Page 139

I cross the room before I consciously decide to move. Gage’s free hand closes around mine the instant I reach him. His fingers are ice-cold, and he grips hard enough to grind my knuckles together. I squeeze back. Let it hurt.

Heller watches us from the wall. He’s painfully ordinary for someone I spent two weeks building into a monster. Gray temples. Lean. Bloody lip. A dark stain seeping through one sleeve.

“You the girlfriend?” he asks.

His gaze moves over me, slow and assessing. Our landlord used to observe me the same way when Mom was too drunk to notice, like he was measuring what he could take. My skin crawls. Even chained to a wall, Heller still regards people like they exist in relation to him.

“I’m the woman who found you.”

He wrinkles his nose. Good. Gage’s fingers tighten around mine.

Heller nods to Gage. “He needs me.” Beside me, Gage’s whole body turns to stone. Heller keeps going, gaining confidence from the silence. “Seventeen years he’s been waiting, right? I’m the only person alive who knows where the kid is buried.”

My stomach roils. Not because I didn’t already suspect Grady was dead. Because he says the kid.

Gage releases my hand. Very slowly. Oh. Heller notices it too, but he misunderstands what it means. “If he kills me,” Heller says, “he never gets his brother back.”

I set my tote on the workbench. “Interesting strategy.”

Both men stare at me. I unzip the bag, and Gage changes the moment I pull out the thick envelope.

“Princess.”

“You left in a hurry.”

“What is that?” Heller asks.

I hold it out to Gage. “Your portfolio.”

Confusion threads his brows. “What?”

“He thinks you make pastries and thirst traps for a living.” I push the envelope into his hand. “Seems unfair not to provide your complete résumé.”

Gage nods, gripping the paper hard. Then he opens it. Heller gives a humorless laugh. “What the fuck is this?”

Gage slides out the first photograph, and his entire posture changes. The devastated brother beside me disappears. A colder, quiet, and inconceivably worse person rises.

He chucks the photograph onto the mattress. “Daniel Mercer. Three women. One seventeen-year-old girl.”

Heller examines it, his face paling.

Gage crouches in front of him and tilts his head. “Where is Grady?”

Heller’s mouth tightens. “Fuck you.”

The sickle flicks. One quick, shallow line across Heller’s forearm. He hisses through his teeth, more shock than agony, and yanks against the chain.

I face the pegboard. Okay. I’m about to become intensely interested in tools. Phillips. Flathead. Several sizes. My hands begin to tremble, so I lace my fingers together in front of me like a woman admiring a museum exhibit.

Paper whispers behind me. Another photograph lands. “Evan Rhodes. You’d have liked him. He also preferred them young.”

“You think I give a shit about⁠—”

“Where is Grady?”

“I told you⁠—”

The whisper of the blade. A strangled grunt. I pick up a screwdriver, inspect it with enormous concentration, and put it back.