Page 89 of The Sinner's Bargain

I started my own search.

I tracked every place she could possibly be curled up and reading.

The dining room.

The sitting area.

The courtyard.

The kitchen.

I called her name as I ran.

“What’s going on?” Oliver and Vance were standing in the foyer when I returned to the front of the house.

“Have you seen Blue?” I asked Oliver, already knowing Vance had spent the entire day with me.

The man’s eyes widened, darkened even as he shook his head. “I haven’t. Have you checked—?”

“I’ve checked everywhere,” I cut in, my chest tight.

“Maybe she finally did the right thing and left,” Vance supplied with a small shrug.

“She wouldn’t leave,” I snapped.

I knew that with a certainty that sliced into my ribs.

She wouldn’t just leave.

She wouldn’t.

But maybe she had. I’d been so busy. Maybe she was tired of waiting.

No.

No, she wouldn’t.

It had to be something else.

Cyrus joined our group with three of his men.

“Anything?” I demanded even though I knew he would have said already.

He shook his head. “We’re searching the house.”

The house.

The fucking, rotting house with its need for blood and death. What if it had taken her? What if she was broken at the bottom of the stairs like my mom, or a bloated corpse like Vittoria after she’d been fished from the lake?

I knew my terror was in my eyes when I met Cyrus’s gaze. “Cy...”

He put a hand up. “Let’s not go there, okay? We’re going to find her. I have men all over this place. I’ve sent the rest out into the garden just in case she found a way in.”

“It’s fucking dark out there,” I breathed, eyes moving to the windows and the inky spill claiming what had been clear blue mere hours ago. “If she’s out there...”

Bells had begun to jingle between my ears, a high, grating shriek that made my skull rattle. My hands shook once before I bunched them into fists along with my resolve.

Blue needed me.

---