Page 130 of Boy of Ruin
My heart races as Lucifer steps away from me, dropping his hand. He glances at the bed of the truck.
“Don’t bother trying to get him out. There’s a lock on the latch. I’ll be back, baby girl. We’re not done here.” Then he takes off down the driveway at a jog, and I think about all the mornings we ran with each other.
Never one without the other.
Ever.
I lean back against the truck, closing my eyes as I tilt my head up toward the night sky. I try to breathe, try not to think about whatever the hell is going on at Ezra’s. Instead, I’m thinking of how to get J out of this.
I’m thinking of tearing that cage apart with my bare hands, but I know I can’t.
Then I realize I can just fucking go inside my house—my thumbprint unlocks it, or at least, it did before I left—and I can find something. A crowbar, a gun. There are plenty of both of those.
I’m getting him out.
I open my eyes, step away from the truck and don’t look back, knowing my heart will break if I lay eyes on that tarp again. I hear hushed voices carrying down the street, and see the porch light on at Ezra’s house, three down from Lucifer’s. They all live on a private street together, probably for this reason. So they can’t keep secrets, even from each other. But I don’t bother waiting to hear what’s going on.
Instead, I run to the front door, skipping my way up the stone steps.
There’s a light on, I see through the stained glass, but everything is distorted, morphed with the pattern of the glass. There are no guards outside of the door, but we passed the guardhouse on the way in through the iron fence that shields this street from the rest of the world.
Whatever is going on at Ezra’s house can’t be that serious; the guards would’ve seen anything strange or unusual.
I press my thumb to the handle, hear it beep. I push the door open, walking into the cold house.
My house.
A shudder runs down my spine as I close the door behind me, leaning back against it, taking a deep breath. I think of Maddox. His mask. Hands on me. The threats he whispered.
The way he drugged me. Ella.
Shaking my head, I pull myself together, step away from the door, turning toward the stairs. The light is coming from the kitchen, and I assume Lucifer left it on because when you don’t worry about money, you do wasteful, asshole shit like that.
Did he leave it on before he went to Julie’s?
Where the fuck is Ophelia? Where did he drop her off at?
I push all that shit aside, just like the dancer’s death. Photos of me. Elijah’s guard being murdered.
I see the coffee table shadowed in the living room, but from this far away, and with no light on in the room, I can’t tell if there’s coke on it like there always seemed to be before I ran.
I take a step up on the stairs, one hand curled around the bannister, the other going for the light switch along the wall.
But then I hear something.
A creak of a floorboard.
I freeze, holding my breath, my hand falling away from the light switch. I don’t want whoever it is to see me until I see them.
My mind starts racing as I hear another creak.
Definitely coming from upstairs.
The door was locked when I walked up, so whoever is in here has to be someone Lucifer let in.
But…was the door locked?
I didn’t check.
