Page 20 of The Wicked

Brooke didn’t look as if she believed me, but she did at least skirt around the pool of mushed-up cake pop and head to the driver’s side. The whole time, I watched the corner of the building, waiting for the monster to appear with a silenced pistol in his hand the way he had at the car wreck. Mom had saved me that day. At first, I’d thought the monster was there to help, that he was a Good Samaritan, but Mom had shushed me and told me to hide. She’d known what was coming.

And now so did I.

When Brooke started the engine and turned the car around, I was finally able to breathe again. But what if he’d seen us leave? What if he tracked Brooke down, and she told him what I’d said? I’d have to stay away from her. From everyone I cared about.

“Why don’t you stay at our place tonight?” Brooke asked. “Aaron makes a great hangover breakfast. Romi swears by it.”

“No! I mean, thank you for the offer, but I need to go home.”

“Are you sure?”

I made an effort to quell the fear in my voice. “Yes, really. I just want to sleep in my own bed.”

And make plans to leave Baldwin’s Shore. Now I had nothing to stay for and every reason to go.

6

GARRETT

“Did a woman dressed as Cinderella come through here? Blue dress, blonde hair.”

Full, kissable pink lips, an ass to die for, and footwork that would give Ginger Rogers a run for her money. I still wasn’t quite sure what I’d said or done, but she’d taken off like an Olympic sprinter.

Congressman Mandell sucked in another dose of carcinogens and blew out smoke. Guess his latest attempt to quit his twenty-a-day habit hadn’t worked out.

“She playing hard to get?”

“Something like that.”

He chuckled and pointed toward the front of the hotel. “The girl went that way. Good luck, son.”

When I rounded the corner of the building, there was no sign of her, but something up ahead caught my eye, glinting beneath the floodlights that made night seem like day at the Peninsula. A shoe. More precisely, one of Cinderella’s shoes. The crystals on the heel had jammed it tight into a drain grate, and she’d just…left it there? I didn’t know a whole hell of a lot about women’s footwear, but I’d picked up enough snippets of information from my sister over the years to realise that this was an expensive designer brand.

I stuck a finger into the grate and gently wiggled the heel free, keeping an eye out for its owner.

The optics weren’t lost on me—was this some kind of joke? Cinderella had run off at midnight—well, close to it—and left Prince Charming in the dust. Hell, I wasn’t even meant to be Prince Charming tonight. I’d reserved a Prince of Darkness costume, but the girl at the costume store made a mistake, one she’d blamed on autocorrect, and here I was. Dressed in fucking ruffles.

With a shoe in my hand.

Did Cinderella expect me to chase her? Because I didn’t chase women. They chased me, and I was the one who did the running.

Or had my brother realised who was behind the blue velvet mask? I’d stayed out of his way, but I hadn’t exactly kept a low profile this evening, not once I’d set eyes on Cinderella and then realised she could dance. If Trey was playing a prank, it wasn’t funny. I half expected one of his idiot friends to pop up with a camera, filming me for their next TikTok video as I made a fool out of myself.

Where was she?

I stilled the way I used to on patrol when I needed to evaluate my surroundings. Waiting. Watching. Barely breathing.Feeling.She wasn’t there. Cinderella had vanished.

Gone.

Like a ghost in the darkness.

I should go find Trey. That was the reason I’d come here tonight, the reason I’d dismissed Johannes’s idea to fly to Aspen for the weekend and blow off some steam. I should toss the shoe in the trash.

But I didn’t.

Instead, I placed it carefully into the trunk of my car and began to plan.

* * *

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