Page 252

A miracle.

Any other day.

Tonight felt like another fucking cruelty. I could finally see the world coming back to me. I just couldn’t find the one missing woman in it. Behind me, the house remained unnaturally quiet. Nyssa was in there… waiting. That was the part I couldn’t fucking stand.

I promised them.

We’re going to bring her home.

Words delivered with the certainly of a man who’d spent most of his life believing there was nothing he couldn’t find if he was willing to become dangerous enough.

Then Guild called.

He’d found her walking along a service road.

Alive.

And suddenly every man I’d deployed meant nothing.

Every contact.

Every camera.

Every vehicle.

Every fucking order.

Nothing.

The Clove Man had taken Bethany. I couldn’t prove it. Not yet. But I felt the shape of him around this. It was too fucking coincidental. The messages to Nyssa. The video. The break-in at my goddamn home. Lily’s ribbon. Nyssa’s knife. And now one of the Daughters simply disappeared?

No.

Too many separate events were beginning to point in the same direction.

Toward her.

Everything came back to Nyssa.

It was too targeted.

Too deliberate.

Too fucking patient.

That was what bothered me most. There was no frenzy to any of it. No impulsive violence. Every move came after the last one had been allowed enough time to settle.

Killian Armstrong.

Then silence.

A message.

Then silence.

The house.

Then silence.