Page 62 of Hold Me Before You Go

I looked down at my body. “Oh, I don’t think—um—I don’t think her clothes will—um—”

Mags had his coat back on and was putting on his hat as he said, “They will. If not, you can put on some of mine, but Grayson might try to fucking kill me when he sees them on you.”

My eyes widened in horror, and a sound I never thought I would heard from Mags came out then, from deep within his chest.

A chuckle.

“Yeah, sweetheart,” he said. “Your man is just as crazy as the rest of us.”

Then, he was gone, a burst of the freezing night air coming into the cabin for a split second. Mags disappeared into it as my mind replayed his words in my head.

Your man is just as crazy as the rest of us.

Your man is just as crazy as the rest of us.

Your man is just as crazy as the rest of us.

“Us?” I asked the empty cabin, as if it was going to give me an answer.

Chapter Fifteen

Grayson

The boys and I were silent, all of us lost in our thoughts, sitting around the meeting table.

It had been three hours since Donna Hale confessed her dark truth to us, revealing something so sinister, it made even my stomach twist. I bit down on my jaw—hard, grinding my teeth to the point of pain, and I kept my eyes on my cell phone sitting in front of me.

I needed to make this call.

Ihadto make this call. There was no other choice.

A deep, long sigh deflated my chest, my breath coming from my nose. It was the only sound in the room. Hayes wasn’t even pacing like he usually would. No, instead, he was sitting across from me, staring at the ceiling, his throat working every few minutes. Ash was seated at the opposite end of the table, his hands clasped together as he memorized the wood grain. Dominic was to my right, staring at the wall behind Hayes’ head, Jake on my left, doing the same. He’d come back immediately after Ash called him with the update.

Robert Hale wasn’t just Edwin Griff and Charles McLain.

Robert Hale was also The St. Louis River Killer, the serial killer who’d been terrorizing the Midwestern city for the last decade.

According to the St. Louis Police Department, he was suspected of killing at least 50 murders in the state of Missouri and Illinois. He’d gotten his name early in his career, because all his victims were found on the bank of the Mississippi River, usually a few clicks up or down from The Arch. During the first few years of his killing sprees, bodies would turn up almost every month, or sometimes, every week. Then, something changes. His killings became more spread out and random—messy. The FBI had classified him as an organized killer, but that was before the gap.

One thing stayed the same, though.

All his victims were classified as obese. Sex, age, or race didn’t matter.

The St. Louis River Killer was a fat-phobic serial killer.

Carrie’s beautiful body and smile flashed in my mind then as I worked to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

“It’s been hours, Gray,” Hayes said, ending the stretch of silence in the meeting room.

I lifted my head to look at him, and then I felt the rest of the boys’ eyes on me, waiting for an order or a plan. Something.

As much as I didn’t want to, I had to make a decision.

“Once the FBI gets involved, there’s a good chance we might be doing some time for that prison break,” I told the room. “Are you prepared for that?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve done time and, because I chose to hang out with you sons of bitches as a career choice, I knew it probably wasn’t going to be my last,” Ash rumbled from his end of the table.

Jake twisted his head to look at him. “What the hell do you mean, you’ve done time?” he asked, shock laced throughout his tired voice.

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