Chapter 27 – Ava Jade #2
Everyone in the state knew about the cult murders. The Adler family was only the first to go. After them, the Finches and the Hayes were found dead in their homes in similar ways. It was later learned that they were all in the cult together. That Douglas Adler was their leader.
I glanced back down at the text in my hand, seeing where the photocopy of the newspaper had been altered. A piece of paper cut into a thin rectangle covered a line of text that seemed to be saying how the surviving boy’s identity would be kept confidential. On it were the words: CORVUS JAMES ADLER.
Fingers shaking, I tapped on the sender’s email at the top of the screen.
My heart lurched in my chest, heat sizzling down my spine.
I chucked the phone at the wall, and it smashed into tiny bits, raining down onto the tile to the backdrop of gasps from the students in the atrium.
I stalked to the nearest student and knocked the phone from their hand. “Don’t fucking read that.” I seethed, staring at all the other students as they stared back at me.
In the cafeteria, a chair scraped back from a table, and I heard Grey shout.
“You fucking heard her,” someone yelled and I turned to find Brianna fucking Moore on the bottom of the stairs. “ Put your goddamn phones down .”
She knocked two phones from the hands of the students nearest to her.
From the corner of my eye, I saw movement and a face flashed clear in the daylight before it vanished around the corner of the west hall.
A face I recognized.
I drew a blade, and the students around me all screamed like little bitches, falling back, their phones suddenly forgotten in the face of something far more interesting: a girl on the edge of her fucking rope.
“Hey!” I bellowed after the King, giving chase as I sped through the atrium and down the hall, catching the flip of his jacket as he pushed through the exit doors at the end and went outside.
“AJ!” I heard Grey shout somewhere behind me, but I wasn’t stopping.
It was him.
That creepy fucker from fight night. I was sure of it. Why lurk around the corner watching like that if he had nothing to do with it.
Why run?
Guilty.
Guilty.
Guilty.
“It’s him!” I called back over my shoulder before I shoved through the heavy metal doors, bursting into the humid morning, squinting as the sun stabbed into my eyes.
I raced forward, lifting a hand to shield my eyes as I scanned the front lot for him, seeing nothing.
“Hey!” I screamed, rushing ahead to vault over the low hedges in front of the parking lot. “Come out, you fucking coward!”
I dropped to my knees and bent low, peering under the vehicles in the parking lot, searching for feet, for movement, for anything.
“AJ,” Grey shouted from behind me as I rose back to my feet, storming around an SUV to peer into the bed of a truck.
Grey caught up to me, his gun at the end of his extended hands, aimed low as he looked over all the cars. “Where is he?”
I growled my frustration, my skin tingling with rage. “I fucking lost him.”
I kicked the nearest tire, kicked it again. Again.
“ Fuck! ”
“Hey,” Grey said, brushing a soothing hand down my back, but I didn’t want to be soothed right now.
I wanted fucking blood. I shrugged him off, putting my hands to my hips as I paced the narrow space between two cars, my chest and back slick with cold sweat, my head spinning from the aftereffects of too much adrenaline and not enough fuel in the fucking tank.
“We’ll find him, AJ,” Grey promised as I hunched over, hands braced on knees to pinch my eyes closed, trying to clear the spots from my vision. “But right now we need to get to the Nest.”
“What?” I asked, and the reality of what’d happened before I saw the King fleeing the scene of his crime hit me. “Corvus.”
Grey nodded gravely. “He took off.”
My heart squeezed. “Alone?”
His jaw locked. “Rook went after him, but Corvus is faster than any of us. He looked like he was heading for the Nest though, so…”
I took one last long look over the cars in the parking lot, praying for even the slightest indication that the fucker was still here, but I really had lost him. He was gone.
But I knew who it was, and I would get answers from him. That was if Maverick still wanted to keep his fucking alliance with the Saints. I wanted him on a fucking platter, and I would have him one way or another.
Drake came rushing from the front entrance a second later, just the person I wanted to see.
“What just happened back there?” he asked, jabbing a thumb back toward Briar Hall. “Your guy just lost his fucking shit. Something about an email?”
“It was your man,” I said, looking at Drake in a new light now, knowing we couldn’t afford to waste much time here. I didn’t like the idea of Corvus alone in the woods, even if it was only a few miles between here and the Nest. It could be exactly what the fucker expected. He could be waiting.
Drake’s brows lowered over his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
I cleared the few steps between us and pointed my blade at him, bringing it to within an inch of his chest. To his credit, he didn’t budge at my advance, only stiffened. “That creepy fuck from fight night. The one you said was your one-man clean-up crew.”
“Aries?”
“I saw him lurking in the atrium when that mass email was sent out to the entire school. And when I pursued him, he fucking ran .”
This seemed to surprise Drake, but not as much as it should’ve. “Maybe he was just running because you were chasing him, Angel,” he said with a shrug, but the tension in his jaw said it all. He didn’t trust Aries, either. “I mean, he saw you fight. I’d run, too.”
I shook my head. “I’ll be having a little chat with Diesel about this,” I warned. “If you and your leader want to keep this alliance, I want Aries served to me on a silver fucking platter. You hear me?”
Drake recoiled from the sting of my words but nodded. “It’s probably just a misunderstanding.”
“We’ll be the judge of that,” Grey said.
Drake nodded. “Understood.”
I let my gaze rest heavy on Drake’s for another moment before inclining my head to the Rover parked a few rows down. “Let’s go, Grey.”