Chapter 3
C onnor
In Arran’s office, I paced the floor, my best friend watching me with his arse parked against his desk and his dark-blond eyebrows merged.
“You brought Everly Makepeace here. Unconscious.”
Not a question, but a response to my announcement after I’d stormed in. A couple of hours ago, he’d called me to the warehouse to share information with me on murders in the city that had sent me flying out the door in a panic. Now I was back, he’d demand answers, and rightly so. I was never so impulsive as I’d just acted.
“For her safety. If someone’s targeting me, they could go for her because of our history.”
“Why bring her here?”
“It wasn’t my intention. I only wanted to make sure she was safe, but when I got there, someone else had already showed up to give Everly a warning that the Four Milers were coming for her and she needed to run.”
I chose my words carefully. If Arran knew his girlfriend’s brother had been there, he’d have to tell her, and judging by the way Riordan had behaved towards Everly, I wasn’t ready to share that information. I didn’t want him knowing where she was. Not until I found him first.
Arran swore. “The Four Milers? What the fuck is Red doing messing with the mayor’s daughter? That’s a risky game for a man in his position.”
He was right. There was a tentative balance in Deadwater between the gangs and the legal authorities. We ran the women, the Four Milers, managed by Red, handled drugs, and the Zombies peddled weapons. Over all of it, the city leaders, corrupt as a whole, took bribes and kept the peace. It was a system that mostly worked, and Arran strived to maintain it for the sake of the women employed at the warehouse.
I shared his goals but had my own role in the city, the enforcer, the clean-up man. Arran kept the women safe, I handled the predators. A win-win for everyone.
Any shakes of the system fucked with both of us.
“We need to find out what they want with her,” I said.
Arran steepled his fingers. “Let me put out some feelers. Is she staying?”
I nodded, though I’d yet to tell her. It felt strange knowing she was upstairs, in my bed. I’d left her there and forced myself to walk away, ignoring the fact it was a twisted fantasy come to life. Except with a version of her who hadn’t lied. Or rejected me.
That level of bullshit would piss me off for months.
My friend gave a warning. “Her father won’t tolerate it.”
“Then he won’t know.”
Someone knocked on the office door. The clubs had closed and would be empty, staff would be leaving for their homes and the warehouse shut down.
Arran called out for them to wait a minute then centred his gaze on me. “Who was it who issued the warning to Everly? You said someone came to her house. One of the Four Milers’ crew or someone else?”
I worked my jaw. “It’s better if ye don’t know.”
The person outside knocked again, insistent. Chatter followed, presumably a number of the supervisors and managers who wanted to get their final tasks done so they could leave.
After a beat, Arran gave me a slow nod along with his trust, letting me keep my secret. “You’ll tell me later.”
I shrugged and jerked my head at the door. “I’m heading out. Places to be, society princesses to keep safe.”
Still frowning, he let me go, and I moved past the queue of staff waiting outside. I had a woman to check on then a city to explore, and answers of my own were needed.
In the lift, I entered the code that was individual to me and travelled up to the top floor. On one side was the apartment Arran shared with Genevieve, and on the other side was mine. Usually coming back here allowed me to relax and breathe, but tonight, my heart raced. I paused, reinstated my cold mask of indifference, and entered.
In a pool of lamplight that fell over my sofa, Everly waited, her knees tucked up and my hoodie shrouding her. She was awake, unsurprising as I’d only given her a low dose of the drug I’d used to knock her out, but seeing her here stole my breath. For a moment, I lost track of why she was here and what the fuck I was doing. Only receiving the strangest sense of rightness at coming home to her.
Then I remembered myself and the scene nearly ten years ago when I’d begged her for a life exactly like this and she’d said no. My heart hardened.
“Connor.” She unfurled her legs and stood.
“You’re awake.”
“No thanks to your apparent new career of kidnap and drugging.”
She didn’t know the half of it. Nor was I apologising for what I’d done. If she hadn’t threatened to scream, I wouldn’t have drugged her, so this was on her. “Do ye know where ye are?”
“The warehouse by the river. Are you going to take me home?”
I locked the door behind me then crossed the room to regard her. “No. Ye heard that arsehole who broke into your house. You’re not safe there.”
Her big brown eyes took me in. “We have a security patrol on the street. I’d have called them if you hadn’t shown up. I would’ve been okay by myself.”
“Aye, it looked like it with that man fucking mugging ye.”
“He said he wouldn’t hurt me.”
I scoffed, poking my tongue into my cheek. “Everly.”
“Connor.”
A beat passed. My blood swirled, heating up.
“Why were you there?” At my hesitation, she pressed on. “Because I’ve come here a number of times to speak to you, but never once did you allow it. Then all of a sudden, you’re at my house in the middle of the night and now I’m in your apartment.”
Too many thoughts collided in my head, but I needed to keep this simple, so I took a seat at the end of the sofa and tried to ignore the bare lengths of Everly’s legs as she settled at the other end. It was oddly cosy. “You’re aware of the murders that happened in the city in the past few weeks?”
Hesitantly, she nodded. “You mean the two women?”
“Exactly. The first, Cherry, bled out on the church steps where she worked, and the second, Natasha, was killed and dumped on our doorstep. The method of execution was identical. Both had their throats slit.”
Everly paled. “Those poor souls. How does that connect to you? Or to me?”
By my brain making leaps and pulling information together in a wild and uncontrolled way. Still, it felt real, particularly considering the events at her home. “At first, Arran thought the killer was targeting him. They copied the way his mother was executed. Then we got the post-mortem report back for Natasha, and she was drugged before her death.”
Everly’s fingertips drifted to the site behind her hip where I’d injected her. Fresh heat and some wave of unknown emotion passed over me at the shiver she tried to hide. She ought to fear me. What I’d become. I wasn’t the boy she’d once known.
“I’m not sure I follow,” she said weakly.
From my pocket, I extracted the small leather zip-up case, opening it to reveal the needles and vials. “Tools of my trade. The killer chose the identical drug I use. An unusual one. Then he brought the body here. With the first woman, I’d been there that night in the same churchyard she worked. It’s possible the killer followed me.”
Everly’s gaze intensified, surprise there, too. I’d wondered what her da had told her about me. “What trade, exactly, do you use that drug for?”
“Ye don’t want to ask me that.”
She pressed her lips together. “Okay then. So you think the murderer is targeting you instead. What does that have to do with me?”
A good question. “It puts ye in the crossfire because of our previous connection.”
Her gaze flew from the drugs kit to meet mine. Disbelief filled her eyes. “Because ten years ago our parents were temporarily married? How widely is that even known?”
Annoyed, I huffed out a breath. “Your beloved father tried to bury it, but enough people would remember to make this a credible threat.”
“Based on that, you broke into my house? You’re reaching.”
“And you’re dismissing it out of hand. Women have died, and the closest lass to me is still ye.”
Everly dropped the eye contact and hugged herself, my hoodie baggy on her but not concealing the swell of her breasts. “I feel awful for those women but I can’t see that I’m in any real danger. Shouldn’t you be squirrelling away your mother, or a girlfriend or three?”
I leapt up and paced away to the window, hiding my expression so she wouldn’t witness the denial that wanted out of my lips. “Let me worry about girlfriends.”
“Great. You do that and I’ll go home.”
I gritted my teeth, her spiky attitude and resistance unexpected. Everly was a soft-hearted creature, made of kindness and care but without any real depth of feeling. I’d once believed the opposite, but she’d proved to me just how shallow her emotions ran.
Rotating back, I moved on to the next weapon in my arsenal. My only objective was to keep her here. Safe. Beyond that, I had no clue what I was doing. “Ignore my warning if ye want, but ye can’t disregard the man who broke into your house and the message he gave.”
She tucked a curl of brunette hair behind her ear, and her expression shifted again. “I don’t understand what he meant. Who was he?”
That answered my question about whether she’d known Riordan Fucking Jones.
I shrugged. “Does it matter? A gang is after ye, and he works for them. You’re safer here in both cases.”
For a long moment, she studied me, then her shoulders slumped. “Even if that’s true, I can’t stay. My father’s away on business, but he expects me at work on Monday morning. I can’t just move out because some random person passed on a threat without evidence.”
“I’ll take ye to work on Monday and pick ye up after.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t have clothes. My phone.”
“Tell me what ye need, and I’ll fetch it.”
She gritted her teeth. “You can’t keep me locked up here.”
I wanted to taunt her, but instead, I let my expression do the talking, like I’d left my notes to direct her earlier. Watch me.
Everly studied me for a long minute, then something registered in her gaze and she angled her head. “Are you really prepared to return to my house just to pick up my possessions?”
I shrugged. She extended a hand.
“Give me your phone.”
“Why?” Regardless, it was already in my palm.
“I’ll give you a list.”
I handed it over unlocked and with the notes screen up. Everly tapped away, pausing every now and again and writing a fucking essay. Then she brought up another screen, though in my act of pretending not to watch her too closely, I couldn’t tell which.
“I have an all-day function on Monday so I’m searching for an image of myself at a recent event so you can collect the outfit I’ll need,” she told me. She scrolled, selected a photograph, then handed the device back over.
I scanned the long list, pasted-in image included. Shampoo, makeup, fuck , underwear. I masked my flare of lust and shut it down. “Got it.”
“Be careful. Just in case someone’s there.”
Interesting that she worried about it for my sake and not her own. It proved she knew the threat was real, even if she thought she could face it alone. “See ye in a few hours.”
“So long?”
“There’s something else I need to do.” In case she was under any illusion of what was happening here, I gestured to the door. “That will be locked behind me. Even if ye escape, the exits off this floor willnae open without my passcode. Don’t even try.”
Her brown eyes glimmered at the challenge. “Looks like you’ve got me exactly where you want me.”
I twisted my lips into a cruel sneer. “Don’t kid yourself, and don’t get comfortable. When I’m back, I’ll find a room downstairs ye can stay in so we don’t have to see each other. The only reason I’m protecting ye is for the sake of your da, nothing personal.”
Then I turned and left, engaging the lock at my back and with no small sense of relief at being away from her. Any other thoughts of Everly were ones from the grave, dead and buried a long time ago when she tore my still-beating heart from my chest, dug in her pretty nails for good measure, then tossed it in the dirt.
It’d been there ever since.