Chapter 80
KIERA
As soon as the bathroom door closed, I knew I didn’t have long. If I was going to run into Dom’s office, I had to move now.
“Fuck.” I grumbled, for once annoyed by my curiosity as I sprinted toward the glass room. Slipping past the door, I flicked on the overhead lights.
I couldn’t make it three seconds without lifting my head to check on Leo’s progress. The cut was bad, but there was no telling how long it would take Doctor Callahan to clean it out and patch it up to her liking.
This is my only shot to see what Dom is hiding.
Trying to take comfort in that certainty, I grabbed the worn metal handles of Dom’s filing cabinet. She was always toying around in there, grabbing shit and spending hours looking at whatever was inside.
But as I thumbed through the files, it was just folder after folder of client names. Inside, pictures of their cars, VIN numbers, maintenance receipts. Burns, Kennedy. The DA’s kid. They’d serviced their green Kawasaki at Lucky Strike a few months ago.
Then my finger caught on Stone, Xander. Maserati, gray. Car chase resulting in near totaled car. A detailing job a few weeks before that. I knew what that meant.
My head whipped around to the bathroom door, still shut.
Time’s running out.
Zipping through the rest of the filing cabinet, my search came up empty. All of it was just nefarious client files. Suspicious but nothing that implicated Dom in anything bigger than whatever The Oracle would put them up to.
But Dom had to be hiding something, even Leo and Spencer thought she was acting odd.
I moved to the desk, flinging open the top drawer. A mess of pens, sticky notes, and paper clips came flying forward. Moving my hand through the mess, taking in glimpses of the notes, I didn’t find anything interesting.
She could just be some asshole millionaire.
Shaking my head, I knew that wasn’t right. Dom was living in a decaying mansion, one whose records had been completely sealed. There had to be a reason she didn’t want me in her house.
Then I pulled at the side drawers. More paperwork, a picture of Dom, Leo, and Spencer at a beach. Standing at the center of the picture, Dom posed with her arms crossed — a reluctant grin teasing the corners of her pouting.
All of them were shirtless as they gestured to the sand around them. They looked happy. Like a family.
Was I tearing them apart?
A wave of guilt washed over me.
I shouldn’t be in here. I should leave, let them get back to their lives.
But the pull of the last drawer drew me in, begging me to finish my search before I ditched this office.
The sink was turning off in the bathroom, Leo would be drying the wound.
There were mere seconds left.
Gripping the cold metal, I opened the drawer. It slammed open, more empty than the others. The clatter of metal sliding inside was the only sound it emitted.
“Fuck.” I jumped back at the sight of a pistol. A glock. But it was the red behind the gun that took my attention.
“What the actual fuck?” My eyes widened as I touched the missing poster under the gun. The same poster I’d seen at the bar, the night Leo and Spencer had kicked Gabe’s ass.
Why does Dom have this?
But then my finger peels the corner, revealing another poster underneath it. A different girl, this one blonde. The same woman from the news report Spencer had been watching.
The blood drained from my face as I lifted another corner. A third poster. The woman described in the amber alert.
And below that, more and more and more. There were a dozen of them. Just stacked there. Like it was nothing. Like the gun was a paper weight on these missing women. Holding them in place. Holding them hostage.
I could hardly breathe, my lungs feeling as if they were being squeezed by a boa constrictor, taking my last breaths.
Everything came together. The car I’d cleaned, The rope and zip ties inside. It was everything they would have needed to kidnap someone. And I’d put my prints all over it.
Then I heard the sound of zippers, Leo’s bag being sealed up from the bathroom.
I had to get the fuck out of this office, right now.
Slamming the drawer closed, I rose to my feet — feeling my knees slip out of place as I rose.
I ran from the room, moving as quickly as I could to the car Leo had been working on. Just as I managed to lean on the grill, the bathroom door swung open.
Leo’s imposing figure filled the doorway as she looked at me.
Was my face flushed?
Forcing a smile, I swallowed as much of my nerves as I could handle. “Is it bad?”
It was the same question I was asking in my own mind.
Leo’s stern face flipped to a smile. “Don’t worry, Princess. I can take a hit.”
Crossing the shop, Leo sauntered toward me. Her brows furrowed as she watched my face. She could read me like a book. Suddenly I was regretting letting her get so close to me.
Does she know? Is she in on it?
I wanted to believe she didn’t, wanted to believe that someone who would put a rapist through The Gauntlet wouldn’t ever hurt a woman. But if they were the judge, jury, and executioner, were they exempt from falling in love with the power?
“You okay?” Leo touched my arm, her warm touch feeling like a burn on my skin. Leo couldn’t. She was a doctor. Do no harm and all that shit.
But the truth was, I didn’t really know these people. I didn’t really know any of them.
I’d never seen her degree, never saw her accreditations. It all could have been a lie.
Nodding, I looked toward the red Ducati. “Yeah, just tired.” But that soft look in her eyes had me doubting everything.
Maybe she doesn’t know.
Dom was the mystery. She never came with us to The Hollow. I’d yet to see her tattoo. And it was clear she was willing to get physical with me, to put me in the place she thought I belonged.
Wrapping an arm around me, Leo guided me toward the motorcycle. I didn’t want to draw her suspicion, trying not to flinch at the touch.
I’d always wondered where Dom’s loyalties truly lied. After all this time, she’d never given me the time of day. Never bothered to prove herself to me.
Now there was a pile of missing posters in her drawers. And I was a hostage in her mansion with nowhere to run.