Page 106 of Leather & Lark
“Motherfucker.” I scroll through my recent appointments until I find the last name that suddenly escapes me as disbelief and panic creep through my flesh. “Get me everything you can find on Abe Midus. I’m going home to look for Lark.” I disconnect the call and face Nina and Damian, their eyes wide with confusion and concern. “Abe Midus. Do you know that name?”
“No,” Damian says. Nina shakes her head next to him. “What the hell is going on?”
“We’ve got him on video, the man who killed Tremblay. And he did it with a tool from my shop.” I try ringing Lark’s phoneone more time as her parents pepper me with more questions, but again my call goes unanswered. “Something isn’t right. I’m going to find Lark.”
Nina clamps her hand over her mouth, muffling a strangled cry.
Damian surges forward. “I’ll come with you.”
“No. Stay and text me if Lark shows up.” I stride down the corridor, Damian’s footfalls an echo behind me as we head into the lobby. “Texan accent, short gray hair, five-foot-eleven, medium build, tattoo of a Bible and cross on his right forearm. Call me right away if you see him.”
“Oh, you lookin’ for Steve? I think he left about an hour ago,” one of the nurses says from where she sits at the reception desk.
“What?”
“Steve. The temp guy. Likes his Bible quotes.” Confusion deepens in the nurse’s expression as her eyes dart between me and Damian. “We had a few people out sick yesterday so we called the staffing company for a temp worker to cover.”
Damian and I turn to each other. His face crumples. I try to swallow the lump in my throat.
“My daughter—”
“Iwillfind her. Even if I have to kill every person in this goddamn city to do it.”
Damian gives me a single nod and I take off at a jog, calling Fionn as I run to my car on the off-chance Lark might still be with Rose. I’m speeding through a red light when he says he hasn’t seen her, but he tells me they’re in their rental and not far from our building, ready to help. By the time I reach our street, they’re already parking next to the entrance.
My heart races. My hands shake. I try her phone again as Fionn and Rose meet me at my car, but Lark still doesn’t answer.
“We called Rowan but he and Sloane are in Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend. They’re on their way home but it’s gonna take a while.” Rose’s face is creased with worry as I withdraw my gun from the glove box. “What’s going on? Where the fuck is Lark?”
“I don’t know. She called me to say her aunt died. She was supposed to meet me at the nursing home, but she never showed.” I lead the way to the main door and grab the door handle only to find it unlocked. It swings open to the textile production floor where there’s no sign of anything amiss. “Conor just found information about the man who’s been targeting her family. And now Lark won’t respond to any of my calls.”
I stride toward the stairs, taking them by twos, Fionn and Rose close on my heels. The worst fears I never could have imagined suddenly pile up around me with every step I take.
“The guy wasright fucking there. He was in my goddamn shop. He spoke to Lark, shook her hand. He’s been around us this whole time and I had no fucking clue.”
By the time we reach the apartment I feel like I might vomit. The desperation and panic are so foreign they’re overwhelming. I keep hoping my phone will suddenly ring, that Lark’s smiling face will pop up on my screen. But it stays silent. And I’m not sure I can survive what I might find on the other side of the door.
I hesitate for just a moment, letting Rose and Fionn know with a nod that they need to stay behind me. And then I twist the handle and push it open.
Blood coats the floor and my knees buckle. It’s my brother who holds me up long enough to stumble into the room and regain my balance.
“Lark.” My despondent plea receives a pained whine in reply. I surge forward into the living space and find Bentley lying on his side near the table, blood coating the white patches on his fur. He whines again, a sorrowful cry that incinerates my crumbling heart.
“Save that fucking dog,” I order my brother as I scramble for tea towels from the kitchen and toss them to Fionn.
“I’m not a vet—”
“I don’t fucking care, save that goddamn dog.”
I stalk toward the corridor where the bedrooms are, calling to Lark as I go. My efforts are unrewarded. I check the bedrooms and bathrooms, but there’s no sign of Lark, nothing out of place except her absence. I return to the living room with a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and clippers clutched in one hand and my gun in the other. Rose has bloodied towels pressed to Bentley’s side as Fionn threads a needle.
“I’ll do what I can to stop the bleeding now and get him to the vet,” Fionn says. I hand him the clippers and he shaves off a line of fur next to what looks like a deep stab wound. When he glances up at me, Fionn’s expression is grim. “Do you have any idea where Lark could be?”
“No.” I scan the room and spot her phone near the coffee table, a broken lamp nearby on the floor. There’s a bloody streak across the screen. My missed calls and texts and notifications from the Uber she never took flash on the backlit glass when I pick it up.
Lark needed me. And I wasn’t there.
An anguished scream fills the room. It comes fromme.
