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I lace my fingers with his and grip his hand tightly and I take slow deep breaths.

I need him, his touch, his voice.

Anything to get me out of those memories.

“From there,” Max continues, looking increasingly guilty. “They started talking about fantasies of hurting the two of you — what they would do, how they could inflict the most damage and how to get away with it.”

“So, he manipulated her, too?”

Fuck.

I hate that.

Max shakes his head, firm, as his lips flatten. “No. I want to be very clear about this. Leigh-Ann was fully in control of her actions and she knew what she was doing. Did Derek encourage her rage for Dalton and by extension, you? Yes, absolutely.”

“But she knew what she was doing?” I ask and Max nods, steel in his gaze.

“Yes. Derek moved them like pieces on a chess board but in completely different ways. Owen was heartbroken and duped. Leigh-Ann was angry and pointed in the right direction, if that makes sense.”

Dalton’s foot starts shaking at the end of the bed and his grip on my hand tightens slightly. “And where the hell is Derek now?”

Max stares at the folder in his hand and sighs. “This is the part you’re not going to like, man… we don’t know.”

Dalton jerks up in the bed, pulling me with him, and I let out a squeak of pain. He glances back at me, his face full of remorse before he gently lowers me back to the bed and pulls his arm from behind my back.

“What the fuck do you mean, you don’t know?”

Max shakes his head. “We got a search warrant and busted down his door but Derek LaBeouf is in the wind.”

Oh my god.

He’s still out there.

He could still be coming after us.

“We did find this though,” Max says as he opens the folder and pulls out several photos, laying them on the table. Dalton scoops them up and lays back into the bed so I can see them too.

The first photo shows a dark wood table covered in maps and papers. There is also a small device off to one side and next to it is a cell phone. Dalton flips to the next photo and I suck in a breath.

My stomach flips.

Pinned to the wall above the table are photos. At the top is a large photo of Dalton with a red circle around him. Under that are surveillance photos — me at the bakery, Dalton out to dinner with Calvin, Dalton and I at the taco truck for our first date, Leigh-Ann out shopping.

Jesus Christ.

He was watching all of us.

“What the fuck is this?” I ask, the tone of my voice revealing the depth of the horror I feel echoing through my body at the moment.

“That,” Max says, pointing to the photos with a look in his eye that I can’t quite decipher. “Is Derek’s chess board. It seems like he started planning this shit as soon as the Devils rescued Raya from him. Maybe before, honestly.”

“Okay, but where the hell is he?” Dalton asks again, his hand shaking as he holds the photo in front of us.

“As far as we can tell, he skipped town. He put in for a leave of absence at work; his cell phone was left at the house as well as the tracker y’all put on his vehicle. And his safe was cleaned out.”

What the fuck?

Where the hell is he going?