Page 48 of Haunted

“Oh my God, Henley. Are you okay?”

An acidy taste crept up my throat. It could have been the swaying motion, or the remnants of adrenaline coursing through my system. Either way, I turned my head away from Jade and vomited all over the sidewalk. Heavy footfalls thundered down the pavement, stopping mere feet from where my lunch had made a reappearance.

“Are you girls hurt? Do you need me to call the police? An ambulance?” our savior asked.

“No police,” I choked out between heaving breaths.

“Henley,” Jade chided.

“I just want to go home.”

Home.

It wasn’t the safety of the four walls I wanted. It was the man who’d shown me with his words and selfless actions how much I meant to him. The man I’d fallen in love with.

Keaton.

He was my home.

He was my everything.

9CALM YOUR TITS

Keaton

“What a fucking nightmare,” Noah stated the obvious as we pulled up to the townhouse.

The toxicology report on our latest victim showed traces of fentanyl and xylazine, also known on the streets as “tranq dope.” Combining the opioid with the––not for human consumption–– horse tranquilizer had become all the rage in the last couple of years. Why anyone would want to gamble with their lives in order to get high was beyond me, but the incidences of overdoses from the deadly mixture had been increasing at an alarming rate.

With the new information in hand, Noah and I took a road trip to the nearest DEA office in Charlestown an hour away, hoping they’d be able to shine a light on local dealers. We left four hours later with seventeen names, along with a new appreciation for our brothers at the agency. Seventeen scumbags in a two-hundred-mile radius was seventeen too many.

“We work through the list like we always do. One at a time.”

“Yeah, except we have no idea what this fucker looks like,” he grumbled, stepping out of my SUV. “What are we supposed to say? ‘Excuse me. Have you sold any of your nasty drugs to someone who looks like they’re a serial killer?’”

“Christ, Noah,” I sputtered a laugh at the British accent he used. “We’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow. Yippee,” he deadpanned.

“What the hell has gotten into you?”

“Nothing.”

I whirled on him, stopping fifteen feet from the front door.

“Bullshit. This attitude is way out of character for my normally calm, cool, and collected best friend. What gives?”

He dragged a hand through his messy brown locks––which were in serious need of a trim––and sighed. Noah was the very definition of pragmatic. If you looked up the word in a dictionary, you’d see his clean, crisp photo to the right. It’s what made him an elite FBI agent and most likely the reason he’d chosen to hop on the profiler wagon.

“It’s got nothing to do with the case. Just me being stupid.” I raised a brow and waited for him to elaborate. “Fuck. I’m jealous, okay? Are you satisfied?”

I rocked back on my heels, completely taken off guard.

“Jealous of what?”

“Your relationship with Henley.”

Narrowing my eyes, I took two menacing steps forward. “Be very careful with your next words, Noah, because if I find out you’re secretly crushing on my girl, friend or not, I will fuck you up.”

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