Page 11 of Ruthless Bonds

“Maybe the neighbors forgot to arm it.”

OK. That made sense. Unexpected, but possible.

“Wait here, I’m going to check the master bedroom.” He headed toward the stairs.

I leaned against the wall, counting backwards from one hundred. It was an old coping mechanism to keep me calm. One I hadn’t needed in a long time.

My ears strained to listen for Dylan, but the house was completely quiet. It wasn’t just quiet, though. It seemed—empty. There was furniture in the living room, but no family pictures hanging over the fireplace or paintings on the walls. No personal touches like pillows on the couch or books on the table.

For the second time that night, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

A few minutes later, Dylan came down the stairs, rubbing his forehead through his mask. “There’s no safe up there.”

“What? Are you sure?” I pushed off the wall and walked toward him.

“Yeah, checked every room. No safe anywhere.”

Something was definitely wrong here. Panic gripped me for a moment as I wondered if the MC’s president had set Dylan up.

He pulled out his burner phone, his fingers flying over the screen. A moment later, he shoved his phone back into his pocket. “He said there’s a safe here. Let’s keep looking.”

Crap. I didn’t like surprises like this. Surprises meant taking time, which meant making mistakes and getting caught. We had to be quick.

Toward the back of the house was a hallway that had rooms to the left and rooms to the right.

“You check those rooms.” He nodded his head to the left. “I’ll check this side. It’s gotta be here somewhere.”

I nodded and headed down the hall. The first two doors opened to bare closets. No linens or cleaning supplies. It just reaffirmed my suspicions.

Nobody was living in this house.

Unease settled deep in my bones, no matter how hard I tried to shake it off.

Stop being paranoid.

At the end of the hall was a set of winding stairs that led to a lower level, but not to the basement I had come out of earlier. I turned on my flashlight and walked down slowly, peeked around the corner when I got to the bottom.

There was a bookshelf at the end of the hall, but it was angled strangely. I flashed my light over it as I got closer. Excitement ran through my veins as I realized it wasn’t just a bookshelf, but a door to a hidden room. Hell, if I was going to hide a ton of jewelry in a safe, I would definitely put it in my secret room hidden behind my big fat fake bookshelf door.

I pushed it open and stepped inside, flashing my light around the room. It was an office of sorts, witha large desk toward the back of the room and cabinets lining the walls. There was a floor lamp off to the side, and I flipped the switch on.

I wished I hadn’t.

The first thing I saw was blood on the ground. My gaze traveled along the floor until I landed on a pair of legs sticking out from behind the desk. A weight seemed to press on my chest, robbing me of breath as I tried to process what was in front of me.

Cabinet drawers had been pulled out; papers littered the floor, and there was blood smeared on the wall as if someone had tried to hold themselves up before sliding to the ground.

We had to get the hell out of here. I turned on shaky legs toward the exit, but stopped.

I couldn’t just leave someone down here. What if they were still alive? With the amount of blood covering the linoleum floor, I sincerely doubted it. But I had to check.

“Hello?” I called out softly. A part of me wanted them to answer, but the scared part of me wished they wouldn’t.

Careful not to step in any blood, I rounded the desk, my eyes widening at the man on the ground. He appeared to be in his fifties, with gray hair and a robust belly that had gashes going across it from where he had been cut. His eyes were closed, with one hand lying on top of his stomach as if to stop his bleeding. On the floor beyond his head was a medium-sized safe, its lid wide open.

Warning bells went off in my head as a familiar scent tickled my nose, barely there, but unmistakable.

Gasoline.

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