“No, man. Sorry,” he replies with confusion in his voice. “But I’ve got something from Stan’s videos. Paranoid old fucker had everything encrypted and I just got past it about ten minutes ago. Sending you a screenshot now.”
I pull the phone from my ear and place the call on speaker as I wait for Conor’s text to come through. When it does, I see an image of a man standing over Stan’s body. His features are obscured by the angle of the camera and the ball cap he wears, the brim pulled low. He clutches a weapon in his hand, not a normal knife but something small and irregularly shaped. Something familiar.
“Can you—”
“Already on it, bro.”
A second text comes in from Conor, this time a zoomed-in image of the tool. The man’s palm covers most of the black handle, but not the ring of gold that attaches the sharp head of the edge beveller. I can see the brand name—WUTA—stamped on the stainless steel.
“Fuck, fuck.” Blood freezes in my veins as my heart tumbles into my guts. “That’s mine.”
“Bro, what the fuck? He was in your shop?”
Images click together like pieces of a puzzle as Nina and Damian ask questions that I don’t answer. “Get me a better picture of the hat.”
A handful of heartbeats later, a new image of the man comes through, his face still mostly in shadow, but the Carhartt logo clearly visible on the front of the cap.
“Motherfucker.” I scroll through my recent appointments until I find the last name that suddenly escapes me as disbelief and panic creep through my flesh. “Get me everything you can find on Abe Midus. I’m going home to look for Lark.” I disconnect the call and face Nina and Damian, their eyes wide with confusion and concern. “Abe Midus. Do you know that name?”
“No,” Damian says. Nina shakes her head next to him. “What the hell is going on?”
“We’ve got him on video, the man who killed Tremblay. And he did it with a tool from my shop.” I try ringing Lark’s phone one more time as her parents pepper me with more questions, but again my call goes unanswered. “Something isn’t right. I’m going to find Lark.”
Nina clamps her hand over her mouth, muffling a strangled cry.
Damian surges forward. “I’ll come with you.”
“No. Stay and text me if Lark shows up.” I stride down the corridor, Damian’s footfalls an echo behind me as we head into the lobby. “Texan accent, short gray hair, five-foot-eleven, medium build, tattoo of a Bible and cross on his right forearm. Call me right away if you see him.”
“Oh, you lookin’ for Steve? I think he left about an hour ago,” one of the nurses says from where she sits at the reception desk.
“What?”
“Steve. The temp guy. Likes his Bible quotes.” Confusion deepens in the nurse’s expression as her eyes dart between me and Damian. “We had a few people out sick yesterday so we called the staffing company for a temp worker to cover.”
Damian and I turn to each other. His face crumples. I try to swallow the lump in my throat.
“My daughter—”
“I will find her. Even if I have to kill every person in this goddamn city to do it.”
Damian gives me a single nod and I take off at a jog, calling Fionn as I run to my car on the off-chance Lark might still be with Rose. I’m speeding through a red light when he says he hasn’t seen her, but he tells me they’re in their rental and not far from our building, ready to help. By the time I reach our street, they’re already parking next to the entrance.
My heart races. My hands shake. I try her phone again as Fionn and Rose meet me at my car, but Lark still doesn’t answer.
“We called Rowan but he and Sloane are in Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend. They’re on their way home but it’s gonna take a while.” Rose’s face is creased with worry as I withdraw my gun from the glove box. “What’s going on? Where the fuck is Lark?”
“I don’t know. She called me to say her aunt died. She was supposed to meet me at the nursing home, but she never showed.” I lead the way to the main door and grab the door handle only to find it unlocked. It swings open to the textile production floor where there’s no sign of anything amiss. “Conor just found information about the man who’s been targeting her family. And now Lark won’t respond to any of my calls.”
I stride toward the stairs, taking them by twos, Fionn and Rose close on my heels. The worst fears I never could have imagined suddenly pile up around me with every step I take.
“The guy was right fucking there. He was in my goddamn shop. He spoke to Lark, shook her hand. He’s been around us this whole time and I had no fucking clue.”
By the time we reach the apartment I feel like I might vomit. The desperation and panic are so foreign they’re overwhelming. I keep hoping my phone will suddenly ring, that Lark’s smiling face will pop up on my screen. But it stays silent. And I’m not sure I can survive what I might find on the other side of the door.
I hesitate for just a moment, letting Rose and Fionn know with a nod that they need to stay behind me. And then I twist the handle and push it open.
Blood coats the floor and my knees buckle. It’s my brother who holds me up long enough to stumble into the room and regain my balance.
“Lark.” My despondent plea receives a pained whine in reply. I surge forward into the living space and find Bentley lying on his side near the table, blood coating the white patches on his fur. He whines again, a sorrowful cry that incinerates my crumbling heart.
“Save that fucking dog,” I order my brother as I scramble for tea towels from the kitchen and toss them to Fionn.
“I’m not a vet—”
“I don’t fucking care, save that goddamn dog.”
I stalk toward the corridor where the bedrooms are, calling to Lark as I go. My efforts are unrewarded. I check the bedrooms and bathrooms, but there’s no sign of Lark, nothing out of place except her absence. I return to the living room with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and clippers clutched in one hand and my gun in the other. Rose has bloodied towels pressed to Bentley’s side as Fionn threads a needle.
“I’ll do what I can to stop the bleeding now and get him to the vet,” Fionn says. I hand him the clippers and he shaves off a line of fur next to what looks like a deep stab wound. When he glances up at me, Fionn’s expression is grim. “Do you have any idea where Lark could be?”
“No.” I scan the room and spot her phone near the coffee table, a broken lamp nearby on the floor. There’s a bloody streak across the screen. My missed calls and texts and notifications from the Uber she never took flash on the backlit glass when I pick it up.
Lark needed me. And I wasn’t there.
An anguished scream fills the room. It comes from me.
Tears fill my eyes as I toss the phone on the couch. I want to pace. To run. But there’s nowhere to go to escape the way I feel.
“I wasn’t here,” I whisper.
A hand wraps around my forearm and squeezes, and I look down to meet Rose’s fierce determination.
“Think,” she demands as the dog whines behind her. “There’s got to be something. Something weird. Something out of place.”
I press my eyes closed and search the darkness. At first, all I see is Lark’s face. How beautiful she is when she’s trying to get under my skin. How she looked on that stage, singing to me. Her body beneath the sheets the first night we spent together, the way she smiled when I turned for one last glance from the doorway.
And then it strikes me, an image that burns brighter than lightning.
“Across the street. He was across the fucking street.”
I stride toward the door, Rose right on my heels. “I’m coming with you,” she says.
“Rose, don’t,” Fionn says, his voice breaking. “Please.”
We stop just long enough for Rose to turn and face him. He’s kneeling on the floor, a hand still placed on Bentley’s side. “Lark is my girl. I’m going to get her back.”
“But—”
“I love you, Fionn Kane.”
Shocked silence fills the room. I expect Fionn to say something, anything, but he doesn’t. It’s as though her words are so unexpected that he can’t process them.
Rose takes a step backward toward the door. Fionn stares at her like he’s frozen. Rose takes another step away. “Save the dog or this asshat will kill you.”
Then Rose strides past me, pulling a huge hunting blade from a sheathe hidden beneath her shirt. When I turn toward my brother, there’s anguish in his eyes.
He swallows, but his voice still comes out uneven when he says, “Keep her safe.”
“I will. I promise.”
I jog to catch up with Rose. When we reach the bottom of the stairs we burst into the cold air, heading for the building across the street.
“So who is this guy?” Rose asks as we get to the locked door. I’m about to try shooting it when she pulls out a small black case from the bag slung across her shoulder and fits a pin and snap gun into the lock. With a few clicks and turns, it’s open and we step inside. The former industrial building has been converted to small offices on the main floor with apartments on the second.
“He said his name was Abe Midus. He booked an appointment at my studio and brought in a saddle for repair. But I know nothing about him aside from he’s a religious guy. Conor is working on it.”
We run up the stairs to the second floor and head to the apartments that face our building, of which there are only three. We stop at the door at the end of the hall, the one most likely to align with our windows, and listen for sounds within. Nothing comes. I keep my gun pointed to the wood as Rose fits her tools into the keyhole. When the bolt gives, I motion at her to stand aside. Then I turn the handle and push the door in.
“Well,” Rose whispers as I lead the way over the threshold. “I think we got the right place.”
There’s no one here. But the evidence of his obsession is everywhere.