Page 80 of Stolen Love

But it’s been an hour and I have no idea if she’s okay or what happened after the paramedics came. I fight the urge to go to the hospital. I need to see her with my own eyes. I won’t be easy until I do.

I toss the burner phone Adira bought me aside. Drag the platinum wig from my head and throw it on the quilted floral comforter that looks like it’s twenty years old.

The news switches to a picture of me. They’re asking for help to find me. Suggesting I might be dressed in drag.

Definitely going to need a different disguise.

Ivy needs me. I should have stayed. If I hadn’t run…

Sitting on the edge of the mattress, I tug at the obscenely long fake lashes that are glued to my lids. Adira just carries all this drag stuff around in his purse like it’s a first aid kit.

A cockroach scuttles across the floor right in front of me.

Damn it. If I hadn’t run I would be locked up and none the wiser about Ivy’s condition. At least like this I can keep looking into what Richard Love was doing in Phoenix. I can—

The click of the door has my mouth drying out as I dive to the floor.

“He was here,” Adira says as a second person follows him into the room. “I told him to stay put.”

I stand in time to see Jason shut the door. He raises a brow at me. “You couldn’t just do what I told you, could you?”

“Ivy?” She’s all that matters.

His expression grows even more sour. “It’s bad.”

“What do you mean… bad?”

“This just in…” The reporter on the television clears his throat. “The ambulance driving Miss Love to the hospital after that press conference has been found abandoned.”

“What?” I turn to Adira for more information.

“The ambulance she was in never made it to the hospital.” Adira flings the bag he’s carrying on the bed as he rushes toward me. “They found Jackson. Dead. With his throat cut. But there was no sign of Ivy.”

“Alec?”

“Has an alibi,” Jason says. “Thanks to social media we can see where he’s been. After the press conference he went to a bar where he bought everyone a round of drinks.”

“Great way to establish an alibi,” I snap.

“At least we know he doesn’t have her yet. He’s still drinking,” Adira says.

“Dizzy?” She’s my next guess. “She’s been stalking Ivy. For months.”

Adira jerks his chin. “Could be. But no one has eyes on Nicole either so—”

“Nathaniel?” I start stripping out of the dress Adira put me in when we swapped clothes at the memorial.

“For someone who is so shy and sweet she has a lot of enemies,” Jason says.

“Give me your suit,” I snap at him. I’m going to start with that creep and work my way down the list from there.

“You can’t—”

“I brought you a change of clothes.” Adira indicates the bag he put on the bed. “Hat. Shades. All very drab.”

I empty it out and start dressing. “Where are my brothers?”

“Somewhat ahead of you,” Jason says as I shove one leg after the other into a pair of baggy pants. “Rebel’s sweet talking a nurse at Sunny right now to get access to your mother.”

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