Page 47 of Nemesis

“I’mnot,” I snap. “Whoever did this was sending a message to me. So… let me take a look, and then you can send in your goon squad.”

He grunts. Considers. He’s very official in his uniform, complete with the rather outlandish, round-topped hat. It’s everything he hides behind when he does questionable things for other people that make me not trust him completely.

Sheriff Bradshaw has been known to follow the money when it suits him. So perhaps I’m not as forgiving as some other people when it comes to him. Why should I? He was in the Hell Hounds’ pocket, and then the Titans’. Then, when it suited him, he double-crossed both.

I step around him while he’s still deciding. The sun is up. The waves crashing as the tide comes in sits in my ears like background music. Rather that than the hum of police chatter, the attention it’s drawing.

I focus back in on the missing eye. The left one. There’s a trickle of blood running down his cheek, dripping off his chin and onto his shirt. I don’t know how he died, but he’s spread-eagle on the wall. Nails through his hands and feet. A stake through his stomach.

Mystomach turns, but I swallow sharply and force my attention to keep moving.

The man is barefoot. Blood droplets fall off his downturned toes, creating a pool on the concrete beneath him.

Whether or not he was alive when they put him up will be left to the professionals. It’s got to be a message of some kind—I just don’t know for whom.

It’s no secret that Apollo, one owner of Olympus, is my twin brother. While Olympus might’ve been a good staging area for a dead body, it doesn’t get nearly the foot traffic Bow & Arrow does. Even now, midday in the middle of the week, there’s a crowd collecting at the edges of the yellow crime scene tape.

“When is he coming down?” I ask Bradshaw.

He wrinkles his nose. “As soon as you leave and mygoon squadcan do their work.”

“Fine.” I head for the door. It’s a good thing the body is centered on the building, and the door is off-kilter. Otherwise, I’d need a damn umbrella—and nerves of steel—to get inside.

The sheriff catches my arm. “You can’t go in there.”

“That’s not a crime scene—the outside is.”

He scowls. “A planted bomb one day, someone murdered the next? You think you should stay open?”

“Luckily, that’s not your call.”

I jerk out of his hold. I fumble with the lock and wrench the door open. The heavy doors are meant to block the light, especially if patrons enter before sunset. It doesn’t ruin the illusion of darkness for everyone else. But it also blocks most of the noise from traveling out onto the street.

I shoulder inside and lock the door behind me.

This club is my home. I love everything about it, and I’d do anything to protect it.

But right now, I’mexhausted. I make a beeline for my apartment and lock myself in. After a quick shower, in which I’mcareful not to get my elbow bandage wet, I towel off and head to bed. I draw the shades, pull the blankets up to my ears, and fall asleep faster than I could’ve imagined.

The mystery of bombs and one-eyed dead bodies can wait.

13ARTEMIS

I waketo someone touching my shoulder, and I swing before I am fully conscious. My fist connects with something hard. A light pain ricochets from my knuckles up my arm, into my elbow.

My eyes snap open, and I’m faced with a looming Kade Laurent.

I wish I didn’t know his last name, but my brother likes to meddle.

He’s rocked back on his heels, crouched next to the bed. Even this way, at eye level, he seems bigger than life. His dark gaze burns, and his fingers probe his cheek.

“Good to know how you wake,” he finally says.

I sit up and scowl at him. My brain, for all the adrenaline in the world, is slow to catch up. That he’s in front of me right now. That I was, moments ago, sound asleep in my Bow & Arrow apartment alone.

But the door was locked…

“It’s time to help me,” he says.

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