Page 72 of Sins of Seduction
The phone and boot fell from Jax’s hand as he stumbled to face his assailant. His vision swam. Black dots appeared as he stared down the familiar face. He stretched his hand out, but his body felt too heavy to keep upright, and he collapsed as he fought to keep his eyes open.
He heard a familiar voice in his ear, and his thoughts went to Raven. She was alone, and he couldn’t overpower whatever he’d been drugged with to save her.
Raven was in a weird state of being awake and still dreaming. Her bed was moving—or was she on a boat? Her gaze shot up to the night sky, but the stars were wrong. Instead of a million tiny lights, there had been big blobs of light that blinded her every time she opened her eyes. Her head still hurt, and the motion of the boat or bed made her feel nauseous.
Raven groaned, trying to sit up, but a firm hand pushed her back down. “Sick,” Raven grumbled.
“Almost there,” a voice soothed in Raven’s ear, and she knew that voice. It was familiar and made her feel safe so Raven settled back into the warmth at her back. She felt a soft hand in her hair. “You’re strong, but if I give you anymore, it’ll probably kill you and we can’t have that. Not yet.”
The voice wrapped around Raven. She tried to make sense of the words but couldn’t piece them together over the pain in her head. There were alarm bells going off that made her wince. She wanted to open her eyes to see what was going on, but they felt too heavy for her.
Raven was moving again. She could feel the breeze against her skin, and that seemed to calm her. She got a whiff of lilac and jasmine, and the pain in her skull tore through her chest, grief seeping into her body. She knew that smell. It belonged to sweet Lea. The woman Raven had wished she could love as much as Lea loved her.
“I…sorry…Lea.” The words had been a struggle to connect and move past her lips. Her tongue felt like it was under sand and her mouth was dry. She wasn’t even sure Lea could hear her, but Raven wanted to make sure she knew how sorry she was.
“Lea?” Raven tried again but was met with only the sounds of the alarms going off in her head.
Raven tried to sit up again, desperate to get to Lea, to make her understand that she never meant for it to end the way that it did, but Lea wasn’t here. She was already gone, leaving Raven alone.
The movement stopped, and Raven felt hands on her body again. They weren’t as soothing as before. They lacked the warmth that Raven had felt, and it made her recoil back into whatever she was leaning up against.
“You’re not sorry, Raven. You’ve never been sorry.” The familiar voice was angry now, and something about this dream felt weird. She tried desperately to open her eyes but was still met with resistances.
“You’ll break like you broke her, and when there’s nothing left, you’ll know how she felt before she ended it all.”
Cruz walked out of the empty interrogation room looking down at this phone. He called Jax back twice, and there was no answer, but he thought for sure he heard him saying something before the call had ended. He tried calling one more time. An urgency he couldn’t place had him hitting the phone button before he could stop himself.
The phone rang twice as Cruz made his way to one of the meeting rooms that Greyson had set up for the case. Jax’s voicemail filtered through Cruz’s ears before he hung up and cursed.
Now who’s acting like a nagging wife?
“What’s wrong?” Greyson met him at the door.
“Can’t get a hold of Jax, and something feels wrong,” Cruz mumbled as they went into the room.
“He should be at Raven’s. I have him picking up the protein powder. There’s still uniforms watching the house, so if anything comes up, we should get a call.” Greyson closed the door behind him, and Cruz got a good look at the board Greyson had put together.
Cruz still wanted to punch Greyson in the throat for accusing him of being behind all this, but a good detective left no stone unturned. “Since I’m no longer your suspect, where did all this point to?” Cruz tried to make sense of the arrows that had led to the mysterious question mark in the middle of the board. There seemed to be a variable missing, and it was either going to be something so obvious they were going to be mad they didn’t see it, or something no one would have expected.
“I’m waiting on Lea Matthews’ mom, Ria Matthews, to call me back. She doesn’t live in Ivywood. I want to know more about this half-sister Lea had.” Greyson walked toward the board. “When I thought it was you, this was without the two murders. The rose petals, the notes, and the situation at Lush—it’s intimate. Given how connected the three of you are, it made sense.”
Cruz held his flinch. Greyson had no idea how connected the three of them were; last night’s events only pulled them closer toward each other.
“But as I told Raven and Jax,” Greyson continued, “the murders wouldn’t fit for you. So I’m back to thinking this was someone avenging Lea’s death, but the question is, who?”
Cruz backed up so he could view the board better. He saw the list of suspects on one side and matched them to everyone in Raven’s circle except for one. On the right there was a category titled unknown and under that title was Lea’s mother, the half-sister, and Danielle Cunningham, and something clicked. The lights had shone into that dark spot he couldn’t see.
“Have you interviewed Danielle yet?” Cruz questioned, and Greyson shook his head. “Why not?”
“She went to the party as Dee Cunningham, and the number she left was disconnected. I ran into her in the coffee shop and told her about Raven, and I let her go, but this was before I was convinced you weren’t guilty. Where’s your head going?”
“She’s the only constant throughout all of these. She has access to Raven, to Lush. I had gone into Lush’s offices with a couple of officers, but we didn’t touch anything. We weren’t alone either. Danielle was with us, and when we left, she stayed behind.”
Cruz held up his hand and dropped a finger for every point he made. “That places her there to plant that note.” One finger down. “She’s Raven’s assistant, that gives her access to Lush, and she could have very well paid someone or done it herself to plant the roses.” One finger down. “She was there the night Bastillo was murdered, and, again, she’s Raven’s assistant. Who knows that club better than her to stay out of anyone’s line of sight while she killed Bastillo?” Another finger down. “If she was at the party last night, why leave a shortened name and fake number?” Another finger down.
Cruz didn’t think it would be that simple, but if his animosity toward Raven put him at enemy number one, then Danielle’s easy access to her should have raised flags too. “Have you done a background check on her?”
Greyson shook his head. “No, but Raven did. It was in the files we collected when we were investigating Bastillo’s murder. Nothing out of the ordinary popped up.”
