Page 79 of Our Lips Are Sealed
Evie didn’t want to believe it. The little girl she’d known would never have done those things. She was willing to bet CeCe had been afraid of him,feedinghim so he wouldn’t consume her.
Annabeth began to chant CeCe’s name softly. Toby turned from them, looking off through the thinning section of the forest to gaze out over the marshy bank on the opposite inlet.
“One day, I met this friend of hers that I liked. CeCe was doing some assistant teaching at a nursing college in Missouri, and Morgan was a student there,” he said. “CeCe said no, but I did it anyway, and she got mad. That was when I knew it was time.”
Tears trickled down Annabeth’s cheeks while he spoke. This was a horrible thing for her to hear, but Evie thought learning of CeCe’s fate might keep her present mentally.
“What did you do to her?”
Rain let loose over the water, crossing the bay in sheets. Toby watched, staring off at the dark shore on the other side as if entranced. “It was time for CeCe to lose,” he murmured. “But don’t worry. I brought her home first.”
Chapter 22
“Evietoldmeyouwere into this kind of stuff.”
With a throbbing head, Liam listened to the exchange through the kitchen screen door. He couldn’t see anything, hanging just out of sight from those on the patio. Without knowing the type of weapon Toby possessed, he couldn’t risk a confrontation and possibly placing the girls in further danger.
Luckily for him, he’d awakened on the library floor with only minutes passing after Toby’s attack. The bastard had hidden under the desk, slinking out from under it while Liam was distracted texting his father.
Once the room ceased its spinning, Liam silently opened the door and could hear traces of the conversation in the kitchen. He’d strained to listen, but was too far away to make out anything except the smack of the screen door closing.
When he realized Toby had taken the girls outside, Liam darted into the hall, making his way to the media room’s office, where Abe was out cold.
A syringe lay on the desk, and Liam checked Abe’s pulse, finding it beating strong. He didn’t have much choice but to leave him asleep in his chair, and with a whispered apology, stealthily made his way into the kitchen to pursue Toby.
On the patio, Liam listened to their low murmur of voices and what sounded like Annabeth’s muffled heaving cries.
“Walk,” Toby’s order floated inside the house. “But not too far ahead.”
Liam risked a peek through the screen and saw Toby leading the girls in the direction of the woods.
As the distance between them and the house grew, Liam called Mathis, but it went straight to voicemail. The fire was conveniently keeping the locals distracted. He went to try Samuel but didn’t want to take a chance and lose sight of the group, so he sent a mass text instead.
Toby is at Haven House.
Securing his phone in his pocket, Liam watched as Toby and the girls slipped into the forest. If he remembered correctly, the brush at the trail’s entrance was an overgrown mess of thick bushes that would briefly block those on the path’s view of the estate, and give him an opportunity to follow.
Without a second thought, Liam charged through the door. Out in the open and exposed, he didn’t have much time. There was a break in the pine near the fork, and it would give Toby a straight view of him bolting across the lawn.
Driving himself to run faster, he quickly calculated where he could gain a small amount of coverage once reaching the trailhead. He came in low on the approach, dropping behind the handful of cypress that made up the estates’ barrier wall. Placing his back to a tree, Liam clamped his lips shut to control the sounds of his breathing and craned his neck to see the girls talking with Toby at the fork.
Evie was struggling to keep Annabeth upright, while Toby had Jamison, who was fighting like hell to break free of his grip. Out of the three women, she was the biggest threat to Toby, and Liam wasn’t going to wait around for him to figure that out.
Toby instructed the women to head left, and recalling the lay of the land, Liam knew the path would curve to the right at some point, with the bayou lying approximately fifty yards in the distance. Samuel and Selah had both noted in their statements to Mathis after the break-in that whoever they’d chased managed to outmaneuver them through the dark forest easily.
Should Toby see him coming, he could cut off the trail and escape through the mill ruins, leaving Liam with no way to track him. The area was riddled with hidden pits, and God knows whatever else. Jamison had mentioned there was even some sort of toxic plant that could burn the skin when touched.
Typing one final message to alert everyone as to where Toby was taking the girls, Liam prepared himself to make his way as quietly as possible into the graveyard from the northern section of the property. He would need to take the path leading to the mill ruins, but then cut to the south, where he could sneak in undetected.
And he would need to move fast. The sun was setting, and once night fell on the forest, he would become blind in the darkness. Rising from his spot behind the tree, Liam gave the group a few minutes to travel deeper into the woods, and when it was time, he slowly started down the path in the opposite direction.
But then Jamison’s scream pierced the silence, and his well thought out plan went straight to Hell.
Chapter 23
Enteringthegraveyard,Jamisonhad taken one look at the equipment strewn about the decaying headstones and shrieked in holy terror, all previous bravado gone.
“Calm down,” Toby ordered, while she flailed. “Don’t act like you didn’t know where this was headed.”
