Page 3 of Karma
“Who’s Phillip?” Marnie asks and looks around at them. “Does that mean something?”
“You have to get things squared away for the wedding, right?” Colt asks. “Why don’t you go and take care of those? You don’t need to worry about this right now. Thank you for your help.”
Looking at Venom, she nods. “Yeah, sure. I’ll, uh, go do… stuff.”
“I’ll be right out, love,” he says and shuts the door behind her. “You’re fucking kidding, right? I thought we decided Phillip wasn’t real.”
“Look,” Colt says and hands him the photos of the wall covered in pictures of Lex.
His eyes widen. “Some of these look…”
“Young? Yeah, they are. Fifteen is the youngest I found, but I haven’t gotten a magnifying glass out yet to review it closer.”
They walk him through the contents of the box, and he gasps as he looks at all of the victims. Men and women. “Men, too?”
“Yeah, that’s what Nina found,” Undertaker says. “This motherfucker clearly has types he likes to stick to.”
“Is Marnie in danger?”
Brock shakes his head. “I don’t think so. If she was, she’d have been attacked again. I think this Phillip guy believes he’s safe.”
“He’s not her type, anyway. That’s probably why he paid Gerard to rough her up. She’s got dark hair and green eyes rather than blonde hair with blue eyes,” Colt says.
“Well, I fit that type. He can come for me. I’ll show him what’s up,” Venom says.
His dark hair has been bleached since Summerville, thanks to Marnie’s suggestion, and his blue eyes look like they could laser through glass when he’s angry.
The image makes Colt happy. If anyone here could hurt this son of a bitch the way he deserves to be, it would be Venom. “Unfortunately, you’re not his type when it comes to men. He likes them with dark hair and hazel eyes.”
“Okay, so level with me. What are we looking at?”
“Thirty-four women that we know of and thirty-three men. There could be more, but this is what we have,” Undertaker says.
“What does this asshole want?”
Swallowing, Colt locks eyes with is Sergeant at Arms. “If Gerard was telling the truth, he wants my wife.”
“Then we find this motherfucker and kill him the same way. Slowly and painfully.”
“I can’t fucking find him!” Brock shouts. “I haven’t even come across his picture until now. Birth records, family trees, school records, teachers, doctors, cellmates, guards… nothing. This motherfucker has not come up.”
“It’s not your fault, Brock,” Colt says.
Laughing, he tosses his hands in the air. “Isn’t it? My job is to find what we need on the internet. Find the things no one else can find, and I can’t find one lousy man. The only person alive we know who has seen him is Marnie.”
“Who’s with Lex now?” Venom asks. “Who’s watching her?”
“We just found out. I have to figure out how to fix this fuck up because we killed the only real link to Phillip we had.”
“I swear, it seemed like bullshit. An excuse to save his own ass,” Brock says and sighs in defeat. “Neither of us found anything.”
“This is one smart motherfucker with one goal in mind,” Venom says.
Colt nods. “Yeah, the goal is to murder my wife. But why?”
Colt didn’t feel right walking away from Gerard and pulling the protection detail from him. Undertaker swore he heard the back door shut and echo in the warehouse when they stormed in, and Colt knows he heard it, too. Everything pointed to it being a diversion tactic, but this is what happens when Colt doesn’t listen to his gut.
Now, what do I do?
