Page 74 of Wretched Soul
It’s when I hear her say that she’ll be going out on Saturday that I relax back in my car seat. Mission accomplished.
I’m nervous as I lean against the balcony and train my eyes on the entrance to the VIP area, desperate for my first glimpse of Lily. She’s wearing her green velvet dress, and even though I’ve only seen a grainy image of her on CCTV, she’d looked stunning as she left her apartment. I’d do anything for that woman. I need her to know that.
Sipping a whiskey, I check the time. She should be here by now, so it’s only reasonable that I check her Uber account. My heart sinks. The car dropped her off on Clark Street. What the fuck?
My fingers fly across my screen as I begin the hunt. There are a lot of cameras in the area, and the place is heaving with Saturday night revelers. If Lily thinks she’s going to give any other guy the benefit of that dress… I only briefly consider the possibility that she’s rejected me completely. She’s playing.
On a hunch, I check out her social media, but it’s when I switch to Kaitlyn’s that I breathe a sigh of relief. There’s a photo of them outside a bar. Lily’s smug expression says it all.
“OK, Slayer. Let the hunt begin,” I whisper.
I could race out to find her, but the trail Lily is leaving seems a little too obvious. I pull up CCTV around the bar she’d posed outside, and in a matter of moments, catch her and her friend walking straight past.
Taking another swig of whiskey, I tail the pair to a waiting taxi cab. She’s not using an Uber and when I check her card transactions, nothing shows up. I could try to hack into Kaitlyn’s accounts, but that would take time and resources I don’t have, and my guess is they’ll pay cash.
“Fuck.”
My attempts to keep track of their cab is futile, and unease creeps up my spine. I try to ignore it. How many times had Lily and Kaitlyn been out clubbing on a Saturday night before I started following their every move? Lily knows what she’s doing – clearly. The only thing I can do is wait for her to drop some more breadcrumbs so I can pick up the trail again. She did threaten to kill me for breaking into her apartment, and fuck, I’m dying here.
“You look like shit,” Calder says as he slides up next to me.
I’m leaning over the balcony to the dance floor below. She could turn up here. And if she’s mad because I didn’t extend the invite to Kaitlyn, they’d appear down there.
“Can you ask Simon to call me if Lily Kendrick shows up.”
“Are you still chasing her?”
He sounds genuinely shocked. I’ve never chased after a woman for this long, and I’ve certainly never held onto them.
“Calder, just ask him,” I repeat, my patience too frayed to be polite.
“Done,” my friend says a moment later. I can feel his eyes on me. “Sorry to hear about your mom.”
“Alice wasn’t my mom.”
Calder rests his elbows on the balcony next to me. “So, she isn’t the reason you’re in a pissy mood?” he says. It’s a rhetorical question so I ignore it. “Then it’s just the girl with the auburn hair and the peachy ass that you take one look at and just want to…”
I turn my head slowly as he mimes biting into a piece of fruit. “If you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to crowd surf after falling from a great height, I’d be happy to satisfy your curiosity.”
Calder grins at me. “Mace, you can’t even satisfy your girl.”
I close my eyes and swipe my tongue slowly across my lips as I straighten up. I won’t go as far as hauling Calder over the balcony, but punching him is a compromise I’m willing to make.
My friend’s laughter reaches me from a safe distance. He’s already backed off. “I’m going,” he says. “But give me a shout if you need back up.”
The fucker winks, and I return to scowling at my cell phone.
I hate not being in control, and this is torture. Lily’s played me at my own game and she’s won. Fine. I don’t care. We can talk about how reckless she’s being later. But this ends now. I call her. She doesn’t answer. No surprise, so I tap out a message ordering her to tell me where the fuck she is.
A minute passes, and either she’s dancing and hasn’t noticed my attempts to speak to her, or she’s ignoring me. To kill time, I keep refreshing Kaitlyn’s Instagram account as if that will summon her next post. And after an excruciating wait, it does.
The photo is another selfie of the two of them outside a nightclub. Syndella should have been shut down years ago, and this had better be another red herring. Lily is going to be in so much trouble if she–
I stop analyzing the photo long enough to register the caption I should have read straight away.
Help! Now Shade!
I spring away from the rail and barrel straight into Calder. “What’s the quickest way to get to Syndella?” I bark.
