Sorrow Byrd (Glass Heart Duet #2)

Chapter 1

Vonn

“Nash!”

Silence.

Rain pelts my skin, and fat drops roll down my cheeks, soaking my shirt.

Batting aside branches in the overgrown front yard of the Gabriel Mansion, mud sucks at my boots as I march onward.

“Nash!”

Holding still, I quiet my breathing, listening with more than just my ears. It’s too dark to see with the heavy storm clouds blocking the last of the late afternoon sun.

There is no sound or any indication anyone is there, but I tilt my head to the right, slip my hand into the waistband of my jeans, and draw my Sig Sauer.

And I stare into the thick bushes, trying to see through the darkness at the person I know is on the other side of that tree.

Nance, Nash’s housekeeper, said a man was out here looking for his wife. Byrdie had run up to her room to escape whatever dark fate that had followed her here. I’d found her white-faced, panicked and shaking, with her tote bag ready to flee.

Thumbing the safety off my gun, I lift it in a two-handed grip.

As the rain lashes me, plastering my t-shirt and jeans to my body, it’s quiet.

Too damn quiet.

My mind prompts me to turn to the house. To Byrdie. She was so damn afraid that someone was here to hurt her, but it isn’t safe to leave an enemy alive this close to her. I’m out here to make it safe for her, and I intend to do just that.

A twig snaps, a bush sways, and my finger finds the trigger, but I don’t press down.

Not yet.

“Nash!” I call out. I don’t blink as I wait to shoot or to dive to the ground, depending on who steps out from behind that bush and whether they have a weapon in their hand.

“Vonn?”

Releasing my tension in a soft exhalation, I thumb the safety back on. I’m lowering my gun to my side when Nash steps out from behind a tree.

His eyes slide from me to the gun and back to me again. He swallows so hard I track his Adam’s apple bobbing. “How close did I just come to having my head blown off?”

“What happened?” I tuck the gun back into the waistband of my jeans, not answering his question.

"That close, huh?” His eyebrow rises, a sign he did not miss my avoidance. “Someone was trampling around out here. I followed the sound. Heard a gunshot, and I ducked. There was another one a bit later, but it was farther away.”

“I heard it inside.” I peer around the forest, which takes up most of the front of Nash’s mansion.

It’s overgrown with no gardener to work on it after we buried the last one in the backyard for daring to put his hand on Byrdie. It doesn’t feel right. I couldn’t say why, how, or where this wrong feeling is coming from, but it’s not safe out here. “Let’s get inside. I need to check on Jessica.”

I almost slipped up and called her Byrdie. She told me her name when I won her trust, and I swore I would keep it a secret until she was ready to share it with Makhi and Nash.

My steps are steady as we retrace our steps to the house.

I left the back door partially open to investigate the gunshot I heard while I was up in Byrdie’s room, so I lead Nash back to it.

In sneakers, Nash slips and slides over the mud-slicked ground more than I do in the lace-up black boots I always like to wear.

The heavy rain continues to lash us both, and we’re shivering and cold, our clothes soaked through as we enter the house through the back door.

It’s as quiet inside as it was outside.

Other than the rain we drip all over and the muddy footprints we leave on the dark hardwood floors, there’s nothing to suggest anyone has been in the house except us, yet it feels wrong.

“Where is she?” Tension stiffens Nash’s shoulders as he shuts the door and locks it behind us.

He must feel the wrongness too.

“Upstairs. I told her to hide when we heard the gunshot.”

He glances at me as we walk through the dining room toward the entryway. “Do you think someone is here to hurt her?”

“Why else would someone be here with a gun?”

“Nance said a guy was looking for his wife,” he says.

I know. Nance told me. Her words prompted me to check on Byrdie. I’d told Nance to go to her room and stay there, not wanting her to get hurt in case someone was prepared to go through Nance to get to Byrdie.

Out of the corner of my eye, Nash is looking at me, waiting for an answer I can’t give him.

Byrdie is that wife. She was secretive before, so quiet about her past, but right from the start I knew she was running from something.

No one has shadows that dark in their eyes if they aren’t afraid.

She trusted me with the secret of her real name.

I can’t give that up. Not even to Nash, who I trust like a brother.

As we continue through the entryway, Nash’s office door flies open. My gun jumps into my hand. That’s how fast I reach for it.

Makhi scowls at me from the doorway, eyes flicking from the gun in my hand to my face. “What the fuck?”

Glaring at him, I tuck my gun away. “You’re lucky I didn’t blow your head off. Didn’t you hear the gunshots outside? What the fuck are you doing flinging doors open like that?”

Nash steps around me while I’m talking to Makhi, and I turn my attention to him. “Where are you going?”

He continues toward the staircase. “Checking on Jessica.”

With a snort, Nash turns back to the office. “Wasting your time, bro. Whatever trouble you had out there, you won’t be having anymore. Bitch is a fucking liar.”

My back stiffens as the curse falls from his lips. “What the fuck did you say?”

Makhi raises his voice as he looks me in the eye. “I said that the bitch is a fucking—”

Five steps close the distance between us, and I have my hand wrapped around his throat before he can say anything else.

Nash appears on my right, grasping my shoulder and tugging me. “Let him go.”

I don’t let Makhi go, and I’m too big for Nash to move.

I keep my eyes fixed on Makhi, and even though I have my hand loose around his throat, he smirks at me as if wanting to provoke me.

“Don’t talk about her like that,” I warn him.

“She was playing you, Vonn,” Makhi says, dropping his smirk. “She was playing all of us.”

“What happened?” Nash asks Makhi and turns to me. “Let him go.”

Makhi knocks my hand aside, and even though it’s not hard enough to move me, I release him. He’s a friend, and I don’t want to hurt him. But my protective instincts for Byrdie are strong.

“I found Nash’s mom’s necklace in her bag.

The one she was wearing in that picture,” Makhi says, pointing his chin at the massive painting hanging in the entryway opposite the staircase.

“She had her friends or boyfriend or whatever out there causing trouble so she could snatch up the loot and make her escape.”

“My mom’s necklace?” Nash glances up at the gold-framed portrait of a blonde woman with amber eyes identical to his. “But that’s—”

Makhi bends to retrieve something from just inside the office—a tote bag—and tosses it toward Nash, who catches it. “Wherever it was, it’s not there any longer.”

Nash peers into the bag and pulls out the emerald and gold necklace. From his expression, a mix of confusion and shock, it’s the same necklace. “How…”

I frown. “Byrdie wouldn’t take it. She had no reason to.”

“Who the fuck is Byrdie?” Makhi demands.

Shit.

I made a big mistake. I promised to keep a secret, and I just spilled it.

“Why do you think she lied?” I ask Makhi instead.

He glares at me. “Because I caught her stealing Nash’s mom’s necklace, and her name is fake. If she lied about her name, she lied about everything else.”

I struggle to understand how he can be so fucking dense sometimes. “She is here running from someone who hurt her,” I bite out. “You saw the way she flinched away from you. She spent her days doing everything humanly possible to be invisible. Of course she would make up a fucking name.”

He furrows his brow. “You knew she was using a fake name.”

“Yes, I knew. Why would she run from someone and keep her real name if she didn’t want to be found?”

Swallowing, Makhi looks at Nash. “And you knew?”

“Yes, I knew.” Nash sets the bag down on the floor. “Since her interview.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Makhi demands, scowling.

“Because it should have been obvious. She dyed her fucking hair. Why wouldn’t she change her name? What else happened when we were outside? And if you’re certain that she’s gone, why is her bag still here?”

“All the money she earned as our maid is still here,” Nash says.

Makhi’s shoulders draw inward, and he avoids my gaze. “I thought she was here to rob the place, so I fired her.”

I step into him. “The person who hurt her before tracked her down. She was crying in my arms before I went out to look for Nash. And you fucking kicked her out!”

Breathing hard, he stares down at the floor. “She lied about her name.”

“Because she didn’t trust you with her name!” I snap. “And she was fucking right not too, wasn’t she?”

Spinning around, pissed I wasted all this time pulling answers from Makhi when I could have been going after Byrdie, I stride to the front door.

I twist the doorknob, shove it open, and step into a torrential downpour.

The rain was bad before. Now it comes down like heavy sheets, making me feel cold just looking at it.

Needing more answers, I turn around. Nash is following me. Makhi hasn’t moved from beside the office door.

“Did she have a coat on? Could she have come back and you missed her?” I ask him.

Makhi darts his eyes from the torrential rain to the tote bag on the floor.

“Makhi!” I snap. “I don’t have time for this shit. Could she have come back?”

He takes a breath and releases it quietly. His face is white as he stares out at the rain. “She didn’t have anything. No coat.” He swallows and whispers, “I slammed the door in her face. Even if she’d wanted to come back, she couldn’t have.”

I turn away from his last whisper and step into the rain. If I don’t walk away from Makhi, I’ll draw my weapon and do something I regret.

Byrdie left with less than she had when she came here. Worse. It looks like whoever was hunting her might have found her.