Chapter 24

Chapter Twenty-Four

Hudson

T o say I'm pissed is an understatement. I thought I'd be home by now. Instead, here I'm debriefing Atlas, who was thrilled to get out of his meeting until we had to fill him in on why.

"So you're the target?"

"Or the fall guy," Kenzo says.

"Looks that way. I'm the one with the connection to each victim. But that doesn't give me any idea of who it could be, though."

"You might actually have more enemies than us," Kenzo laughs, and I give him a look.

"What? It's true. You can't kill as many people as you have and not make enemies in the process. Even if the guy you're killing is an asshat, someone out there still loves him."

"He's not wrong. It's how it was when I was growing up. We would take out the whole family, not just to send a message, but to prevent circumstances like this from happening."

"Well, it's a good thing you fuck up, or you wouldn't have Ivy," I snap, getting up and pacing.

Ivy was the only surviving member of a rival family that Atlas and his father wiped out. A cop had snuck her out and placed her with an adoptive family. He had no idea who she was when she came into his life, and ironically, neither did she.

Atlas gives me a look that threatens to gut me if I mention his wife again, but I'm beyond caring.

"Don't mind him. He's just pissed he's here with us and not with his new wife," Kenzo remarks.

Atlas does a double take. "You got married?"

"You said I could borrow the plane," I say defensively.

"I didn't know you were getting married."

I shrug. "You didn't ask."

He pinches the bridge of his nose. "How is it that you managed to make me and Kenzo seem sane?"

"If that's what you need to tell yourself, go for it."

Kenzo starts laughing. "To be fair, Atlas has a point. You stole your kid's girlfriend, and just to one-up him, you married her."

"Yeah, well, she loves him, so I needed to do something big."

Atlas looks from me to Kenzo. "Is he hearing himself right now?"

"I personally think he's going through a midlife crisis," Kenzo replies.

I pick up my whiskey glass from the desk and throw it at his head. He ducks, and the glass hits the wall and bounces off without shattering. None of that cheap-ass glass for Atlas.

"Is she a gold digger?" Atlas asks as he leans against his desk.

"Was Ivy?"

He tenses. "Ivy is different."

"Why, ‘cause she's yours?"

"Alright, fuckers, calm down." Kenzo sighs. You know things are going to shit when Kenzo is the voice of reason.

"I had to fight her just to let me buy her clothes. She didn't marry me for my money, Atlas. So you can just forget that right now. She married me because I blackmailed her. I'm ninety percent sure she hates me."

Atlas relaxes. "Okay, good."

"I need new friends," Kenzo mutters.

"I hate to put this in your head, but if this person has it out for you, you might need to keep a closer eye on your girl."

"Fuck, I never thought they might target her." I run my fingers through my hair and pull my phone out to check the cameras.

"Or she could be involved. The timing of her coming into your life seems more suspicious than coincidental now."

I pause and look up at Kenzo.

"Are you high? She's an eighteen-year-old high school student. She has no idea what I really do for a living. For fuck's sake, she thinks I drive Atlas's ass around all day. She sure as hell wouldn't know about an old target's wife or who my army buddies were."

"Stranger things have happened. In our world, we tend to underestimate women when they're often stronger than we think."

I shake my head and look at Atlas. He shrugs. "Ivy shot me."

"Trix drugged me. Though, to be fair, I drugged her first. Oh, and she's the real Bone Keeper."

I blink, then turn back to Atlas, who doesn't look surprised at all. Of course, Atlas knows. That motherfucker knows everything.

"But she's so…"

"Badass, I know." He smiles proudly.

I was thinking fragile, but I don't share that, still kind of stunned.

"You need to look into her. Should have done it before you married her. But if the search comes back bad, there's nothing a bullet won't fix."

"Careful, Atlas," I warn him. He might be my boss, but it's only on paper. I work for him because I choose to, and he pays well, not because I need to.

He gets up and pours himself another glass of whiskey and downs it before he can say anything else that will make me want to shoot him.

"We checked out her father. He has a rap sheet a mile long. He was in and out of prison for more than a decade of her life. How the fuck she ended up in his custody is beyond me, especially since he's not on the birth certificate."

"A simple blood test would take care of that, but can you blame the mom for not listing him? She probably thought she was doing the kid a favor," Kenzo says.

"I looked into his connection to the hit-and-run, and my sources tell me it has nothing to do with the loan shark he owed money to. Word on the street is he goes after the source, not the families," I tell them, not bothering to listen to their response as I scan through all the cameras in the house, frowning when I can't find Starling.

"What's wrong?" Kenzo asks.

"I can't find her," I mutter.

"Isn't she at school?" he drawls, making Atlas chuckle.

"Maybe, but we didn't get in till six-thirty this morning."

I call her cell, but she doesn't answer. I call her again and leave her a tense message to call me back.

"Call the high school," Atlas suggests when he sees I'm worried.

I consider that as I look back through the cameras more slowly. I find her school bag at the front door where I left it this morning and notice the door's wide open.

I stand up. "Something's wrong."

I walk out and dial the high school on my way. Once the secretary answers, I ask her to check and see if Starling was at school today. I wait while the phone plays annoying elevator music.

Atlas and Kenzo step up next to me. "Might as well come along," Atlas says.

I nod. If something happens, I'll take all the help I can get.

"Get in. I'll drive," Kenzo orders.

I dig in my pocket for my keys and toss them to him. Atlas and I climb in the back as the secretary comes back.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Smith, but it appears Starling didn't make it in today. And since nobody contacted us, it will be marked down as an unauthorized absence."

"What about Abbott Peters?"

She tuts and asks me to hold again.

"I swear to God, if she puts me on hold once more, I'm going to reach down the phone and choke her with her fucking pearls."

"How do you know she's wearing pearls?"

"Oh, trust me, she screams pearls and twinsets," I grunt. She comes back and informs me Abbot didn't show up either.

I hang up without thanking the bitch and look at Atlas. "Neither of them showed up."

"So they skipped together?"

I grit my teeth so hard my jaw pops.

"You have cameras. Can't you scroll back through the footage?" Kenzo says over his shoulder.

"Shit." Of course. I'm a fucking idiot.

I open the app, go back to when I left, and fast-forward until I see Starling wake up. I watch as she looks around and dives out of bed, sneaking down to her room. When she disappears into her bathroom, I lose sight of her, which pisses me off that I didn't put cameras in there.

I speed up the footage, feeling myself get hard as she gets dressed. I frown when she freezes, thinking the feed has glitched, until I see the door open. When I see Abbot enter, I expect the worst. But then her hand covers her mouth, and she's running to the bathroom. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what's happening.

When Abbot comes out and trashes the room, I curse. "Fuck! Kenzo, drive faster."

"What's happening?" he asks, speeding up.

"Abbot. He must know. He trashed Starling's room."

I watch it unfold on the screen. There's no sign of Starling, and though I could fast-forward, a part of me thinks the worst. Finally, I see her rush into the room, and he pushes her. My grip on the phone tightens. I continue watching as Abbot leaves and Starling stumbles back into the bathroom.

"Did he hurt her?" Atlas asks quietly.

"I can't tell, but if he did, I'll kill him."

Some time passes before she emerges from the bathroom again, this time struggling to stay on her feet. I watch her walk down the stairs, looking like she's in some kind of trance. I follow her as she leaves the house on foot, not taking anything with her. I'm still watching the footage when we get to the house, but as far as I can tell, she hasn't come back, and when I look up, the front door's still open.

We all climb out of the car and head inside. Nothing's out of place downstairs, so I head upstairs.

I lift my phone and dial Abbot. It goes straight to voicemail as I walk into Starling's room.

"Jesus." Kenzo whistles from behind me.

The phone beeps, telling me to leave a message. "If you've hurt her, I swear to God, I'll make what happened to you yesterday look like child's play." I hang up as Kenzo moves past me and goes into the bathroom.

I look around and watch as Atlas picks up her cell phone and taps the screen. "Missed calls from you, but that's it."

"She threw up," Kenzo calls out, and I head into the bathroom.

"I figured that out myself." But yeah, there's a faint smell of vomit in the air.

I step forward and see something on the floor. I bend down to pick it up and find a razor blade. A million things run through my head, and none of them are good.

"What's that?" Kenzo asks.

I hold it up for him to see, and he steps closer, taking it from me.

"There's some blood on it, but it's not fresh, and there's no blood anywhere in here."

I blow out a relieved breath. He's right. Let's not jump to conclusions.

"I think you should tell us everything from the beginning, Pete," Atlas says from behind me. "If we can figure out what's going on in her head, we might be able to work out where she went."

I turn and nod, then quickly go check my room and bathroom just in case, but find nothing. I join Kenzo and Atlas, who have made their way down to the den. Kenzo has the liquor cabinet open but settles on grabbing us each a bottle of water from the mini fridge instead.

"Don't know how the rest of today is going to play out, and alcohol won't help us figure anything out," he says, tossing me and Atlas a bottle of water.

I sit in one of the armchairs while Atlas takes the other, and Kenzo leans against the windowsill.

"I don't even know where to start."

"Start at the beginning. She hasn't been here long. How much could there possibly be?" Kenzo snorts.

I scratch my head and start from the first moment I saw her asleep on Abbot's lap at the hospital, to sending her upstairs to my bed when we got back from Vegas. When I'm done, they both stare at me.

"I'm no expert on women," Kenzo begins, then stops. "Actually, I've got nothing."

"You're both acting like I don't know what you did to Trix and Ivy. The things I know about are bad enough. I can only imagine how much worse the shit I don't know about is."

"We're all a little fucked up, so why would dating be normal for us?" Atlas asks, looking generally confused.

"I'm not sure a little fucked up covers the lengths you went to. Either of you."

"I guess, in the grand scheme of things, you've been pretty tame," Atlas concedes.

"But we only had to manipulate Ivy and Trix into admitting how they felt. Ivy and I were attracted to each other right from the beginning."

"Same for me and Trix."

"Starling wanted me. The day of the wake, she was attracted to me, I could tell."

Atlas looks from me to Kenzo.

"What?"

"She might have been attracted to you, but would she have acted on it while she had a boyfriend if you hadn't forced the issue?"

I think back to our interaction. "No. She's fiercely loyal."

"That's where your issues are. You're not just fighting her feelings for you; you're fighting her feelings for your son."

"Does she love him?" Atlas asks.

"Yes. I knew she did when I married her."

"I feel like I'm growing a vagina," Kenzo mutters.

Atlas ignores him. "Does your kid love her?"

"He's fucking around on her."

"That wasn't what I asked."

I rub my hands over my face.

"The way I see it, you need to change your approach to it. You're trying to make her forget her boy, right?"

"He's not her boy," I grit out at Kenzo, who smirks. Motherfucker is just trying to get a rise out of me.

"What I'm saying is, stop trying to make her forget about him and make her think of you instead. And not in the million ways she wants to kill you. Show her the perks of being your wife. You've gotta give her more than an eight-inch reason to stay."

I pull my gun and point it at him. "I'm thinking Trix would make an amazing single mom. Right now, I'd really be doing her a favor."

"Now that's not very nice. Daaad, Pete's being mean to me."

"One of these days, Kenzo, I'll let him shoot you just to give me some fucking peace and quiet." He looks at me and stands up. "You can't shoot him today. I need him to look into Starling." I move my gun to point at Atlas. "Calm the fuck down," he barks at me.

Reluctantly, I lower my gun, but I don't take my finger off the trigger.

"We need to know more about her for reasons like this. Where would she go? Who would she turn to? You also need to know what you're up against because that razor blade in Kenzo's hand says it's more than what you know."

He's right. I know he is. I just don't like it.

"We check out everyone connected to us. We only let this shit slide because Abbot and Starling were minors, and I thought you'd keep separate from our world."

"And that brings us back to the whole eight inches thing." Kenzo laughs.

I'm considering getting up and shoving the corkscrew on the bar counter into his eyeball when I hear the front door open.

I yank my phone out and check the front camera. There is a car pulling away that isn't familiar, and I make a note to send the plates to Kenzo to check later as I get up and rush out of the den. I freeze when I see Starling standing in the kitchen, watching me with an unreadable expression on her face.

There are a million things I want to say and a dozen more I want to do, but I settle on one. I storm across the room, wrap my arm around her, and slam my mouth down over hers.