Page 47 of Soulless Angel

Shit.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CLOVER

After several calls to Blaze proved useless, I tried Cash instead. He picked up right away. In a rush, I told him that I’d been attacked, and I needed him to come get me. He didn’t ask questions or hesitate. Five minutes later, he was outside the restroom, ready to escort me from the building.

As we were leaving the building, sirens sounded in the distance. Someone must have found the dead man in the restroom. The police were on their way. We didn’t hang around. We hurried to Cash’s SUV and got the hell out of there.

While Cash drove, I repeatedly called Daire over and over until he answered. Without wasting a lot of time, I told him to get out of the building and go home right now. He didn’t question me. Taking my word for it, he said that he would see us soon.

The drive home wasn’t all that long, although it felt like it took forever. I nervously fidgeted the entire way, my mouth dry, my heart racing.

“Calm down, Clover. Take deep breaths. Everything will be all right.” Cash did his best to reassure me. At a red light, he reached over and stroked my cheek. “I’m so fucking proud of you. You have no idea how amazing you are.”

I sure didn’t feel amazing. I felt fucking terrified. My mind was a mess as I tried to process the surreal experience. It all felt like a really horrible dream.

“They know about us. They want us dead. What are we going to do?” I began to ramble on, convinced that the person running the dark web content at Paradise was going to have us killed. We never should’ve gone there. This was too much.

“Hey, chill out. You need to keep your head. This is no time to fall apart. We’re not going to let anything happen to you, Sunshine. We won’t take our eyes off you until this is all over.”

Cash’s continued reassurance did nothing to make me feel better. We must have been careless. We’d done something to screw up, and now they were coming for us.

When we arrived at the house, Cash pulled a gun from under his seat, telling me to stay behind him while he went ahead and checked things out. That definitely didn’t help me feel better. Neither Blaze nor Daire seemed to be home yet. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

I followed Cash as he did a sweep of the house. First the exterior before venturing inside. Everything seemed fine. Still, I couldn’t shake the bad feeling that settled in the pit of my stomach. These people knew that we were students. They had to know our names. Most likely, that meant they also knew where we lived.

Once Cash had checked the entire house from top to bottom and felt confident that it was clear, I went to the kitchen and promptly poured myself a stiff drink. I knew that it wasn’t the right way to handle this. Right then, I didn’t care.

When I chugged down my first drink and poured another, Cash eyed me uncertainly. His lips pressed together, and he shook his head, like he wanted to say something, but decided against it.

A few minutes later, the front door opened, and Daire strolled inside. “What’s going on? Clover was in a panic.”

“Someone tried to kill her in the bathroom at school,” Cash explained.

“Someone tried to kill me too.” Blaze’s voice preceded him as he rushed into the house moments behind Daire.

Blaze and I took turns recounting our personal incidents to the others and to each other. Hearing that he’d been chased at gunpoint scared the shit out of me. If Gage hadn’t shown up when he did, Blaze might not have made it home.

It quickly became clear that the only reason the other two had been spared such an encounter was because they were in class. These guys were looking for all of us. There was no denying how serious this was.

“They must have had their own hidden cameras back there,” Daire mused, pouring a drink of his own. “We should have known.”

“It’s not like we could wear masks or anything,” Blaze pointed out. “That would have been suspicious. Even fetish wear masks would have had to be removed when we showed our I.D. at the door. It was inevitable that they would get footage of us, either from the back or from the front entry. We should have come up with a contingency plan.”

I chugged back my second drink and reached for the bottle. That’s when Blaze swiped it away.

“What the hell?” I protested.

“You need to stay sober,” Blaze admonished. “Drinking yourself stupid will not keep you alive. You’re cut off.”

His tone was hard and firm. I stared at him, aghast.

“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “You can’t cut me off, Blaze. I’m an adult. I don’t need your permission to have a few.”

Blaze’s expression darkened. “You do now. Do you really want to fight me on this, Clover? You won’t win.”

He didn’t get forceful with me all that much lately. Since everything had gone down with Brady harming the two of us, Blaze had been a lot more chill. The monster within him lurked in his amber brown eyes now, reminding me that it still existed.

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