Page 50 of Lust

As soon as I leave The Vault the next evening, I turn on my monitoring app. My fingers fumble as I unlock my phone, in desperate need of a dose of Ruby, like a teenage boy nervously opening the pages of his first Playboy magazine. Security must have tightened up this building, though, because all I see is fuzz. No images come through. My teeth grind thinking about the fact that I’ll have to wait until I reach the street to catch a glimpse of my queen.

A text alert pops up on my phone. It’s just a quick note from Mom, something about New Year’s Eve. Yet another family obligation to avoid. As I stride out of the elevator and across the polished marble of the first floor of the Arrow building, however, the significance of the text sinks in.

My heart falls to my feet.

The Arrow building isn’t locked down. The text from mom came through just fine. There’s something wrong at Ruby’s house.

Desperate to be mistaken, I click back over to the monitoring app and I flip through the various views. Outside. Kitchen. Bathroom. Front hallway. Bedroom. Nothing. Only fuzz. My frantic fingers feel numb. Finally, I see something on the last one, a camera I’d wedged into a grate in the hallway to monitor the door to Brent’s room. The view has changed, but the camera is still on. Now, however, all I see is a closeup of the speckled linoleum that covers the floor beneath the kitchen table.

Someone tore down my cameras. All of them. And because I was in this series of stupid fucking meetings, I missed the whole thing. Now, I’m over two hours away from her house and helpless.

Ice cold dread fills my veins, then steels into resolve.

I dial Delilah.

“You have to get in touch with Brent.”

She responds with silence.

“Delilah?”

“I’ve been trying to call you all day, Aaron, but nothing went through. Brent was at the diner this morning. With that same guy from before. Gio. They were arguing.”

A lump of granite forms in my gut.

“What did you hear, D? Tell me you heard what they were talking about.”

“I couldn’t catch it all, but I heard Brent tell the other guy he was tired of waiting and to meet him at the warehouse.”

“Call him right now.” My voice grates. “Tell him you have to meet up. Make some excuse. Tell him you can’t wait until tomorrow, that you’ll break up with him if you don’t see him tonight. Make it believable.”’

“Or we can just see where he goes.” Her voice sounds shockingly calm.

“What do you mean?”

“I put a tracker on his car, picked one up at the office the other day.”

Relief floods my veins, nearly making me collapse.

“Delilah?” My hand shakes with a surge of adrenaline, “this is not a drill. Ruby’s in danger. It’s go time. We have to get Gary there, too.”

“Got it.” She silently waits on the other end, so I end the call and contact my flight team. Apparently, they value their jobs, because they promise they’ll be ready to go by the time I reach the airport. No questions asked.

Two hours later, I’m sliding into the driver’s seat of my car back in Sacramento. Before turning the key in the ignition, I take a slow, deep breath to refocus on the task at hand.

Everything is fine. We’re moving a little faster than I thought we would, but it doesn’t matter. Everything’s going to be just fine.

Except that a deranged lunatic has Ruby, and who knows what he might do to her.

“Fuck!” I pound my fists against the dashboard of the Lincoln town car, the only thing I could arrange on such short notice. It’s not ideal, but it’ll have to do.

“Motherfucking piece of shit motherfucker.” I allow myself one more moment of frustration as I stroke my scar, remembering the way the blade glinted in a ray of sunlight right before Brent slashed my shoulder. The way he laughed maniacally while doing it. The line of red blood that appeared on my favorite Nirvana t-shirt.

Fuck him. He will not win. Tonight, Brent Michelson will die.

Adrenaline makes my legs twitch. I turn up the radio to calm my nerves. Strings soar over the airwaves, crooning out The Swan by Camille Saint-Saëns. My phone lights up. A message from Delilah. A location.

Delilah

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