AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He pulled away and exhaled, resting his forehead against mine.
Lacing our hands together, I nudged him with my forehead. “What have I always told you?”
“I don’t know. You talk nonstop, it’s hard to keep up with.”
I pulled back with a mock glare, gaping at him.
A wry grin pulled at the corner of his mouth, even though his eyes were still clouded with worry.
“Together,” I said loudly, giving him a pointed look. “We’re unstoppable.”
“Just like we handled Mr. Brewer and Ms. Kelly together?” He arched an eyebrow. “Go ahead and deny it. I know you killed them.”
I made a face, sputtering out a few noises before finally answering. “That was totallydifferent. And besides, Jake and I are cool now because of that whole thing. I mean, he hasn’t given me half of a best-friend necklace yet, but I’m sure it’s coming. He’s just waiting for the right moment. I can tell.”
Leander rolled his eyes, spinning me away from him and adding soap to the sponge. “Where do you propose we start?”
“One of them had a burner phone. I need to get it to my guy in Chicago and hopefully he can get us some answers.”
“Didn’t the police confiscate it?”
“Oh, I’m sure they would have. Too bad it’s in the lining of my jacket.”
He resumed dabbing at me with the sponge, running it over my shoulder and down my left forearm. “I thought it felt unusually heavy.”
“I wasn’t going to give up the only lead we have.” I reached across myself and caught his wrist gently, dragging his arm across my chest.
He took the hint and wrapped his other arm around me too, nuzzling the side of my head. “I mean it, mon coeur. I don’t know what I would do if they killed you. I can’t live in a world without you.”
“You’ll never have to. I swear, I’m not going anywhere.”
24
Leander
Even after Bennett’s relatively safe return, I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. The nightmares were back with a vengeance, only this time they switched from my own demons, to his — unknown men taking the only thing that mattered to me. My brain conjured a variety of outcomes, ways his kidnappingcouldhave gone, each ending more terrible than the last.
His physical wounds healed a little more every day, while the ones in my mind continued to fester. The only thing that brought any form of relief was being with Bennett — knowing he was alive, and safe.
So, I lived on coffee and the updates from Elijah and Cole as they worked tirelessly to find me the remaining kidnapper, the one Bennett hadn’t been able to kill.
The company van, sadly, was a dead-end. The van had been stolen the day of the incident and from all of the information we were able to unearth, there was no connection between anyone at the company and Bennett or I.
Our break came, days after Bennett’s return, in the form of a local obituary.
“That’s him,” Bennett said, stabbing a finger into the photograph of an unremarkable man. “Dwight! I’ll never forget that stupid look on his face.”
Taking the paper from him, I skimmed the rest of the text. “It says he had a farming accident.”
“Sure. If you want to call an ice pick to the brain a ‘farming accident.’”
“And his brother Maynard died unexpectedly at home?” I turned the paper around again and showed him the second picture under the fold. “Was he the other one?”
Bennett nodded. “Yeah. That’s the one I strangled.”
“Galigher…”
“What?”
