Page 132 of Arran's Obsession

My focus sharpened.

Tyres squealed, then in a rush, a vehicle bore down fast on the warehouse. It had the boot open and the windows blacked out in a way that couldn’t be legal. Meaning this wasn’t a car used often, or the blackout film had just been added.

I dialled Arran.

The driver performed a tight turn then reversed in hard, aiming straight at the club entrances. The car smashed into a low bollard, jerking the front wheels up. With the engine still on and fumes billowing, the driver crawled through the centre, only their shape visible through the dark glass.

I stuck my phone in my pocket and sprinted.

A naked body was shoved out the back of the car by gloved hands. The person dropped heavily to the ground in a tumble of limbs, and the driver whipped back to his seat, too fast for me to see anything but the skeleton mask he and the body both wore.

I couldn’t miss the blood, though. A slash of it gleaming under the yellow streetlights.

Driving my feet into the ground, I was almost on them.

“We’ve been rammed. I think someone’s hurt,” I yelled for the benefit of Arran if he’d answered my goddamned call.

The black car’s engine sound changed, then the vehicle lurched forward, a cloud billowing after it. The driver floored it.

Grey smoke swirled around the body dumped outside of the strip club. A blonde woman, nude, a red gaping slice across her throat, the bandanna only covering her upper face.

I stared at her in horror, then croaked out the words, “She’s been killed and dumped.”

Halfway up the hill, the car choked, stalling. They’d fucked it up in the crash. The driver scrambled out on the wrong side for me to see anything but their movement.

Furious, I took off, running hard to chase them down.

Chapter 39

Arran

Sprinting around the building, I saw nothing for a long moment. Then my peace was shattered. A body left naked on the ground, her face covered by one of my own crew’s masks, and her neck glistening with blood.

Genevieve.

Gen with no choker protecting her throat. Gen with no chance of survival from the depth of the cut.

Anguish clamped hold of my stomach, and I stopped, unable to take another step. Subconsciously, I knew it couldn’t be her, but it gripped me all the same.

All the life she’d given me iced over and died, like she had. Tyler jogged past, two of his team with him and the rest monitoring the other side of the building.

He squatted next to the body and peered closer. “Fucking hell,” he bit out, then raised his focus. “This a police job? Lot of cameras around here. There’ll be eyes on us from the flats down the way.”

He was right.

I couldn’t move my lips.

“Shit. Did you know her?” He tugged the mask from her face.

The terror released me. It wasn’t Gen. Not her beautiful eyes in these unseeing duplicates, not her lips.

My heart restarted, beating too fast. Packing away my horrified, gut-wrenching thoughts, I managed to speak.

“Her name’s Natasha Reid. I’ll make the call.”

A short while later,Natasha’s body was being scrutinised with photographs taken from every obscene angle, an ambulance arriving with lights swirling. Cops swarmed the place, Detective Dickhead lauding it up.

I handled him, getting Manny to pull the CCTV footage. Not that there was any concern over the facts: There was no blood on the ground where the body had been dumped. Nothing like the scene where Cherry had been killed, despite the reused method.

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