Page 118 of Morally Gray Daddies

My entire body tensed as a pair of feet stalked toward me, and it didn’t register in my brain immediately that they were naked feet, no shoes, until he was standing above me.

Alive.

“We need to leave,” he said tightly.

“Is he?—”

He stabbed a finger at the pile on the floor. “Get your clothes on. Now.”

I pushed away the thousand and one questions flooding my head and did exactly as he’d commanded. It dawned on me as I finished that he’d been out there as naked as I’d been lying there on the floor, but even in the darkness I could see no sign of blood, a wound, or any indication he’d been hurt. There was also no sign of the man I’d seen in the kitchen, and his absence brought a sense of foreboding that prickled my nerves.

We both finished dressing at the same time, and as we did, he gripped my arm and tugged me from the room. He moved decisively down the hallway and through the kitchen, weaving past the island and the stools we’d placed there earlier. We were about to start crossing the living room when I saw… it.

It was nothing like what they show in the movies. It was just a man—no, not a man, a shape that had been a man—lying on the floor. In the darkness, he gave the impression he might’ve passed out there or was searching under the couch for his lost keys. Except… he looked like neither of those things, because in some sense I couldn’t quite pin down he appeared exactly like what he was: a dead body.

“Oh, god,” I choked the words out in a hoarse whisper.

He tugged on my arm to keep me moving. “Don’t stare. Don’t focus on it. Just keep walking.”

I jerked my gaze up and did as he commanded, stepping past the form as he guided me to the door.

We headed straight to the SUV, and he bundled me inside. Once he’d closed the passenger door, he disappeared, and I kept my gaze fixed straight ahead, trying not to focus on what I’d seen back there. A few minutes later, he reappeared at the driver’s side and slipped inside. He started the truck, pulled away from the house, and headed back up the dirt road we’d come down only a few hours before.

“Are you okay?” he asked quietly.

“I think so.”

“If you feel like you’re going to throw up, say something. Neither of us needs to be riding with the smell of vomit for the next few hours.”

“Yes, Sir. I don’t think I’m going to puke, though.”

“Everyone says that their first time.”

‘Their first time.’ He’d said it so calmly, as if he was talking about the first time you went bungee-jumping or something. Not the first time you walked past a dead body that the man who’d just made love to you had killed.

In the rearview mirror, the darkened house faded into the depth of the desert night. We came to the gate, passed through it, and he closed it behind us as he’d done when we’d arrived hours ago. It wasn’t until we were all the way back to the highway we’d been traveling on that I had the chaos of my thoughts collected enough I was ready to ask the question that mattered most.

“What… What do we do now?”

“We change locations,” he answered laconically. “Once it’s become clear his first operator’s been killed, he’ll send another.”

“Who’ll send? Who did… that?” I gestured back toward the house that had long disappeared into the darkness.

“Your friend’s father,” he replied. “Antonio Delgado.”

Mr. Delgado? “He… He sent that man to kill you?”

“Yes. I’m told he’s taken what I did to you rather hard.”

I shivered. I liked Sonja’s father, certainly more so than was probably normal or appropriate. Still, I’d never thought he’d do something like this, even considering what I knew he’d seen in that video.

“I… I’m sorry, Sir,” I said softly. “I didn’t mean to cause you a problem.”

He brushed the comment away with a firm tone. “You don’t need to apologize, Aubrey. You’ve done me no wrong.”

The white and yellow lines of the highway flowed past us, the headlights creating bright dots of white at the edges from the roadside markers that flitted past us as we sped by.

“So… where are we going now?” I asked.

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