“Sweetie, I dunno. If he’s in the midst of a breakup and obviously stressed about restaurant shit, he might have gotten the dates wrong.”
“I guess, but then he corrected himself and said the thirteenth. It’s the way he said it, the way he put it all together. It was just weirdly specific,” I reply, scrolling through messages he and I shared around those dates. “He said something else about our conversation in the car on the way to the event, that ‘the restaurant was the only thing that made sense in his life’。 But I’m positive he never said that.”
“Hun, Sloane, I love you. I love you more than anyone, sweetie, but he might not fully remember all the details. I mean, he’s clearly fucked in the head if he’s going to give you up, so who knows what’s going on upstairs, you know?”
Lark keeps talking, explaining every reasonable theory for why he could have said what he said.
But I don’t hear a word as I push the cat from my lap and rise to my feet.
Because I’m staring at a text I’d sent him at the end of March, the same day he’d called and asked me to be his date for the awards.
Do you think this gala will have an ice cream buffet? If so, I should probably let them know that you only accept freshly-milked semen.
My blood turns to shards of ice in my veins.
I remember holding that white tub in my hands in Thorston’s kitchen as I read the homemade label to Rowan.
April tenth to thirteenth.
I know what he said on the way to the gala. I remember it as clearly as I remember the warmth of the kiss he’d pressed to my neck in the lobby, the tingle of electricity in my skin when he’d taken my hand across the leather seat during the drive. ‘At least one thing is going right at 3 In Coach’， he told me. ‘Stuff inevitably goes wrong. It just… feels like a lot lately.’
Lark is still talking when I say, “I have to go,” then disconnect the call.
My fingers are cold and numb when I open the app for the camera I installed in the restaurant kitchen.
My stomach churns as I take in the details on the screen.
“No…” Tears flood my vision. “No, no, no…”
I clutch at my heart as it shatters for a second time. Blood drains from my limbs. The edges of my vision darken and I press my eyes closed tight. A sound of anguish tumbles past my lips as my knees buckle, my phone dropping from my hand. I know the horror I just saw is real. But there’s no time to fall apart.
What if you’re not fast enough?
I don’t answer that question. I can’t. The only thing I can do now is try.
I swallow the lance of pain and steady myself to take one turn in the middle of the room. My gaze lands on my leather case where I keep my scalpel among my pencils and erasers.
Hands shaking, I pick up my phone and dial the Unknown Caller, a contact whose name I never entered into my phone. He answers on the second ring.
“Spider Lady,” Lachlan says. “What’s the occasion?”
“I need a favor. Urgently,” I reply as I whip my case from the side table and stride toward the door. “You have as long as it takes for me to run twelve blocks.”
“Sounds fun. I like a challenge. What do you need?”
“I’ll tell you what I know,” I say, already descending the stairs by twos. “And you’re going to give me everything you can find on David Miller.”
22
FINESSE
ROWAN
T he sharp edge of the mandolin lays against my inner forearm between the ropes that bind me to the chair. My palms face upward in curled fists, my short nails digging into my flesh as I brace against the pain I’ve already endured and that which is yet to come. Ragged breaths saw from my chest and I grit my teeth. I know what’s about to happen. Blood already pours from two other wounds, and he’s determined to get the perfect slice this time.
The blade catches in my skin and peels it from the flesh beneath.
I swallow a scream as David pushes down to resist my futile struggle and glides the mandolin toward my elbow until a thin strip of my skin is cut away. He tosses the bloodied tool onto the prep counter where it skids to a halt next to his gun.
Then he tears the flap of skin free from my arm with a merciless tug as the sound of my distressed cry fills the room.
“You know, I developed a taste for this at Thorsten’s,” David says as he leans close until he takes up all the space in my vision. He grips my hair with one hand and wrenches my head back to smile down at me. His once vacant eyes are not fucking vacant anymore. They are ravenous. And they’re pinned on me. “Did you develop a taste too?”