Chapter 17 Violet
VIOLET
Somewhere in the middle of a vomit-induced sickness dream, I started thinking about the warehouse of horrors. When I woke with morning sunlight streaming through the windows, and Levi and Whip tangled around me in X’s bedroom, the warehouse was still on my mind.
For a long moment, I didn’t move. Just stared at the ceiling, playing over every detail of the night Toby died.
But so much of it was a blur. So much of it was dark shadows and fuzzy corners.
I knew my brain was trying to protect me from reliving the entire thing out in full, vivid color.
I didn’t want to see Dickson climbing through that window, only for his lifeless body to fall at my feet.
I didn’t want to relive that sickening, robotic death countdown, or the way Toby had plunged that knife into his own neck to save me.
Maybe it was the funeral that had forced my brain to let down some of the walls that had been keeping me safe for weeks.
Maybe it was the food poisoning.
But all I knew was I wanted to go back.
Had to go back.
“Omelet? Are you awake? Are you contemplating all the ways you could kill me?”
I jumped at X’s voice and twisted, peering over Whip to see X on the floor beside him, surrounded by empty bottles of water, vomit buckets, and towels.
He looked about as wiped-out as I felt, curled up on the floor with no pillow and a towel as a blanket.
“Did you sleep on the floor?”
He sat up and stretched, something in his back cracking audibly.
“Not sure I’d call it sleeping. I need new carpet if we’re going to make a habit out of staying here.
Something way fluffier and preferably with a higher thread count.
” His gaze flickered over my face. “You seem better. Less… Casper the Friendly Ghost.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Thanks. I think. Good to know vomit-pale isn’t my color.”
“You feel better though?”
I did a mental sweep of my body and realized I did. “I’m tired but I actually feel quite well. Like all that vomiting detoxed my body or something.”
X perked up at that. “So I helped!”
“You most definitely did not help.”
His shoulders slumped again, but it was impossible to stay mad at him. His heart had been in the right place and he’d been duly punished, cleaning up after us for hours, which for someone as squeamish as he was, had to have been torture.
“Can you take me back to the warehouse today?” I asked him.
Levi’s arm tightened around me, drawing me back into the warmth of his chest. “Not a fucking chance,” he mumbled into the back of my shoulder.
I hadn’t even realized he was awake. I linked my fingers through his and brought his hand up to my mouth, kissing his knuckles. “I need to, Levi. Please. I don’t want to go without you all, but I will if I have to.”
He grumbled something else I didn’t catch, his arm banding around me again though, so I got the gist he wasn’t thrilled by the idea.
I couldn’t blame him. I’d put myself in danger before, and it hadn’t worked out so well.
But this seemed relatively low risk. The police had presumably gone through the place and cleared it of anything that could kill us.
I doubted whoever had set the trap was going to use the same location twice.
That didn’t seem like their style. It was too obvious, and they were too smart.
I’d underestimated them once. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“I’ll take you,” Whip said quietly without moving. “As long as I can stand up without the room spinning.”
X got up and hovered like Whip might need catching at any minute. The fact Whip didn’t complain told me their little conversation last night when they’d thought I was asleep had done them good.
Or that Whip was still seriously ill, but he got himself up with no assistance from X and turned to face me. “I want to look over the place again as well. Then we need to talk about the pile of bodies we found out at the dump site.”
“We should talk to Grayson,” Levi offered from behind me.
X frowned. “What if Trigger and Ace and Torch are responsible for those bodies though?”
Whip practically growled, “They aren’t. They can’t be.”
X pointed at him. “Times that reaction by a hundred and that’s how Gray is going to react.
Trigger is his brother. You think he isn’t going to automatically want to protect him?
He’s a biased witness. Or source. What’s the difference?
I don’t know. He’s a biased man! But I do know we can’t go to Gray.
We need to work out if any of the three of them are involved and have solid proof before we go accusing them of anything. ”
Levi groaned. “I hate when X has a point.”
X clapped his hands. “Right then. It’s decided. We return to the scene of the crime, check out the warehouse, now that the cops will have quit crawling all over it, and then we go hunting Murder Squad members.”
“Not hunting,” Whip said dryly. “Researching. Surveilling perhaps. Not hunting. We aren’t hoping to have to kill anyone.”
X flapped his hand around dismissively. “Potato, pot-ah-to. Same, same. Either way, we have a big day ahead of us. We’re going to need breakfast.” He grinned. “I think there’s some leftover oysters in the fridge…”
The looks Levi, Whip, and I sent in his direction could have peeled his skin right off his bones.
“Or I could just do eggs!” He scuttled out of the bedroom before anything could be thrown at his head.
Whip, Levi, and I all picked at the omelets X set in front of us, none of us quite trusting our tender stomachs. Eventually, we all scraped our plates onto X’s, and he happily wolfed down the leftovers.
None of us had clean clothes at X’s place, so we did the rounds, stopping so everyone could get fresh clothes, but no one suggested it would be quicker to split up.
I didn’t know what had changed, maybe it was the sex, maybe it was the conversation Whip and X had last night, maybe it was just the fact what we were about to do felt a lot like walking back into the lion’s den even though the beast had already had a couple of swipes at us.
But I wanted to be with them, and they seemed to feel the same, so nobody complained or suggested separating.
It was past midday when we got to the warehouse. Whip parked his car out front, in the same spot he had the night they’d found me inside, covered in Toby’s blood.
I hated that I remembered that. But was grateful as well that bits and pieces were coming back to me.
I had to have missed something. There had to be clues my brain wasn’t putting together.
Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.
Either way, I wasn’t going to get anywhere by sitting in the car, and they were clearly all waiting on me.
I pushed open the door, and without a word, the three of them followed.
They flanked me as we walked past industrial businesses, going about their day, working out of the other occupied factories.
But a lot of the buildings in the complex were empty, For Lease signs in the windows or taped to the doors.
I couldn’t imagine there’d be a rush of businesses wanting to move into the area once they found out the place was a murder scene.
I forced myself to walk confidently, to keep my strides long. I didn’t want to give myself a chance to back out.
But the sight of the building where it had all gone down still sent shivers down my spine when it came into view.
We stopped at the door, and Whip took up a sentry position at the end of the row, keeping watch, but it seemed pointless.
Nobody cared we were here. The other businesses at the front of the complex, where they had street visibility, were busy doing their own thing, and there was nobody around when Levi pulled tools from his pocket and picked the lock, bright and shiny, like it had been replaced recently.
He pushed the door open, and we all waited for some sort of alarm system, but nothing happened.
Levi put away the pliers he’d brought, ready to cut wires if there had been, and we all stepped inside. Whip put a brick in the way of the door locking, like he knew I wouldn’t be able to stand the thought of being completely closed in here again.
Even still, dread filled me. It was brighter than the night I’d been here, sunlight filtering through the high window.
But not enough to ward off the lingering feeling of death and despair.
There was something wrong with this place. The air felt stale. The darkness pervasive.
Everything inside me screamed at me to run.
I stood my ground, refusing.
Even when my gaze caught the faint trace of Toby’s blood on the floor. Mostly cleaned off but the stain remained, nonetheless.
X just squeezed my hand and past me, for once in his life silent, his gaze flittering around the space.
The other two did the same, the four of us moving in different directions, wandering around beneath the high ceilings.
But there was nothing much here. Like I remembered from that night, there was no sign of anyone owning or occupying the building.
I knew X had Hendrix, his brother, search for ownership records and the building had come back as owned by a huge foreign investment company.
Which didn’t seem tied to anything relating to me, or the Murder Squad, so the idea of the owner being involved had quickly been dismissed.
But Levi wasn’t the only person in Saint View who knew how to pick a lock. Anybody could have broken into this place and quietly laid a trap, just as easily as we’d walked in here today.
“I think this place must have been occupied by a business at some point,” Whip called from the front. “There’s an old fridge up here and a couple of broken chairs. Might have been used as a break room once upon a time.”
I didn’t remember seeing that the night we’d been here. Just the dark shadows and evil voice who haunted my dreams.