Leather & Lark (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #2) (101)

“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.

Charcoal drawings line the walls, images of crosses with quotes scribbled in margins, sketches of houses and unfamiliar places and people. There are several drawings of an older woman with a Bible spread open on her lap. Handwritten notes are piled on every surface. Times and dates and locations. A colorful strip of paper sticks out among the white ruled sheets, and I pick it up. KEX, with Lark Montague, the ticket says.

Fire fills my chest with a burning ache.

My phone rings and I scramble to pull it from my pocket. It’s Conor.

“Anything?” I say.

Rose watches from where she stands next to a scope mounted on a tripod, the lens pointed to our apartment.

“Nothing for an Abe Midus. He’s a ghost.”

“Did you check records for Texas?”

“I checked records for everywhere. There’s no one who’s feasibly within the range of your description.”

I let out a string of swears as Rose shoots me a worried look. She starts searching through a pile of syringes and vials arranged on a tray on a side table. Conor is rattling off different iterations of Abe’s name and everything that he’s searched as Rose opens a Bible that lies near the table’s edge. Her eyes go wide as she whips it off the surface and thrusts it toward me, pointing frantically at the name.

“We found something. It’s Abe Mead,” I say to Conor. The realization hits me right in the chest. “Oh shit. Mead. Harvey Mead is that bloke Rowan and Sloane killed in Texas. He must be related.”

Conor’s fingers tap furiously over the keyboard. There’s a brief pause that feels like an eternity. “It’s his brother,” Conor finally says. “I’m coming up with an address for Oregon. I’ll need to get to Leander’s and search from the office for anything more than the basics.”

“His history isn’t going to tell me where he’s taken Lark,” I bite out.

“No,” Rose says as she points to the closed front door behind us. There’s a map taped to the wood. “But maybe that will.”

We step closer.

Portsmouth, the title says.

I rip the map from the wood and throw the door open. Then I run down the hallway, feeling like I’m being burned alive, one cell at a time.





SCORCHED




Lark


I wake to darkness.

No sliver of light. No sound. Nothing to orient my brain as to where I am or how I got here.

Only a familiar smell, a vague recognition my brain can’t pull from the haze of whatever drug still swirls in my veins.

I slide my arm across a cold metal floor and tap my wrist to check the time. But my watch is gone.

“Fuck,” I whisper. The word is too thick on my tongue. I roll onto my back and blink at the dark, willing any filament of light to appear, but nothing comes. All I see is a blackness.

Every heartbeat pushes me to a cliff edge of panic.

My breath quickens. Bile roils in my stomach. I pat my pockets down for my phone. Nothing.

Memories surface through the haze of drugs. A man in my apartment. My dog snarling. Blood on my throbbing head. I touch my hair and there’s a crust of it clumped in the strands. I remember a pinprick of pain in the side of my neck. My trembling fingers drift down to the mark.

I press my eyes closed. I will myself not to cry. The drug still lingering in my veins is both a blessing and a curse, dulling the memories of another darkness. Even still, I see the red numbers of the clock through the slats in the door as I huddled with my sister in the closet. Those glowing lines are so clear in my mind despite the many years that have passed.

Five thirty-nine. “How much longer?” I’d whispered to my sister. It had been hours since we’d heard any sounds from the house, but we refused to disobey our mother. We saw the desperate fear in her eyes when she closed us in and demanded we keep our promise to stay hidden.

Ava held me close. Kept me warm. “Figure it out, Lark,” she said.

Figure it out, Lark.

My fingers land on a small circle of metal embedded into the floor. I push myself up to sit and trace it, looking for a latch. But there isn’t one. There’s just a smaller, raised metal circle with eight screws near its perimeter beneath me. The surface of the circle feels slicker than the surrounding floor. I try every inch of the circle, hoping for a solution, some kind of button or clue. Nothing. Just the roar of my heart and the tremor in my hands as I fight to keep my fear at bay.