arguably deserved it, but Amie Carlson had been an innocent bystander. And Ruby… Oh, Ruby, what did you do?

Sera set her legal pad on the table and slipped off her shoes.

“Nice pedicure,” Levi said.

“Heidi did it. She has one of those beauty box subscriptions, and it came with nail polish this month. Plus I didn’t want to give you a foot job with crusty toes, so…”

She settled back as he worked the tension out of her arch, and more than anything, he wanted to do this in their own place, not a brutalist meeting room with the ambience of a fallout shelter. But for now, this was the only touch they could share.

“Your toes are perfect, much like the rest of you.”

She blushed rose pink. “How are you feeling?”

His side was still sore—he wouldn’t be doing sit-ups any time soon—and every time he looked in the stainless-steel mirror by the showers, the jagged scar on his neck reminded him how close he’d come to meeting his maker. But nothing was infected, and the docs expected him to make a reasonable recovery in time.

“Better now that you’re here. Tell me what happened.”

She started with Grey’s sneak ambush at the Justice Project, the unredacted version this time, and moved on to her panic attack. Anger surged through Levi’s veins, but that was quickly followed by helplessness. He should have been there to shield her from Jerry’s games. He should have been there to protect her.

“Don’t meet with them again.”

“Jerry messaged today and said we need to talk—at least, I assume it was her because the message was signed with a J—and I don’t have much of a choice. She has information that we want. But I’ll be better prepared this time.”

“I wish we’d never started this.”

“A part of me feels the same, but what was the other option? For whoever killed Ruby to get away with it? Goodness knows what other crimes they’ve committed over the past decade. They’re organised, they’re ruthless, and they’re well-funded. Ari said they paid Amie Carlson a hundred bucks a month to monitor Justin for seven years.”

“Why the hell would they do that?”

“I guess so they could strike when they needed to? They also pretended they were working for your dad.”